Budget winners and losers(ZZZ)

westice

Here are the winners and losers in the 2011 federal budget:

Winners

    * Super funds: More infrastructure projects to invest in with more secure outcomes.
    * Unemployed: $233 million to get the long-term unemployed into the workforce.
    * Mentally ill: $1.5 billion in extra funding.
    * Teachers: $425 million to reward top performing teachers.
    * Apprentices: $101 million national mentoring program to help them finish training.
    * POWs: Australian prisoners of war will get a $500 a fortnight benefits boost.
    * Low-paid workers: $300 a year of the Low Income Tax Offset to go into pay packets from July.
    * Students with disabilities: Extra $200 million.
    * The bush: $4.3 billion of investments in regional hospitals, health care, universities and roads.
    * Tradies: First $5,000 of the cost of a work vehicle can now be immediately written-off by small business.
    * Foreign aid: Boosted by half a billion dollars to $4.84 billion.

Losers

    * The environment: No details of carbon tax, but more expected in the budget update in coming months.
    * Sick: Tougher criteria to get onto the disability support pension.
    * Defence: $1.1 billion not spent on new equipment being handed back to the government and civilian staff cut by 1,000.
    * Families: Family Tax Benefit will be cut off when children turn 21 instead of 24, saving $29.2 million over four years; income tests for Family Tax Benefits, baby bonus, paid parental leave maintained.
    * Company car owners: Cuts to the fringe benefits tax concessions for salary-sacrificed cars will save $950 million.
    * Public Service: Increased efficiencies to save $1.1 billion.
    * Asylum seekers: $292 million for an asylum-seeker swap program with Malaysia to stop the flood of boats.
    * GPs: Medicare rebate for GPs reduced for mental health treatments.
    * Dentists: Delays on serious reform of dental healthcare due to a lack of funds.