Aussie Welfare system to be abolished
Australian budget ends “Age of Entitlement”
15 May 2014
This week’s Australian budget is a stark warning to workers internationally of the sweeping social reversal being demanded by international financial capital in every country. In what has been depicted as the “lucky country,” which seemed to escape the 2008–2009 global financial crisis, the framework has been set for dismantling every aspect of the welfare state established following World War II.
The Abbott Coalition government’s first budget will have an immediate impact on the lives of every section of the working class, especially the most impoverished. The screws have been tightened on welfare payments across the board to ensure that the unemployed, the disabled and the elderly wait longer, receive fewer benefits or get nothing at all. Working-class families are being stripped of tax concessions. The principle of “user pays” has been extended to visits to the local doctor and other medical services, as well as to giving universities free rein to make massive increases in student fees.
The budget sets a number of new benchmarks that will be exploited to impose similar measures internationally.
* The pension age will be progressively lifted over time to 70—an unprecedented measure in an advanced industrialised country. Many elderly workers, physically unable to work or who cannot find a job under conditions of mass joblessness, will be condemned to years of destitution on unemployment benefits.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014.../pers-m15.html
