Budget to leave poor families worse off: report

By now, it’s no news that the Abbott government’s first budget – presented last week – was probably the harshest in decades.

The Government has come under fire from across the community in the past week as it tried to sell measures including tax rises on petrol, a $7 fee to visit the GP, a crackdown on welfare measures and $80 billion in cuts to health and education.

Last week, there were also reports on how a loophole in the Budget offers high-income earners a small window to escape the debt levy. (Read more about this loophole here.)

But while the wealthy may hardly suffer the impacts of the Budget, new information reveals low-income families on benefits could lose as much as 10 per cent of their incomes.

Related: Budget may leave students in debt excess of $120,000

Fairfax reports that information withheld from the Budget shows that the hardest hit will be an unemployed 23-year-old whose income will slide to be 18.3 per cent worse off.

This data on whether a Budget makes families on different income levels better off or worse off was introduced by Peter Costello in 2005, and was included in every announcement since.

In 2009, Wayne Swan also began to include percentage changes in income and changes in dollars earned weekly.

However this table was excluded from Hockey’s first Budget.

Related: You won't believe what they scrapped in the Budget

Some of the other highlights of this table as obtained by Fairfax are below:

Worse off: Single parent on the parenting payment with one child aged six will be 10.2 per cent worse off.

Better off: Someone earning three times the average wage will lose only 0.9 per cent of their take-home income.

Better off: A high-income childless couple earning $360,000 a year will lose nothing.

Voters angry over budget: polls

The latest Newspoll published in The Australian newspaper shows 69 per cent of respondents think they will be worse off under the measures announced by Treasurer Joe Hockey last week.

Households earning between $50,000 and $90,000 were the most pessimistic.

Only 39 per cent said the budget was for the good of the country, according to the survey.

Similar sentiments were reflected in a Fairfax-Nielsen poll, with 74 per cent saying they will be worse off and 63 per cent branding the budget unfair.

The Australian says the poll is the worst result for any coalition budget on record, with only five per cent saying they will be better off.