Federal Budget 2020: Pensioners get extra $500 in two payments
Aged pensioners, disability support pensioners and Carers Allowance recipients are among five million Aussies who will be eligible for two $250 payments over the next six months.
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Five million pensioners will pocket an extra $500 over the next six months in a $2.6 billion cash splash in time for Christmas.
The $250 Economic Support payments will be tax-free and delivered progressively from December, with another payment by March next year.
They will be paid to aged pensioners, disability support pensioners, eligible veterans, concession cardholders, families receiving Family Tax Benefit, Carers Allowance recipients and Commonwealth Seniors Health Card holders.
Taxpayers will spend a record $227 billion on welfare payments in 2020/21 – up 68 per cent in just one year – as the COVID-19 pandemic pushes more Australians onto the dole queue.
JobSeeker payments will cost $35 billion this year alone – more than is spent on Medicare, aged care or schools.
The Budget documents predict spending on dole payments will halve next year, and fall to $13 billion in 2023/24.
Treasury forecasts that the unemployment rate will peak at 8 per cent at the end of this year, dropping to 6.2 per cent by the end of June 2021.
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JobSeeker pays single job seekers $565.70 a fortnight, or $612 if they have children.
Debt recovery of welfare payments will be paused until at least the end of October.
Unemployed youth will find it easier to apply for Youth Allowance or ABSTUDY payments, without being tested on their parents’ income.
The Department of Social Services will automatically assume they worked over the six month period from March to September this year, to qualify as “independent” job seekers.
The budget papers reveal young workers and women were hardest hit by jobs losses at the start of the pandemic.
The federal government will also spend an extra $44 million each year to pay the wages of more than 500,000 frontline charity workers helping the public with emergency relief and counselling.
Older Australians will be taught to use the internet and online banking safely, through a $28 million program through the eSafety Commissioner and the Good Things Foundation.
Welfare income management will continue with a Cashless Debit Card in the existing sites of the Ceduna region in South Australia, the East Kimberly and the Goldfields regions of Western Australia, and the Bundaberg and Hervey Bay regions of Queensland.
The budget papers show the federal government plans to extend the Cashless Debit Card to the Northern Territory and the Cape York region in Queensland.
A national Memorial for Victims and Survivors of Institutional Child Sexual Abuse will be established for “symbolic reparation and public recognition’’.
Boosts to the age pension announced in the Budget are “very welcome”, the peak group for Australian seniors says.
“Some very good news for older Australians in the Budget: two lots of stimulus supplements for the age pension $250 in December and $250 next March,” Council on the Ageing chief executive Ian Yates said.
“We’re very pleased ... with 23,000 new home care packages to provide Australians with better care and more care at home. It’s not sufficient to bring the waiting list down to 30 days, but it’s a very big first step.”
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