TRTL, good explanation. Thanks.

The future of Australia I ask.. Is is not with our youth? Then I ask.. Why are we encouraging the lowest common denominator to breed with a means tested Baby Bonus? I hear of many stories of how the the baby bonus can be spent on a new Plasma TV or other inflationary type expenditure.

I suggest it be more fiscally responsible for it to be in the form of a tax rebate and encourage the "contributing" tax paying members of our society with less social problems to "create" the youth of our future?

Col Rouge has a new moniker.

The baby bonus and Family Benefit Part B are welfare payments. If families with incomes of $150,000 can't manage then perhaps they should go to a Centrelink financial planner to learn how to budget, or ask any unemployed person on a Newstart Allowance to review their expenditures to see where they could trim their spending. If dealing with dole bludgers doesn't appeal then perhaps they can deal with carers or aged pensioners.

I hope that Australian politicians start planning for Australia's future rather than run around lining up their Macquarie Bank consultancy to increase their own wealth

At $200 per barrel by 2009, OIL will prove this budget to be Rudd's folly.

All the future-fund $Billions stashed in foreign investments will sail down the Swanny in elaborate US Ponzi schemes involving among other things the new 'subprime' - wind farms. Australians will be left high and dry. How can Rudd be so bloody naive.

Given the recent trend in oil prices the budget should have reflected the following countermeasures:

1. SPEND the surplus on needed infrastructure IMMEDIATELY. The targets have been identified for years. No need to hoarde. That's pure stupidity as time will tell.

2. CUT IMMIGRATION to zero. There is no point having extra workers with oil at $200 per barrel. They will be idle as the economy will permanently downturn. And Rudd's wet dream of 10% GST collection on everything the 1,400,000 or so immigrants expected over the next 3 years of his government? At $200 per oil barrel, global currencies will be so deflated that Rudd will have to raise GST to around %30% to cope with the onerous immigrant burden he is creating for all of US. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if people talk of lynching. God knows they'll have plenty of time to discuss it sitting in biodeisel laced traffic jams right across every capital city.
And another thing, the mining industry needs about 2000 extra workers. What the hell are the other 170,000 skjilled migrant intake going to be doing? Driving up house prices & rents to the benefit of all those vested interest MPs who have big property portfolios.

3. Invest a substantial proportion of the surplus in finalising the GEOTHERMAL pilot plant in the Hunter. GEOTHERMAL is the ONLY replacement energy source for OIL that nature has availed us. Every other source in some way or another is CRITICALLY dependent on oil or coal for its sustainability. Further future fund allocations should invest in GEOTHERMAL as a PRIORITY depending on the outcome of the Hunter pilot.

Budget this Mr Rudd ... keep watching those oil prices .... by 2009 you're finished!

Thatcher,you speak he truth,but neither of the political parties will go there.

Saul, I share your hope that the Rudd Government will be willing to spend political capital more adventurously in the two Budgets before the next election.

In a period of skills shortages and high employment, Rudd should have used the budget as a golden opportunity to re-structure government with new, more efficient delivery mechanisms, replacing the woeful delivery of public services and infrastructure by the states.

The removal of the Medicare surcharge will see hundreds of thousands of people dropping out of Private Health insurance. This will place an unsustainable extra burden on the state public hospital systems that they are simply unable to cope with given their current woes.

Part of Rudd's budget package should have been to start implementing structural change by providing for the gradual transfer of the management and ownership of state public hospitals to Commonwealth control. Only then can Rudd complete a 'roots and branch' reform to this key service sector. But why stop there?

Massive efficiency gains of $30 Billion a year are possible when Australia has completed the total transition to a two tier system of government comprising local government and the Australian government.

Local government has the capacity to deliver high quality services including national health, police, justice, education, environment, and transport programs that also meet local and regional needs and priorities.

The state parliaments and their large civil services are the middlemen of Australian politics. Their greatest service to Australia could be to facilitate the transfer of their powers and assets to the Commonwealth Parliament so that we can achieve a globally efficient country that provides maximum regulatory consistency and value for each tax dollar spent on public goods and services. I hope we get there by 2030.