Australia: News and Views

So in the next few weeks you may well be getting a $900, $1800 or even more. What are you going to do with the goverment payout - are you going to save your money or spend it?

Well without a doubt the government wants you to spend your payout - that’s the theory -  the government wants to you spend your cash, to stimulate the economy - but is that the best thing for you and your family?

I don’t think it is - sure if your financial situation is so dire you are about to lose your house or rental - then you possibly should spend your $900 payout rather than save it but for most people I think you should look at how to save your money from the payout.

Saving money is now the new black - or as the economists would say - cash is king in an uncertain economy.  Saving money is not a bad idea when most bank saving accounts are offering better returns than most superannuation funds. A rate of around 5% in the bank is look pretty good for your savings.

How to save your money - well make sure you find a safe place - the banks are guaranted by the government and personally  I wouldn’t be putting too much money into shares - however much your friendly broker may be talking about market bottoms.

The other option apart from saving money or spending it, is to use your government payout to  pay down credit card and mortgage debt. The only caveat is that paying off your credit card - doesn’t mean that you now have heaps of money to spend!

Photo Credit

Holden is owned by GM and General Motors is cutting 47,000 workers - over 20,000 of which will be worldwide. The question for Australia is how bad will the cuts be for the Holden factories in Elizabeth, Adelaide and Victoria.

Now as in the US the federal government has been throwing millions in the direction of Holden - so long as they produce a 4 cylinder fuel efficient car in Australia - hmm you mean like the Toyota Corolla or the Hyundai Getz? Since when was it a good idea to mandate what gets built, rather than looking at what the consumer is actually wanting to buy. What about building a cheaper LPG car? Australia has huge reserves of that. What about small diesel cars which are common in Europe and non-existant in Australia.

The reality is that Australia is a very,very big country - unless you never leave the centre of Sydney or Melbourne then you need a car which you can drive comfortably for a 1000km or so the next town - its usually called a Holden Commodore.

Anyway by the look of these pictures of car backlogs - the last thing we need is any more new cars!

Meanwhile the Elizabeth plant in the suburbs of Adelaide remain closed as workers are on a compulsorily extended Christmas shut-down.

Hopetoun is a pretty little town on WA’s south coast about mid-way between Albany and Esperance. No one had much heard of the place until a few years ago when BHP developed and opened a nickle mine just up the road at Ravensthorpe.

Hoptoun sprang to life - property boomsed and for the first time sub-divisions started to be developed. A new primary school was opened and the secondary school extended. Prices jumped  in what had been a flat property market for decades.

Property prices always follow the population and a large influx of a well-paid population into a small country townsaw all propertyprices go through the roof.

Many of those moving to town on the promise of a mine life of 25 years - with an eye to retirement to the stunning beaches and fishing opportunities which WA’s southern coast  has to offer. Hopetoun is under 10km from the Fitzgerald River National Park.

Now the boom is bust, the mine is due to close at the end of the month, and house prices are turning into bargains. A development which had 4ha sections for sale at $239,000 has slashed prices to $69,000 - now that could almost be a bargain if you fancy a holiday home within 600km of Perth - Hopetoun could be the spot for you.

OK now the government has got the economic stimulus package passed by the Senate the question most people seem to be asking - what will I get and, far more importantly when! After all this time of the year is expensive for many Australians as kids go back to school and many people move house as well.

There are two agencies in charge of paying out the $900 or $950 payout to Australian workers:

Centerlink Extra Payments

• The Family Bonus is a payment of $900 per family with only one main income earner. You’re eligible if you receive the Family Tax Benefit Part B and you will be paid in the period: 11 and 20 March 2009.
• Back to School Bonus is a payout of $950 per  child (aged 4-18 years on 3 Feb 09). You will receive this if you are eligible for  Family Tax Benefit Part A or you received a Carer Payment or Disability Support Pension and were aged less than 19 years old on 3 February 2009. You will also be paid between 11 and 20 Mar 09
• $950 payout to support farmers and businesses that have been affected by drought. It will be paid to recipients of the farming hardship benefits between 24 March and 6 April.
• The training and learning bonus of $950 will be paid to students who were eligible on the 3 Feb for the following programs:Youth Allowance, Austudy, ABSTUDY Living Allowance,  Sickness Allowance, Special Benefit (under age pension age), Family Tax Benefit Part A for a full-time student aged 21-24 years (inclusive) on 3 February 2009. This payment will be made between 24 March and 6 April

For more details check out Centrelink’s site

For tax payers who earned less than $100k in the tax year ended 30 June 2008 their $900 (for $80k), $600 (for between $80k and $90k) and $200 ( for between $90k and $100k) (note the ATO’s own figures have not been updated on this!) will be paid from early April - payment is from the ATO  so make sure you have done your tax return and they have your current bank account details!

Yeah - I know we have been all hanging out for this one - Google’s answer to the iPhone - the Google Phone (original guys!) is touted to be the all new must have device for 2009. It combines a phone with GPS, internet connectivity (using Google’s chrome browser) .

The phone is available through Optus only in Australia, and has been dubbed the Dream. The Dream features all the “must have” stuff:

• WiFi

• Bluetooth
• 3meg camera
• Chrome web browser
• you-tube
• googlemaps,
• musicplayer
• text
• email

One assumes you can make calls with it as well - they don’t mention that Apparently there is a USB connection - actually useful for syncing your phone book, but doesn’t include a headphone jack - so everyone gets to share your choice in music excellent ! Well actually it doesn’t mention that its a MP3 player - surely they didn’t miss that?

Call me old fashioned but I like a phone to take calls and let me send SMS’s - that’s it! For a small computer I’d rather have a $300 netbook  - you’d require a PhD in maths to work out what you have to pay for a Google Dream phone in Australia because its only available on a monthly plan - but I bet its more than $300!

Yesterday the news was bad for the economic stimulus bill - or as we like to call it here the government payout to taxpayers bill.

News is all good now - but the price is an additional $900 million- that was the price for Nick Xenophon to vote for the bill he rejected yesterday .  I guess not many of us know what our price is but Nick Xenophon does - its $900 million to help the drought-stricken Murray Darling catchment - not a difficult guess as to what area of the country our Nick represents!

So along the way we lost $50 to the Greens so the payout is now $900 - but lets face it that’s $900 more than most people get from their governments! And really its not he government’s money because for certainly the taxpayers who are getting the payout to taxpayers

So just to recap to - be eligble for the $950 $900 payout to taxpayers:

• you need to have earned less than $100k in the 07/08 Australian tax year;
• you need to have earned more than around $11k otherwise you won’t have paid any tax that tax year,
• you need to have filed your tax return for that year - DUH - you are LATE - but you have until 30 June to file your tax return for 07/08 to get the payment.

In addition - yes you can get more than one $950 $900 payout

• if you are a full time student eligible for Austudy or Youth Allowance
• if you receive family assistance parts A or B for eligible children under the age of 18

Also make sure that centrelink (for the family benefit, student and other benefits linked payments ) and ATO (for payouts based on your 07/08 tax return) have your up to date addreses and bank a/c details - hate to delay getting the cash because the bank account number was wront for your $900 payout

The government hasn’t got the $950 payout legislation through the Senate - and already its reducing. The Greens have agreed to support the government but the price was a reduction of the $950 payout to a $900 payout. The $50 you just lost will go to, you guessed it, enviromental projects.

Personally I’d rather they gave the $50 to the bushfire victims. In fact one slightly sensible option I have heard that payout recipiants have the option to donate the $950 payment to  the victims of the Victorian bushfires.

Still its not over yet until the obese female  starts her warm up.   The$42 billion package is stil not through the Senate - the independent Senator Nick Xenophon joined the oppositiion and defeated the bill today.

Xenophon wants the buy-back of water from the Darling-Murray catchment to be brought foreward. He’s a brave man- standing between millions of Australians and their $950  $900 payout.

So don’t spend your $950 $900 payout yet. I suspect that Kevin Rudd will win this one - just give him a few more days.

I have found even more Koalas suffering in the extreme heat in South Australia and Victoria.

But first an explanation. I have not posted about the biggest story in Australia for years: the devastating bush fires in Victoria.

The fires have been burning since Saturday and as of today there are still fires out of country, 1000 homes have been lost and 181 Australian’s dead. If you want up to date, factual and non-hyped news go to the ABC official site - they are the government owned station - are doing a great job and you can hear live streaming radio from Melbourne for  the latest, the fires are still out of control as I write this on Wednesday morning.

The reason I haven’t posted about the fires is quite simple: I have an ethical problem with making money out of people’s misery. I am happy to post cute koala pictures but I can’t quite  write a filler post in the hope that I will hit page 1 of Google and get the traffic.

There is the beginning of a debate here in Australia about the role of media in such situations. I think I am not the only one being sickened by prime time TV shows taking people back to their destroyed homes while sticking a camera in their face and recording ever reaction, after previously watching a husband and wife who had been separated for days discovering that each other were alive and being reunited, while circled by no less than 6 big TV cameras.  That I think is a topic I will write about.

So in the same spirte that have seen entertainers showing up at the survivors camps and playing for free: here are some more of the cute Koala photos doing the rounds - and no none of them are from the bushfire areas - they are from the previous week’s heat wave in South Australia and Victoria: Koalas are HOT!

OK the bottom line is that to receive the $950 payout for tax payers who earned less that $100k in the 07/08 tax year - you have to fulfill two main criteria.

• you have to have lodged your 07/08 tax return which is over due anyway. You have until June 30 so get your sh**t together and do that
• you have to have paid tax in the 07/08 year

The second point will discount some people who have earned a very low income, probably from a part time job or only worked part of the year. The bottom line is that if you income was less than $11,000 last year you probably won’t get the $950 payout. In reality you have had it already - because anyone who earns less than $6000 pays no tax in Australia and those of you who earn a little more will have got the $750 rebate for low income earners anyway!

And don’t whinge - the tax system in Australia is very generous to low income earners be they students who worked part time or others with part time jobs. New Zealanders pay 15c in the dollar for all their income earned from the first $1!

So if you earned less than $11,000 last tax year you probably won’t get the $950 payout

I must admit I saw this pic of a very hot Koala - before yesterday’s hot koala photos that I published looked more like real life hot Koalas asking for water - but still I wasn’t sure.

This is for real though this guy just wandered into an outhouse in a property in South Australia - and took himself a bath! Koalas are shy wild animals - they do not do this sort of thing normally.

Unluckily for the Koalas and other  hot Australians its looking like there’s a bit more hot weather on the way for Melbourne which is getting record hot temperatures again this weekend and Sydney is also looking to get hotter - with Bondi expecting 40,000 on the beach tomorrow.

While up in Queensland a full 60% of the state is a declared disaster zone - with flooding across the northern parts of the state. Some northern towns may be isolated for another 6 weeks  - though that will OK, and not unusual in the North in the wet, so long as the beer doesn’t run out.

But you have to admit the Koala is cute - and I’m sorry mate I thought you were a stuffed toy being posed!