Australian budget focuses on training, welfare

SYDNEY (AAP) - Turning the next mining boom into jobs for all Australians by sharpening up workers' skills and pushing those on welfare into the workforce is at the heart of Julia Gillard's first budget as prime minister.
While the resources boom will deliver a $115 billion boost to government coffers over the next three years to deliver a surplus in 2012/13, for the first time in almost a decade it did not include across the board tax cuts to ease the cost of living pressures.
Treasurer Wayne Swan said the $350 billion budget would power the economy onto create 500,000 jobs over the next three years.
"The core of this budget is about building a bigger and better trained workforce ...the centre piece of this budget is jobs, jobs, jobs," he said.
A $3 billion training plan coupled with incentives and penalties to get more people off welfare and into work - including teen parents, the disabled and long-term unemployed - would ensure the nation did not "waste a single pair of capable hands," the treasurer said in delivering his fourth budget.
The larger than expected $22.6 billion deficit for 2011/12 is due to a diving tax take since the global financial crisis and the summer of natural disasters.
But the budget is expected to get back into the black to the tune of $3.5 billion in 2012/13.
While the Greens - whose vote will be needed to get the budget through the Senate after July 1 - have argued the surplus and corporate tax cuts should be deferred, Mr Swan said "meandering" back into the black would "push up the cost of living for pensioners and working people".
The government says it's done the hard yards on finding $22 billion in savings over the next three years, and keeping the rise in public spending to one per cent a year.
It's also found savings from extending the freeze on higher income limits for family payments for two more years, imposing the flood levy, deferring infrastructure projects and changing car fringe benefit rules.
But the budget papers also revealed $7 billion in "other" cuts to a wide range of programs, from solar energy to research, aged care and aid to the Pacific - something the Greens will take care to examine and could block.
"Good decisions now will avoid unnecessary pain later," Mr Swan said.
A $36 billion injection will provide new roads, railways and ports to capitalise on the boom, while superannuation funds are likely to chip in more under the nation's first national construction schedule.
An extra $20 billion will go into hospitals under a deal with the states to provide more information on how taxpayers' money is spent, with $1.8 billion specially set aside for regional projects and $2.2 billion for a new mental health strategy.
In a foil to the independents, on whom the minority government relies, there is $4.3 billion for regional health care, universities and roads.
Mr Swan revealed the summer of natural disasters had delivered a $9 billion hit but the economy was still expected to grow by four per cent in 2011/12, with the jobless rate averaging 4.5 per cent in mid-2013.