The Coalition government’s budget has failed in garnering full support from Greek Australian business, aged care and welfare and has been seen as an attempt to harvest votes in the upcoming federal elections for a flailing Coalition.

Key points

  • Short-term cost of living relief, but lack of economy-wide reforms
  • No real support for the hospitality and entertainment sector which has suffered
  • Not enough for new age workforce wages, retention, and development
  • No money for public schools’ capital works at a time of enrolment growth
  • Halving the petrol excise may stimulate the economy in the short-term
  • Investment in business digital transformation is good
  • A short-term extension of the Boost Apprenticeship Commencements is good.

Four Greek Australians – Lambro Manouras, the CFO for commercial property developers, the Maras Group, Peter Zervos the Treasurer of the Hellenic Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, (HACCI), Faye Spiteri OAM the CEO of Fronditha Care, a leader in culturally specific age care and, Angelo Gavrielatos the President of the NSW Teachers’ Federation talked to Neos Kosmos about their view of the budget handed down last Tuesday by federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg.

Professor James Arvanitakis in Neos Kosmos last week, said the treasurer is “working hard to convince us that he has heard the concerns about cost of living and has responded.”

“The budget was a little lacklustre and lacked major reforms” said Lambros Manouras, CFO for the Maras Group commercial property developers from Adelaide.

“The budget is aimed at winning votes in the upcoming election.

“The various incentives and sweeteners provided to support Australian families and individuals are temporary, one-off benefits.”

Mr Manouras expected incentives regarding fringe benefits tax and support for the “hospitality, and entertainment industry which has suffered from extremely difficult times.”

“Incentives for food, culture and entertainment stimulate spending, and those incentives could have remained, for a year or so – until life got back to ‘a new normal’,” Mr Manouras told Neos Kosmos.

Mr Manouras welcomed government investment in business digitisation as “a great initiative and very important for businesses.”

“The additional 20 per cent tax reduction, $120 deduction for every $100 spent, up to $100,000 until 30 June 2023 will provide many businesses with the incentive to implement digital transformation.”

The Boosting Apprenticeship Commencements (BAC) was “great for tradespersons and businesses,” and said that the Maras Group will consider employing more people based on BAC.

“This helps businesses of all sizes and a great incentive to employ more staff at a subsidized cost.”

Mr Manouras said that support for tradespeople made sense and “targeting tradespersons gives a leg up when Australians go to the polls.”

Peter Zervos from the Hellenic Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (HACCI) said the focus of the budget was “on dangling an election carrot in the form of significant spending measures and increase borrowings.”

“The budget is focused on the short-term cost of living relief with the Federal election just around the corner.”

Mr Zervos is concerned with the government’s eye-watering deficit accumulated over two years of propping the economy due to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

“Longer-term measures for a sustainable future did not feature strongly and moving forward a budget with a significant deficit is not viable,” Mr Peter Zervos from HACCI said.

He welcomed the government’s infrastructure spending, and incentives for onshore manufacturing. And along with the support for the Australian space industry, he said these measures that “may contribute to greater economic prosperity.”

Mr Zervos said the budget lacked “economy wide reforms of the type needed to see Australia prosper in the later part of the 2020s and beyond.”

“Once the Federal election has come and gone, the next budget should focus on Australia’s economic and sustainable future.”

Faye Spiteri OAM, CEO of Fronditha Care, the Greek aged care provider, said the government had to respond to recommendations coming out of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.

“There is the need to change the model of funding in age care, but also to invest in the workforce.”

Ms Spiteri said there are major changes from the current assessment model “to activity-based funding” like that used in the acute hospital sector.

Fronditha Care’s CEO was eager to know more about “the detail, which has not been released.”

The current model of funding based on the needs of clients will move to funding based on the activities provided.

“It will be more like a hospital funding model” Ms Spiteri said and worries about how the new model may impact on Fronditha Care services provided to clients in their own home.

“We don’t know what it means. Will one unit [of funding] be equal to $216 a day? This is the first time in this budget that any information has been released and we don’t know how many units we will be entitled to,” said Ms Spiteri.

Fronditha Care takes a holistic approach said Ms Spiteri, and thus “consider the whole Greek community.”

Fronditha Care was setup in 1977 with the aim of providing the Greek community with relevant and affordable aged care.

“We provide services to over 1500 people in community as well as residential services, we have almost 1000 community services clients and over 500 combined in our residential services, and independent living units.

“We’re looking at a continuum of care, from home-based care to residential aged care, and palliative care.”

Ms Spiteri said that Fronditha Care is “future focused around changing needs and expectations of people in the community.”

“There’s a focus in this budget on residential not on community care, there is an absence of detail.”

She welcomed the government’s initiative to get more clinical graduates in age care, but is concerned about staff wages, staff retention, and skills development.

“The budget is very thin on how to attract and retain people, especially when wages are very low.

“For us there’s an added layer of attracting and retaining Greek-speakers because it’s an expectation by those we serve.”

Ms Spiteri recognises that COVID and border closures created great strain on finding language and culturally specific staff.

Angelo Gavrielatos President of the NSW Teacher’s Federation pulled no punches.

“The Morrison budget is a slap in the face of every student, their parents and teachers,” Mr Gavrielatos said. And added that the government has “slashed public schools by $796.5 million over the next four years” which denies students the resources they need to achieve their very best.

“At a time of significant enrolment growth, the Morrison Government hasn’t allocated a single cent for capital works in public schools in this year’s Federal Budget,” said Mr Gavrielatos.

He scoffed at the government boast about delivering “record funding” for schools which he says, “does not make the distinction that they are delivering record funding for over-funded private schools at the expense of public schools which are funded well below their minimum Schooling Resource Standard.”

The Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Councils of Australia (FECCA), the peak body for multicultural Australia, is disappointed by the limited budget measures for culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities. Multicultural communities expected more from this budget. The budget lacked whole of government response to multicultural communities’ needs.

FECCA CEO, Mohammad Al-Khafaji expected that the “numerous lessons learned from the pandemic would have resulted in greater investment in Australia’s multicultural communities.”

Mr Al-Khafaji said that investment should have been “across the whole of government not just in health.” Whilst there are some targeted measures in health, it is disappointing that so many Portfolio Budget Statements are silent on initiatives supporting our communities.

“This has been another missed opportunity for a consistent and coherent whole of government approach to multiculturalism and we must do better. This is not a budget for a multicultural Australia.

The FECCA CEO echoed Ms Spiteri’s calls for greater budget measures in aged care to “improve wages and conditions for the aged care workforce” and to augment the number of “workers from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.”

“We are disappointed that increased wages and improved working conditions for aged care workers, easily half of whom are from our multicultural communities, are not addressed in the budget.

“We look forward to working with government to address these major gaps.” said Mr Al-Khafaji.

Inflation, stagnant wage growth, disrupted supply chains, low migration, the Russian invasion of Ukraine which has lead to high petrol prices, and an existential climate crisis seem not to have been fully addressed in this budget.

Of course, the global COVID-19 pandemic is still with us, and no one is sure what the ‘new normal’ will be and how long it will last.

It is an election budget aimed at middle Australia.