http://www.theage.com.au/national/million-families-to-get-school-cash-boost-2012...

A million families will get a new cash payment of up to $820 for every child they have in school, being spared the hassle of claiming back education costs in their tax returns.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard has decided to axe the education tax rebate and replace it with direct cash payments, after more than 600,000 eligible families failed to claim $400 million in rebates in 2010/11.

The new SchoolKids bonus will be paid directly into the bank accounts of families eligible for Family Tax Benefit A. It will begin in July - when the carbon tax takes effect - and arrive in two instalments each year.

Families will be paid $820 for every child at high school and $410 for each child in primary school.

In an extra one-off boon, the government will pay refunds for the last financial year directly into bank accounts in June. That $830 million outlay will fall in the current financial year, helping to relieve the cost to the budget in 2012/13, when Labor vows to return to surplus.

The family payments is expected to cost the budget an extra $2 billion over five years, at a time the government is making massive cuts to expenditure in other areas.

Labor wants to rush legislation into Parliament this week to deliver the first cash next month, as it confronts a diabolically low primary vote that would deliver an electoral wipe-out if it were forced to an election.

Labor's electoral stocks are so low that even MPs in ultra-safe seats now fear for their political lives.

The Sunday Age has learnt that government whip Joel Fitzgibbon has confided to colleagues he will be forced to doorknock to hold his seat of Hunter, despite a notional 12.5 percent margin.

Other Labor MPs, including some who voted for Ms Gillard in the leadership battle with Kevin Rudd in February, confessed last week they believed Labor was doomed under her, but they were stuck without an alternative.

Senior government figures have styled this as a traditional Labor budget - hinting at big cuts to hit the goal of surplus but vowing to protect battlers and families.

Maqqa wrote on May 6^th, 2012 at 7:51am:


If she can't win votes, she'll just try buying them instead through bribery. The stench of desperation that surrounds her government is getting worse each day.

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Well trodden subject Maqqa, couldn't you find a thread that had a blindly conservative bias.

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Well it worked for the lying little rodent.