According to new data obtained from the Treasury through Senate Estimates, the average taxpayer pays $11,427 in income tax, and almost half of that is given to welfare. Senator Eric Abetz said:
With more than half the budget being spent on health and welfare, it is clear that our current fiscal situation is unsustainable and we need to see if we can deliver the same outcomes while spending less money. Further, the fact that each taxpayer is paying $474 towards interest on our national debt once again highlights how important it is to reduce the debt burden on future generations.
Thanks to Labor, we as a nation are projected to have $700 billion in debt, something that future generations will have to pay back with interest. The disappointing revelation in these statistics is that most of the debt is being racked up on welfare. It is inexplicable that we are asking the youth of today to pay for today’s welfare bill with interest because Labor and Greens Senators refuse to take difficult decisions.
That works out $83 per week for welfare. $35/week on aged pensions; $20/week on family payments; $17/week on disability payments; $6.30/week on the unemployed.
That’s how you end up bankrupt like every socialist state. Encouraging welfare dependency and disincentivising free enterprise. Charity should never be done through by government and taxation system. Wasteful, inefficient and creates learned helplessness. pic.twitter.com/OZeUjzWcU3
— Eddy Addicks (@EddyAddicks) December 28, 2017
Further, the Daily Mail reports: “Almost 27,000 unemployed Australian addicts are on disability pensions because of the damage they’ve inflicted on themselves by drink and drugs.”
Almost 1,400 Australians get the disability support pension (DSP) solely because of drug or alcohol dependence, while about 1,500 DSP recipients have a primary psychiatric or psychological condition caused by substance abuse. And almost 27,000 jobless Australians on the DSP list alcohol and drug-related conditions among the problems preventing them from working.
There is only one way out of poverty, and it’s not by making poverty less miserable, but by making it more escapable. As Arthur Brooks said, “Getting things without working for them is a very hard habit to break. Getting things without working for them can become a way of life… Earning your way out of poverty is much more empowering and enduring than being supported by government programs which maintain people in their poverty.”
In other words, sometimes it’s unloving to feed the hungry. The Apostle Paul said, “if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat” (2 Thess. 3:10). That’s because, when you feed a man unwilling to work, you kill his God given motivation to work: hunger. Proverbs 16:26 says, “A worker’s appetite works for him; his mouth urges him on.” By failing to understand this basic principle, many welfare systems end up creating the problems they’re designed to solve.
The following breakdown shows exactly how the average taxpayer’s $11,427 is being spent by the Government.
| $m | per cent | Notional contribution by average tax payer | |
| Welfare | 146,613 | 37.9% | $4,326 |
| – Aged | 61,754 | 15.9% | $1,822 |
| – Families | 36,011 | 9.3% | $1,062 |
| – Disability | 30,555 | 7.9% | $902 |
| – Unemployed | 11,046 | 2.9% | $326 |
| – Other | 7,258 | 1.9% | $214 |
| Health | 74,445 | 19.2% | $2,197 |
| Education | 32,594 | 8.4% | $962 |
| Defense | 34,630 | 8.9% | $1,022 |
| General public services | 19,897 | 5.1% | $587 |
| Interest on Government debt | 16,076 | 4.2% | $474 |
| Housing and community | 4,625 | 1.2% | $136 |
| Fuel and energy Sector | 6,726 | 1.7% | $198 |
| Foreign affairs and economic aid | 6,383 | 1.6% | $188 |
| Transport and communication | 9,139 | 2.4% | $270 |
| Industry assistance | 5,879 | 1.5% | $173 |
| Immigration | 3,594 | 0.9% | $106 |
| Public order and safety | 5,189 | 1.3% | $153 |
| Recreation and culture | 3,623 | 0.9% | $107 |
| Other purposes | 17,840 | 4.6% | $526 |
| Total | 387,253 | 100.0% | $11,427 |
