A $312 million pledge to modernise aged care is one of the key IT spending announcements in this week's 2022-2023 Federal Budget.
The aged care commitment was one of several sizeable IT spending allocations in a budget that Treasurer Jim Chalmers pitched as beginning the “hard yards of budget repair”.
The $312 million will be spent over four years for essential aged care information and communication technologies system maintenance and enhancements, including streamlined reporting, and to enable aged care sector reform.
Regional connectivity is another big technology spending item in the new budget. It earmarks $2.4 billion for NBN Co to extend fibre access to 1.5 million more premises, including more than 660,000 homes in regional Australia.
An additional $1.2 billion will be poured into the Better Connectivity for Regional and Rural Australia Plan to enhance connectivity. This will include providing faster internet for 755,000 NBN fixed wireless users, including 120,000 satellite users upgraded to fixed wireless. The money will also go to supporting mobile coverage through new investments in regional and remote Australia, especially in under-serviced areas, and improving resilience against natural disasters, including reliable power supplies and innovative approaches to keeping communications running.
The $1.2 billion will also go to helping farmers improve farm safety, productivity and efficiency from new communication technologies, and extending the Regional Tech Hub to support regional communities to access mobile and internet services.
Another $50 million will go to the TAFE Technology Fund to modernise TAFEs with up-to-date IT facilities, workshops, laboratories and telehealth simulators. A further $6.8 million has been budgeted to improve critical data infrastructure.
The government also announced $31.3 million to extend its whole of government cyber hubs pilot while an evaluation is completed. The pilot involves four hubs to deliver cyber security capabilities to Commonwealth entities.
Visa backlog, technology training
The government has also budgeted an additional $42.2 million to accelerate visa processing, which it hopes will resolve the visa backlog and raise awareness of opportunities for high-skilled migrants in Australia’s permanent Migration Program.
The permanent Migration Program planning level will be increased from 160,000 to 195,000 in 2022–23, with more than 90 per cent of new places skilled migrants and more than a quarter targeted to regional areas. Work restrictions for student visa holders and secondary training visa holders will be relaxed until 30 June 2023.
Meanwhile, 480,000 fee-free TAFE and community-based vocational education places will be created, especially for areas of critical shortage. Places will be allocated to people from low socio-economic backgrounds, rural and remote areas, First Nations people, and students who are first in their family to attend university, and people with disability.
The first step in this plan will be the development of a $1 billion one-year National Skills Agreement with States and Territories, to provide 180,000 fee-free TAFE and community-based vocational education places over 12 months from 2023. Support will be targeted to priority groups, including First Nations people and priority areas, including care sectors. From 2024, vocational education and training will be supported by a new longer-term National Skills Agreement.
In universities, up to 20,000 additional student places will be created in 2023 and 2024 in areas of skills shortages, including technology.
And as previously announced, digital apprenticeships will also be created, with equity targets for groups underrepresented in digital and technology fields.
A new Startup Year program will provide up to 2,000 income contingent loans per year to allow eligible students to participate in a university-based accelerator program and “ help the next generation of Australian entrepreneurs bring their ideas to life”.
External contractors
The government has budgeted a $3.6 billion cut in outsourcing expenses on external contractors, consultancies, advertising, travel and legal expenses.
This follows Federal minister for the public service Katy Gallagher’s comments earlier this month that the Federal Government is working to develop an in-house consulting model for the Australian Public Service “to strengthen core capabilities and functions” that have been contracted out.
“Let’s not give away some of our most interesting work on evaluation, project management and strategy to the private sector,” she said at the time.
Economic slowdown
As expected, the government’s economic outlook was grim, forecasting the economy will grow by 3.25 percent in 2022–23, slowing to 1.5 percent in 2023–24.
It forecast inflation to continue rising to a peak of 7.75 percent in the December quarter, before falling “gradually” to 3.5 percent by June 2024 and returning to the Reserve Bank’s inflation target by 2024–25.
Labour demand is expected to soften in 2023–24, with employment growth forecast to remain positive. The unemployment rate is forecast to rise to 4.5 percent by the June quarter of 2024 but remain below pre-pandemic levels.
Meanwhile, the goverment is warning that electricty costs will continue to soar, increasing by an average of 20 per cent in late 2022 and rising by another 30 percent in 2023-24.
Are you happy with the 2022-23 budget? What do you want for your business from the Federal Government in 2022-23? Let us know at editors@techpartner.news.
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