Submission to Budget Policy Statement (BPS) 2021

Executive Summary

1. Our submission to the BPS 2021 is written in the context of our 14th annual State of the Nation report released in February 2021, Disturbed Present. Better Future? During this report release, one of our primary calls to action to government was courageous and bold policies. We acknowledge that the government has proposed many social policies that we are supportive of, particularly during the Covid period in 2020. However, our State of the Nation 2021 report indicated that in most of the social progress indicators we’ve monitored for over a decade, things got worse or didn’t really change in the last year in our opinion. Therefore, we have followed up our report release with this submission to the BPS 2021 to continue to emphasise our key messages and call to action to our government.
2. The Salvation Army generally supports the direction and intentions of the BPS 2021. We are supportive of the overarching policy goals, and of the Budget 2021 priorities and wellbeing objectives. The core of our submission will focus on commenting on the investment decisions in the wellbeing objectives, and the fiscal strategy in the BPS 2021.

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