Good economic times help deliver generous budget

"It should be recognised that the Federal Budget continues to benefit from the resources boom with healthy revenue generated from corporate profits and other taxes. This in turn is helping to finance the tens of billions of dollars in new spending initiatives over the next four years," he said.

While welcoming the tax cuts and the new education and training initiatives, Andersen said the Federal Budget had failed to address a critical issue affecting the printing industry, the need to up-skill existing employees.

"We remain hopeful that the next round of training related initiatives will tackle the issue of upskilling which remains critical to our industry," he said

Andersen welcomed the additional places under the skilled migration program.

"The printing industry is currently suffering acutely from skills shortages so we are supportive of this measure along with funding to help fast track apprenticeships," he said.

Andersen said that in the area of business tax reform there were some modest changes announced in the budget to the GST which should help reduce overall compliance costs. Printing Industries however is advocating corporate tax reform.

"The Federal Government needs to undertake some further reforms in corporate taxes, especially in the area of the capital gains tax," he said.

While the budget failed to contain any new industry measures Andersen said that more information was made available concerning the new Industry Statement that was released last week.

"Printing Industries is currently involved in consultations with the Federal Government to determine what role the association and industry can play in the newly announced initiatives such as the Australian Industry Productivity Centres and Global Opportunities Program," he said.



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