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Weekly news wrap up: Budget time and Angelina Jolie’s announcement

The Federal budget was released this week with major funding being allocated for Disability Care Australia and education reforms. The baby bonus has been replaced with a less generous scheme that will only be eligible for couples earning under $101,000. In an article creatively titled OK ladies, lie back and think of Wayne Sydney Morning Herald Journalist Jacqueline Maley points out that there is a two week opportunity for Australian couples to be eligible for the bonus before it ends on March 1 2014. Other major announcements included delays to carbon-tax compensation, higher costs for cigarettes, boosts to cancer research and detention centres and an increase of funding for the ABC and SBS.

In his budget reply speech, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has pledged to honour Julia Gillard’s tax cuts, pension rises and family payments granted to households as compensation for the carbon price, despite maintaining that he will scrap the carbon price if elected. To fund this the Opposition will adopt all of Labor’s budget cuts including the baby bonus. Greens leader Christine Milne attacked both Labor and Coalition saying they had offered Australians “a finance plan without a broad vision”, while “Mr Abbott’s alternative is worse”.

In non-budget related news Angelina Jolie this week revealed spectacularly that she had a double mastectomy and will also be having her ovaries removed. The announcement included opinion pieces in some of the nations major newspapers is expected to increase the demand for the surgery. In Australia, anyone who carries a high risk of carrying a potential cancer gene such as the known breast cancer-linked genes BRCA1 and BRCA2, are eligible to undergo free genetic testing

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