BY July next year some $2000 in extra benefits will be going into the bank accounts of families with two children in their teens and a total income of $90,000 a year, according to todays Budget released by Treasurer Wayne Swan.

It will come as a package of payments covering five benefits and a tax cut.

Documents released with tonight’s Budget show the family from July next year will be getting $820 in the new Schoolkids Bonus and $200 boosted to Family Tax Benefit A.

In addition, it will receive $73 a year from carbon pricing compensation and $853 from tax concession for low income earners.

This is an indication of the welfare boom the Government wants to introduce to match the mining boom.

A similar family on a lower income will be better off by $2173 with the same bundle of benefits.

Two-thirds of families with one child paid FTB A will get $300 a year and extra, and one third will gain $100 a year – paid into their bank accounts.  

The Family Tax Benefit A increases will give extra cash, up to $600 a year, to 1.56 million families.

A supplement for those on the dole will add $208 a year for the unemployed, and students.

Pensioners will be $338 a year better off.

If you are an unemployed parent…

Single unemployed parents will have their parenting support payments removed when their youngest child turns eight (compared with 16 now).

At present, single mothers receive $648.50 a fortnight until their youngest child turns 16. The new plan, which comes into effect in July 2013, will end the payments when the child turns eight and shift them on to the Newstart Allowance.

For partnered parents the $442 fortnightly income support payment will now end when the youngest child turns six.

If you have children…

Throw out the shoebox of receipts, as the Education Tax Refund has been replaced by the Schoolkids Bonus - a twice-yearly payment into your bank account. Parents will receive payments of $820 a year for each teenager they have at high school, and $410 for primary students.

From 1 July 2013 the Family Tax Benefit Part A will increase for all eligible families. Families with one child will get an extra $300 a year, and an extra $600 for families with two or more children.

The Government is investing an additional $225.1 million over four years to help 130,000 Australians with childcare costs back into the workforce. Through the Jobs, Education and Training Child Care Fee Assistance it will help eligible parents on income support by paying the difference of the cost of childcare and the amount of childcare benefits they receive.

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A Victorian woman accused of murdering her husband after he made demands for kinky sex says she can't explain why she killed him.

Eileen Creamer said "things got out of control" on the weekend in February 2008 when she stabbed her husband David in the abdomen and beat him savagely at their home in Moe.

She told Justice Paul Coghlan of the Victorian Supreme Court jury that: "I couldn't believe I had done something like that."

Creamer does not deny killing her husband, but says she did not commit murder.

Giving evidence at her murder trial, Creamer alleged that in the previous year when they were living apart, her husband came into her house and raped her, although there was little evidence to substantiate her claim of rape.

Creamer further claimed that her husband constantly talked about threesomes and tried to get her to sign up for sex parties, although she told the jury that she still had no explanation for the killing.

"I can't explain it," she said.

"Things just got out of control that weekend."

Asked why she lied to police about her husband's death during her record of interview, Creamer replied that she was "scared".

"I panicked, I didn't know what to do. I couldn't believe I had done something like that."

Creamer alleged that she had been raped the previous year. She said she was going to report the matter to police but her husband convinced her not to, alhough again there was little in evidence to support this claim.

The couple moved to New Zealand in the 1990s.

Because he was "coloured", David Creamer had not been able to mix with white women under South Africa's apartheid system, Creamer told the court.

She said her husband had enjoyed being able to mix with white women in New Zealand.

"It was just a whole new world for him," she said.

Mr Creamer had had affairs in New Zealand and later in Australia, she said.

Despite Creamer's claims however, a jury found her guilty of her husband's killing and she has been jailed for 11 years.

Eileen Mary Creamer, 53, was the first Victorian woman to be found guilty of defensive homicide.

Forensic evidence was used to highlight the ferocity of her attack on her husband, which was possibly done with a South African tribal stick, before she stabbed him repeatedly in the abdomen during a fight at their home.

A jury found her not guilty of murder, but guilty of defensive homicide.

Justice Paul Coghlan said the couple had a dysfunctional relationship.

He said Mr Creamer died after a "very substantial" beating that demonstrated Creamer was "out of control".

Justice Coghlan ordered South African-born Creamer, who is also a former New Zealand resident, serve at least seven years in prison before being eligible for parole.

She has already served nearly two years in custody.

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Now that Charlie Sheen's two young sons have been temporarily removed from his home, and his ex-wife Brooke Mueller has filed a restraining order against him, the question remains--what will happen to his kids?

According to celebrity divorce lawyer Raoul Felder, Sheen's behavior over the last several weeks will play a large role in his custody battle.

"I don't think its even a question about custody," he told The Early Show's Chris Wragge Thursday morning. "I think the question is will he ever be able to be alone with his kids? That's the problem now."

Felder said that Sheen's TV appearances--in which he's exposed his unusual living situation--have only weakened his case.

"If I were representing him, I'd put him on the stand and just keep showing these things. He doesn't deny the drugs. Doesn't deny the alcohol. And he himself is exhibit A when you look at him."

However, Sheen's ex-wife Brooke Mueller is not without her share of problems--something Felder readily admits. Sheen has said he intends to make a bid for full custody of his twin sons based on Mueller's alleged cocaine use.

"Comparing the two of them, one has a handgun and the other has an atom bomb," Felder said.

Some celebrity alcoholics seek alcohol addiction treatment help, but many other famous people may not even know that they have a drinking problem.

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KINGSTON, Jamaica, Wednesday October 27, 2010 – Sharon Marley, the daughter of late reggae legend, Bob Marley has pleaded not guilty to a charge of cruelty to a six-year-old autistic boy.

Marley, who is also a former member of the Melody Makers, entered the plea yesterday in the Family Court, a few days after she allegedly abused the child at the Total Care Learning Centre.

She will return to court on November 8th.

Police had received a complaint from the boy’s mother, who is also an employee at the centre, that last Thursday while the child was playing with a toy, Marley took him into a room. She said her son could be heard screaming and he emerged crying and with several bruises on his body.

A day later, the 46-year-old Marley surrendered to police and was released on station bail. The bail was extended when she appeared in court yesterday.

The court appearance came on the same day that her sister, 28-year-old Makeda Marley, received seven years probation for growing marijuana at her home in Pennsylvania, United States. Police had found 11 plants in the basement of her house.

A judge had given her the choice of either the long probation period or two to 23 months in prison.

During her probation period she will have to undergo random drug tests and has been ordered to stay away from drug users.

Violation of the probation would land her in a state prison for 15 to 59 months.

The younger Marley was the last of the late reggae singer’s 13 children.

http://www.caribbean360.com/index.php/news/jamaica_news/46476.html

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It is an odd priority. When the Greens leader, Bob Brown, was asked to name his first legislative priority for the new Parliament he had no hesitation - euthanasia. Brown wants to repeal the federal statute that outlawed euthanasia in the Northern Territory. "This will restore the rights of territorians to be able to legislate for euthanasia," he told Network Ten.

I wonder if all those who voted for the Greens in August expected that? They might have thought a carbon reduction scheme was the No. 1 Green priority, or an end to logging. But it is euthanasia. Brown didn't run as the head of the euthanasia party. But that is the effect of making this his No. 1 priority.

The Greens have a funny attitude to people. They care about them, of course, but they worry there are too many of them and that this will choke the environment. They say we need a "sustainable relationship between humans and the environment", which involves a lot more birth control and a lot less use of natural resources.

The Greens are the only party committed to abortion on demand. The others leave it to each MP to decide how to vote on abortion. Labor has members with differing views, as do the Liberals. Not the Greens. They have a party position spelt out in their platform.

It might be easier to die if the Greens have their way but they also want taxes levied on the estate of people who have died. Any other party that proposed to liberalise death laws and tax the dead would be accused of a revenue grab. But not the Greens.

They do not particularly target taxes at the dead; they target the living as well, with proposals for tax rises in superannuation, capital gains, car use, electricity prices and companies. Bob Brown could have campaigned as the head of the tax party, because that also is the effect of his policies.

Labor can govern only with the support of Adam Bandt, the newly elected Green in the seat of Melbourne. The Greens will have the balance of power in the new Senate. Now that they exercise such power they are entitled to more scrutiny.

Imagine taking a journey from the GPO to the state border. The Green vote is highest where you start - in the inner-city terraces and converted warehouses. In the seat of Melbourne, the Greens polled 36 per cent and in the seat of Sydney 24 per cent.

As you move out to the quarter-acre blocks in the suburbs, the Green vote declines. When you get to semi-rural and country areas it falls further. In Gippsland in Victoria it is 7 per cent and in Parkes in NSW 6 per cent.

As you take that journey, you will notice that families live in the suburbs where it is cheaper to buy a house with a garden for the children. They do not see their children as a threat to ecological sustainability but as their greatest contribution to society.

If you travelled on a Sunday you would notice, as you moved out from the inner city to the outer suburbs, that the church services attract bigger crowds. Conventional religious belief is stronger. This explains why these electorates do not warm to the Green agenda of euthanasia, abortion, gay marriage and adoption.

The fascinating thing about Green supporters is that their natural habitat is not the open spaces or the pristine forests but the crowded cafes and asphalt alleys of high-density, inner-city living.

Of course the inner-city areas were the traditional fiefdom of the political left. They still are. But the political left has found that marketing itself under the label "Green" has much better appeal, which is how Lee Rhiannon was elected as a senator for NSW.

She grew up as part of Sydney's first family of communism and followed her parents into the party. Her chances of being elected as a communist senator were zero but she has done well under the Greens banner.

Adam Bandt was an undergraduate and postgraduate scholar of Marxism. In another age he would have journeyed through the union movement to a Labor pre-selection. Now these activists turn "Green" and they are taking the inner cities with them.

But they are also taking a lot of support from people who think that Green is a description of environmental policies. It is much more than that. It is a clever marketing label. Beyond the label is a fully formed agenda of radical positions on tax, economics and foreign affairs. It pays to look carefully before buying the product.

Peter Costello is a former Liberal federal treasurer.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/read-the-fine-print-on-the-greens-tin-20100928-15vp0.html

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A MOTHER in the middle of a custody dispute has been caught boasting on her Facebook page how she thought about ripping her husband off for another $20,000.

"Felt like being a smart arse," she wrote, signing off "Bwahahaha lol."

Lawyers are now advising their clients locked in Family Court fights to take down their Facebook pages as the networking site has become both the latest weapon and target for warring spouses.

In one case a woman discovered her husband was a bigamist when she was tipped off to look at wedding photographs of him with another bride on the other woman's Facebook page.

In another case a husband discovered he had been set up by his wife with a woman he thought he met on an internet site. He discovered the woman was a "friend" on his wife's Facebook page.

"I tell my clients just don't bloody do it, don't be silly" family law expert Michael Taussig QC said.

The woman who boasted she had thought about dragging out the Family Court case to cost her ex-husband an extra $20,000 in legal bills found it backfired on her.

Justice James Barry granted custody of the two children, aged nine and eight, to their father with the mother getting visiting rights.

He then ordered the mother to pay $15,000 of her ex-husband's estimated $35,000 legal bill, saying the mother's behaviour had been the "stuff of nightmares".

She had already strung the case out by falsely claiming her ex-husband had been sexually assaulting their children after one judgment went against her. Then she falsely claimed the father's new wife had been assaulting them.

"The mother has over the years attempted to manipulate the court system," Justice Barry said.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/ugly-feud-fought-on-facebook/story-e6freuzi-1225942450541#ixzz13BHkaDt4

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A UK community care worker has been found guilty of sexually assaulting a five-month-old baby while her boyfriend took pictures of the abuse.

Tracy Dawber, 44, let convicted paedophile Colin Blanchard take the photographs as she attacked the child on her sofa, Winchester Crown Court heard.

Dawber was convicted of the sexual assault and allowing indecent pictures to be taken at her home in Southport, Merseyside, in 2008, Sky News said.

The care worker, who dated Blanchard for about a year, had denied the charges - but he told the court she had taken the lead in the abuse.

Blanchard, 40, of Rochdale, Greater Manchester, previously admitted being involved in the assault, the jury was told.

He also confessed he had been involved with other women in a paedophile ring, including Vanessa George.

George was convicted at Bristol Crown Court, in 2009, of abusing children while working at a Plymouth nursery.

Justice Royce remanded Dawber in custody for pre-sentence reports before a date for sentencing is set.

Dawber is the fifth member of Blanchard's paedophile ring to face justice.

Read more: http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/uk-woman-found-guilty-of-sexually-abusing-baby-as-boyfriend-took-pictures/story-e6frfku0-1225940657503#ixzz12xzDs952

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