Community groups' post election wish list

Transcript from World News Australia Radio

Prime Minister elect Tony Abbott has pledged not to leave any Australians behind, but community groups are anxious not to be forgotten.

"A good government is one with a duty to help everyone to maximise his or her potential. Indigenous people, people with disabilities and our forgotten families as well as those who Menzies described as lifters not leaners. We will not leave anyone behind."

Prime Minister elect Tony Abbott makes a pledge he's sure to be reminded of in coming years.

Already social services groups are calling on the Coalition to ensure a more equitable distribution of government payments.

Uniting Care Australia national director Lin Hatfield Dodds says a comprehensive review of welfare payments is needed to ensure Australia's most disadvantaged don't miss out.

"We need to make sure that government payments are going first to where they're going to make the most amount of difference and that's to people and households that are really trying to live on very little income at all. I think as a nation we could probably do with delivering a little less financial support to Australians who are doing okay financially."

The Australia Council of Social Services President Simon Schrapel is also calling for a thorough review of the tax system.

He'd like to see loopholes for high income earners closed, and changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions.

"Controversial, no doubt, and there'll be opposition to putting those measures on the table but we believe there's some real opportunity to look at recalibrating those taxes which would acutally have an impact on housing and housing availability but would also ensure that we've got a better revenue stream for the government."

Tony Abbott says he wants to be known as the "first Prime Minister of Indigenous Affairs" and to that end, he's promised to establish an Indigenous Advisory Council within his first week in the top job.

Mr Abbott says he'll meet with the council three times a year, and once a month with the council chair, prominent Indigenous Australian Warren Mundine.

But ACOSS President Simon Schrapel says there are very few details of what the Coalition plans to do to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians.

"We hope that it's not going to be a punitive approach. We understand his genuine committment but if you look at the record of previous Coalition government, particularly up in the Northern Territory and the intervention that they introduced there which has not produced the results that either the previous government or the Coalition when they introduced it would have hoped for. So we're certainly not looking for those sorts of initiatives but we think some investment that allows some greater communitiy control by Aboriginal communities is worthy of further consideration."

Ethnic communities are also calling on the Coalition government not to leave them behind.

Chair of the Federation of Ethnic Communities' Council of Australia, Pino Migliorino, says migrant employment and settlement services must continue to recieve funding.

"We would be really keen for the new government to put effort into an employment program which is targetting those who are most effected by unemployment or indeed under-employment. They are new arrivals, they are older migrants being dislodged out of manufacturing and they are many of our business migrants and skilled migrants who come here and are not working in the areas of skills for which we've actually asked them to come."

People representing Australia's poorest and most vulnerable neighbours are also concerned about what a Coalition government will mean.

The Coalition is set to divert $4.5-billion worth of aid funding into building three major metropolitan roads over the next four years.

CARE Australia CEO Dr Julia Newton-Howes says the decision is terrible for Australia's international reputation and could cost lives.

"I'm concerned not only that we won't be helping the urgent humanitarian needs as well as the long-term development programs but by raiding the aid program in this way - very short term committments to aid - means that our aid program may well become less effective in many, many ways."

CARE Australia and other aid organisations are calling on the incoming government to quarantine the aid budget.