Service was set up, whereby health and social workers were trained to provide community-based services either at local clinics or as mobile teams in the field. According to Whitlam, this initiative was successful "in eliminating the barriers that exist between Aborigines and primary health institutions". The Housing Society Scheme allowed Aboriginal communities to formulate their own budgets in spending departmental grants (taking into account the importance of Aborigines determining their own housing needs), and by June 1975 over 100 housing societies had been set up and 450 houses had been completed under the scheme. The Aboriginal Loans Commission was set up in December 1974 to make personal and housing loans to Aborigines at a discounted rate of interest, and encouraged the incidence of Aboriginal home ownership while helping to overcome discrimination in finance markets whereby Aborigines with steady employment and incomes were often refused loans for reasons related to their race. In June 1973, the Whitlam Government set up Aboriginal Hostels Limited as a public enterprise designed to provide the Aboriginal population with essential and urgent accommodation. By 1975, 74 hostels had been set up, with a combined capacity of 1,677 beds. The budget presented on 17 September 1974 included a 173% increase for urban and regional development, a 30% increase for health, and a 78% increase for education. In addition, a revised income-tax scale reduced tax payable for people on incomes less than $10,500 a year. The 1975 budget provided funding for the new Medibank health scheme, together with a 2% increase in education, a 5% increase in urban and regional development, a 15% real increase in social security expenditure, and a restructuring of personal income tax. Despite being in office for only three years, the Whitlam Government was able to carry out a radical programme of progressive social reform, and arguably came far in meeting the promises of change envisioned by its electoral slogan. According to one historian, "If many Labor supporters regard the Curtin and Chifley governments as a period of great achievements and greater ambitions frustrated by conservative forces, their illusions in the Whitlam government are even more heroic. After nearly a quarter of a century of stagnant conservative rule during which Australia seemed to be a backward looking outpost of the British empire run by monarchists and reactionaries, Gough Whitlam, the Mighty Gough, broke through and during his first 12 months in office remade Australia