Treasurer Jim Chalmers last night handed down the Albanese Government’s fourth federal budget - the one they never intended to have - and it shows!

This is a very bland budget with very little new in it that we haven’t already heard about.

I’ve spent yesterday afternoon in budget lock-up going over the Budget papers and here is a summary of the key things my team and I have found.

As far as the ACT goes my verdict is: pretty disappointing. You can read my media commentary here.

Budget at a Glance 

This Budget didn’t really have a centrepiece like previous ones have, it was built instead around minimal announcements centred on five key pillars which I’ve summarised below.

The big news out of the Budget is what the government is calling two new tax cuts for every taxpayer: lowering the first tax rate progressively over two years which will deliver annual savings of $268 for most taxpayers (except the lowest bracket which will be $218) and increasing the Medicare levy low-income thresholds, which the government says will benefit about a million households.

Health was definitely the hero though in terms of major spending commitments.

In terms of the headline figures, the Budget is out of the black and back into red with next year’s deficit to be $42 billion, gross debt to hit $940 billion this financial year and $2bn of savings identified in this Budget. Growth is forecast to pick up from 1½ per cent this year to 2½ per cent in 2026–27.

The Treasurer’s speech paints a rosy picture of things improving for Australians - but acknowledges that for many people this is at odds with their lived experience. Against a backdrop of global uncertainty and very modest growth, the Treasurer cast this Budget as Labor’s “plan for a new generation of prosperity in a new world of uncertainty.”

For me the most glaring omissions were the lack of any real structural reform, support for the most vulnerable in our society and a plan for responding to President Trump. A $20 million Buy Australian campaign, while welcome, won’t cut it when we stand to lose hundreds of millions in research partnerships and other trade penalties.

While the government deserves credit for bringing down inflation and debt, it’s also clear that we need so much more ambition. We need the political courage to tackle the root causes of the big issues we face.

Here is a snapshot of the Budget’s five focus areas and key measures:

Cost-of-living

1. What the government is calling “two new tax cuts for every taxpayer”
2. Pay rises for workers in some industries like early education and aged care
3. Extending the energy bill relief for households & small business by $150 over six months to the end of 2025
4. Extending the ACCC’s Inquiry into the National Electricity Market by 12 months “helping to ensure households and small businesses are getting a fair deal from their energy retailer.”

Health

1. Reducing the maximum price for a PBS script to $25
2. $7.9bn for increased bulk billing incentive
3. Adding medicines to the PBS
4. $662.6 in new GP training incentives & scholarships for nurses & midwives
5. 50 additional urgent care clinics (including 1 in Woden)
6. $792.9 million women’s health investment 
7. $1.8bn in public hospital funding 

Housing

1. $54 million for prefabricated housing 
2. Doubling construction sector apprentice incentives
3. Expanding Help-to-Buy scheme eligibility 
4. Banning foreign investors from buying existing homes

Education

1. Wiping 20% off existing student HECS-HELP debt 
2. $426.6 million for three day early childhood education guarantee
3. Pursuing full funding of public schools
4. Making free TAFE permanent (subject to passage of legislation)

A stronger economy 

1. Reforming non-compete clauses
2. National licensing scheme for electricians as a precursor for more professions
3. Up to $3bn for NBN rollout
4. $17.1 billion on infrastructure ($53 million for the ACT)
5. $2bn extra for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation 
6. $3bn for Green metals
7. $20 million to encourage consumers to buy Australian made products through the Buy Australian campaign.

A shameful hole in this Budget is any real investment in Nature - it merits one line in the Treasurer’s speech re-announcing a paltry “$262 million to preserve and conserve our natural land and ocean assets” .

The ACT is getting $50 million in new funding for the Monaro highway and a new urgent care clinic but that appears to be it.

No new convention centre, no stadium, nothing for major congestion points like Horse Park Drive and Drakeford Drive.

The only areas of positive new investment are on things I have either directly negotiated or pushed the government on. These include allocating:

• $55 million for Upper Murrumbidgee River Health
• $10 million to the CSIRO for research into new Gene Drive technology
• Expanding eligibility for the Help to Buy shared equity scheme, consistent with the recommendations I put forward in his senate committee report
• $47.6 million in more support for veterans to help speed up claims processing
• Partially addressing student debt with the 20% existing HECS/HELP debt reduction and a National Student Ombudsman but failing to reform Job Ready Graduates or change the timing of indexation on remaining debt
• Modest additional support for small business that falls short of what’s needed
• Supporting Build-to-Rent to get 80,000 new dwellings online with better protections for renters including 5 year tenancies and no-cause evictions 
• Electrification accelerator projects funded through ARENA to get entire suburbs off gas and onto renewables through rooftop solar and home batteries

Dive into the details below. 

Tax Cut Details

The Albanese Government will cut income taxes in two instalments as follows:

• From 1 July 2026, they will reduce the 16 per cent tax rate to 15 per cent (for income between $18,201 and $45,000).
• From 1 July 2027, this tax rate will be reduced further to 14 per cent.

The changes to the personal income tax system will cost $17.1 billion over the forward estimates. The increase to the Medicare levy low-income thresholds will cost $648 million over the forward estimates.

Public Service Jobs

While welcoming the Albanese Government's work to rebuild the APS and transition from contractors to permanent staff, there are some good but also some worrying changes to staffing levels in the Budget (Budget Paper 4). I’ve summarised key ones here:

Health

This year’s Budget builds on a strong record for Labor on health. The Government has a good story to tell on its investments over the past few years, and we should recognise the work they have started to address disparities that leave people behind.

This Budget, I want to recognise the Government’s $792.9 million investment into women’s health, which will significantly cut the cost of contraceptives and hormone therapies and deliver more support to people with endometriosis. There’s an extraordinary gendered gap for health costs, and this goes a long way to helping patch that up.

The big investment is in GP bulk billing. While this investment will work in places like Tasmania, it will not work here in the ACT. The trial of this policy saw basically no uplift in bulk billing, and the way it has been structured means we won’t even see any relief in gap fees, which remain among the highest in the country.

The money to train new doctors while welcome will barely scrape the sides. It’s unclear whether the ACT will see any of that funding, despite the ACT having the lowest number of GPs per capita out of any major city and our city also being in desperate need of new specialists so that Canberrans can receive more of their care closer to home rather than needing to move away.

Without investment that recognises the structural issues in the ACT, it will continue to be the same story of coming last in the nation on bulk billing rates and not being able to attract the GPs and specialists we need to support our growing community. I have a plan that will help us start to turn this ship around that I’m excited to share with you over the next month.

Really worryingly, mental health continues to be a blindsport for the Government. While we have seen funding for digital tools, we have not seen the long-term funding needed to train more psychiatrists, more psychologists, more social workers and to start to address some of the underlying issues driving poor mental health, like growing rates of loneliness.

While there is funding to keep current public dental services running for adults, I know many Canberrans will be disappointed to find out that there hasn’t been a larger expansion of dental services in the Budget. Dental bills can be prohibitively expensive, and I’ve heard from many senior Canberrans who are living in pain because they can’t afford to see a dentist. We know the Budget is under pressure and we can’t afford to fund everything, but I think it’s critical that we have an appropriate safety net for people.

Finally, I wanted to call out a small win on the Medical Costs Finder website. This website has cost us $24 million and it is helping almost no one compare medical fees. After a bit of pushing, the Government has committed to fix the website up and to publish what doctors charge and what insurers will cover. This is great news and it should help people make more informed decisions about whether they need to change doctors or change insurers to get a better price for the procedure they need.

Other investments

Housing 

Labor has made some big investments in housing over the past term which is so welcome but makes the new money in this Budget seem pretty small by comparison.

And the magnitude of the housing crisis means it is one of those areas where the government needs to keep ramping up big investments, especially with the Housing Australia Future Fund outperforming on its returns and funding rounds being fine tuned.

For the ACT, this Budget was particularly disappointing as we still haven’t seen action on some many long-term asks, from divesting the CSIRO site for social and affordable housing to waiving our historic housing debt.

It’s also an area where the major parties won’t touch structural reform, despite good support for sensible changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax that protect existing investments.

The expanded eligibility to the Help to Buy Scheme is something I pushed for in the Senate inquiry and is a good win to have. A $1 million property price cap for ACT as well as the expanded income thresholds - $90,000 to $100,000 for individuals and from $120,000 to $160,000 for joint applicants and single parents - will help more Canberrans access this scheme.

It was disheartening to see the independent expert Economic Inclusion Advisory Committer’s advice ignored with no increases to Commonwealth Rent Assistance.

$2.5 million in 2025–26 to provide emergency accommodation for women and children experiencing family, domestic and sexual violence also seems way too small.

The investment in modular and prefab is welcome - housing is a policy space ripe for innovation and I’m hoping some of our local ACT companies will benefit from this.

Social Security & Cost of Living

In three consecutive reports now the expert independent Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has recommended significantly raising income support payments and Commonwealth Rent Assistance.

While the government to their credit have in previous budgets announced a number of modest increases, in this Budget they completely ignored the advice. 

This will condemn so many Australians to continue to live below the poverty line. It’s particularly damning because for this report the Committee commissioned new research which powerfully makes the case for significantly increasing safety net payments and Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA).

The fact is that without a significant increase our safety net is not keeping people safe. 

The research shows that inadequate income support payments are acting as a barrier to victim-survivors leaving a violent relationship. Research undertaken for the committee also quantifies not just the social but the economic opportunity cost of failing to raise safety net payments.

As a wealthy nation, Australia can and should do better to support the most vulnerable people in our communities, and this research shows that spending on government services will decrease over the long-term if we do. Until we start adequately taxing multinationals, from gas giants to big tech, I don’t want to hear that we can’t afford it.

We need change now, and the Prime Minister talks about “no one left behind” but has left so many behind in this Budget. 

Education

The big ticket items in education are the school funding agreements to try and get all public schools to 100% of their school resourcing standard.

There’s also more support for early childhood education - both staff and actual centres - but this area is still ripe for more reform and I increasingly think we need to move towards a publicly funded and delivered early education model.

In Higher Education there are some sweeteners but not the real reform we need to tackle the ballooning student debt burden.

I think uni students will be pretty disappointed the Budget doesn’t go further in addressing the key recommendations from the Universities Accord.

While the rate of indexation has been lowered, the timing won’t change so students will still get charged indexation on amounts of HECS-HELP already paid back.

The Government has not answered the Universities Accord call to reform the failed Job Ready Graduates scheme so some students will continue to be charged as much as 117% more for their degrees.

And with no raise to income support payments, students will still have to try and make ends meet on $46 a day if they’re eligible for Austudy or Abstudy.

While the introduction of paid placements for some students is a great step forward the rate is too low and placement poverty will continue for students outside of nursing, teaching, social work and midwifery.

Small Business

The Treasurer said that the government is “going into bat for small and local businesses in this Budget” but the measures announced don’t really match up to the rhetoric.

There are very modest investments in things like protecting them from unfair trading practices, additional money for the Buy Australian campaign additional funding for the ACCC, extending energy bill relief for around one million small businesses and cracking down on unfair trading practices, strengthening enforcement of the Franchising Code and progressing the design of a national licensing scheme for electrical occupations.

But there’s still no permanent legislation for the instant asset write off or agreement to raise the rate - indeed, there was no ongoing funding in tonight’s budget, raising serious doubts about its future. Lacking also were other innovative measures to reduce the administrative burden crushing small business.

Prior to the Budget the Government kicked the can down the road on any real security of payments reform for tradies and without statutory trusts they will continue to miss out when big business goes bust.

Climate and Nature

Once again, Nature is the biggest loser in the Budget. The Government didn’t even bother putting a press release on the environment in the Budget pack!!

The only main new spending was $262 million to preserve and conserve our natural land and ocean assets.

We are so fortunate to live on this megadiverse continent but the major parties just won’t take the action or make the investment needed to protect it.

The only small win was one I negotiated with the Prime Minister for Gene Drive funding through the CSIRO to help combat invasive species.

Investments in Nature in this Budget are shamefully low. If our future on this planet isn’t worth investing in, I don’t know what is.

There are also some investments in the energy transition, but nothing that addresses the majority of Australian emissions, which are exported as coal and LNG.

Women’s Safety

The epidemic of men’s violence against women and children continues. Despite record government investments, we are still failing to keep women and children safe and frontline services are underfunded.

Last September the Government announced $4.7 billion over 5 years plan for frontline family violence services already announced in September, with funding to commence on 1 July, including:

• $3.9 billion over five years to the family, domestic and sexual violence sector, and a commitment to long-term funding certainty for services
• an $800 million increase in legal assistance funding to services addressing gender-based violence, over five years
• a more than $80 million boost to trauma-informed support for children and young people to promote recovery and intervene early to prevent inter-generational violence.

Advocates spelled out clear, evidence-based asks ahead of this Budget including and appear to have been largely ignored.

Disability 

The Budget includes $423.8 million including reforming the Linkages and Capacity building program, providing general supports for people with disability and their family, carers and kin. 

There is also a welcome boost to the National Disability Insurance Agency staffing allocation.

Defence

There is a modest increase in defence spending, which is projected to grow defence funding to 2.3% of GDP by the early 2030s.

The Budget brings forward $1 billion in defence spending to help boost Australia's military capability and an increase of $10.6 billion for defence over the next 4 years.

This includes $272 million on Australian-made radars and $650 million on long-range missiles.

The Budget also allocates $61.7 million of existing defence spending to provide regulatory, safety and policy advice in support of Australia’s acquisition of nuclear‑powered submarines.

ACT-Specific Funding

For a party that promised things would be different under Labor for the ACT, it was very hard to find evidence of that in tonight’s budget which failed to deliver for the nation’s capital.

The Treasurer said the government is spending “$120 billion in infrastructure in every state and territory over the decade” but only a tiny fraction of that will be spent in the ACT. We are simply not catching up on decades of underfunding.

After four federal Labor budgets we still don’t have funding for a new Convention Centre or Stadium in the nation’s capital we so desperately need.

There’s a small amount of new funding for the Monaro Highway but nothing for some of our other roads that are desperately crying out for upgrades like Horse Park Drive and Drakeford Drive.

Canberra Avenue is the fifth most dangerous road in the nation of the past decade - where is the needs-based funding that flows in the billions to other jurisdictions?

The new urgent care clinic is welcome as is the extension to the specialist trauma‑informed sexual assault legal services pilot. But as I’ve said previously, the investment in health won’t even modestly increase bulk billing here or give any relief to the extremely high gap fees.

A one-off additional boost for our public hospitals of just $50 million will not scrape the sides, particularly when you consider the ACT health system just had a $200 million blow-out in just a single year. 

Again, any extras investments were things I have negotiated like funding for the Murrumbidgee river. The blame game between federal and territory Labor governments needs to end, they need to do the work like I did on Vision for Canberra then get on with delivering it.

Some Additional Measures of Interest 

Live music

• The Government will provide $8.6 million in 2025–26 to extend the Revive Live program to support Australian live music venues and festivals showcasing Australian bands and artists.

Spy agencies

• $44.6 million over four years from 2025–26 (and $3.8 million per year ongoing) for measures in response to the recommendations of the 2024 Independent Intelligence Review

Scams

• The Government will provide $6.7 million in 2025–26 to extend the operation of the National Anti‑Scam Centre within the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to continue protecting consumers and businesses from scam activity. 

First Nations

• $1.3 billion for Closing the Gap and stronger outcomes for First Nations Australian, including;
  • $70.9 million to increase opportunities for First Nations people, and particularly single carer families, to buy their own home and build intergenerational wealth,
  • $47.6 million to support First Nations organisations to deliver culturally appropriate aged care assessments for First Nations people,
  • $3.5 million to support the uptake of First Nations Australians’ Health Assessments through the Deadly Choices program.

STEM

• The Government will invest $7.01 million to expand successful science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) initiatives including $1.15 million for the CSIRO STEM Professionals in Schools Program

Multiculturalism and support for people fleeing Gaza

• The Government will provide $1.6 million over two years from 2024–25 to provide mental health support and services for Australians impacted by the conflict in the Middle East.
• However, these measures are already partially funded by existing resources of the Department of Health and Aged Care. There is no other new funding to support people who have fled Gaza and other conflicts around the world.
• The Government will also provide $178.4 million over five years from 2024–25 (and $1.2 million per year ongoing) to support social cohesion in Australia. These are measures aimed at supporting multicultural communities, including the rebuilding of the Adass Israel Synagogue and various grants provided to multicultural organisations.
• There is $15 million for a community sports centre in Melbourne that supports Muslim youth through sport. This is great - but notably absent is any investment in a long-called-for multicultural centre for the ACT.

Immigration and Refugees

• There’s no increase to the humanitarian program, no access to a social safety net for people seeking asylum on bridging visas, and no investment for faster and fairer processing of visa applications. Instead, there’s an undisclosed amount - listed as ‘not for publication’ - to resettle people from immigration detention in Australia to the Republic of Nauru under the government’s new migration laws passed late last year. 

Budget in Reply

The Opposition Leader is scheduled to give his Budget in Reply on Thursday night. He’s expected to focus on gas and there is speculation that he will announce fast-tracking gas projects to deliver a gas reservation policy built on new developments. He will say that this will bring down the cost of energy.

He’s wrong.

The policy would do little to bring down the cost of energy and would drive further climate change. Over the last decade gas production on the east coast has more than tripled - but at the same time, prices have also tripled. This is because large multinational gas suppliers are preferenced.

New gas projects would not come online for three to five years and so would not meet short-term demand. A gas reservation policy based on new projects would not have any impact for another decade. By which the right incentives will have allowed a large number of Australian households and businesses to get off gas in favour of cheaper energy sources.

Most importantly, we should not be drilling for more gas. The climate science is very clear on this. Expanding Australia’s already massive gas industry destroys the chances of avoiding the worst of climate change.

Alongside Senator Lambie, Australian businesses, unions and civil society groups, I have proposed an alternative that would get Australian households and businesses a fair deal on gas while avoiding a further expansion of the industry.

Around 80% of Australian gas is exported. A substantial amount of that is uncontracted gas, which means that diverting it to the domestic market comes without material sovereign risk. We don’t have a gas supply problem, we have a gas export problem. You can watch me talking about this here.

A Final Word

If you made it to the end, congratulations!

Budgets are all about choices, and I’m worried the government made some wrong ones last night.

Rolling out untargeted measures like the tax cuts and energy bill relief that aren’t based on need while leaving so many others in poverty and housing stress. Shying away from the big reforms and the landmark investments we need to build the kind of future we want for this country.

We need a government willing to be bold, to invest in the things our community cares about, like they did with health.

Thank you for reading, let’s lock in for the election being called!

David.