On Tuesday the Albanese Government handed down its third federal budget and last night the Opposition leader provided his reply. 

The government has a difficult task trying to manage inflation while also providing support to an increasing number of Australians who are struggling.

We went into this budget hoping for some big things given the scale of the challenges we are facing in a whole range of areas and based on the priorities you shared with me that I put forward in our pre-budget submission, notably:

• Housing
• Health 
• Education
• Cost-of-living
• Climate and biodiversity
• Men’s violence against women

We need measures to address the growing intergenerational inequity and structural reform. 

A vision for the future we want as a country and a budget roadmap to get us there. 

While welcoming the positive measures the budget does contain, my initial response - one that has been shared by a range of stakeholders coming - is some disappointment. 

In part, because expectations were so high and the crises we face are so deep.

I’ll provide a debrief at next Wednesday’s Post-Budget Town Hall event at the Australian National University. We’re fortunate to be joined by guest speakers Sue Webeck, CEO of the Domestic Violence Crisis Service in the ACT, to provide her post-budget wrap as well as Sharon Friel, Professor of Health Equity in ANU’s School of Regulation and Global Governance, to talk about intergenerational equity. It would be great to see you there – if you can make it, please be sure to RSVP here, where you can also find a streaming link and a link for submitting questions online.

In the meantime, below is our summary of key measures and what they mean for you.

Budget centrepiece: Future Made in Australia 

The big ticket item in this budget is the $22.7bn for Future Made in Australia. With the Coalition pledging to oppose, the Greens and Crossbench will hold the balance of power on this legislation.  

I’ll wait to see the detail and consult as I always do prior to coming to a position.

Hydrogen and Critical Minerals are by far the biggest winners here with a $16.3bn investment, the majority of which is for new production tax incentives.

This is great, but how about we stop subsidising fossil fuels to the tune of some $11bn a year and invest that money in addressing the threat of climate change, and actually get on with the transition?

And why would we give production tax credits for hydrogen and critical minerals but not advanced renewable energy manufacturing? Solar and batteries? 

This seems like such a huge missed opportunity.

There’s a $1.7bn Future Made in Australia Innovation Fund and a review into R&D (which is at the lowest levels as a % of GDP on record) and an extra $1.9bn for the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

Batteries get a pretty modest investment with $500m but household electrification is completely overlooked. 

This is despite countries like the US ploughing billions into getting solar onto the roofs of low income households.

And it is a real worry because it grows the divide between rich and poor in this country.

Electrification can save households up to $5000 year on year - that is so much more valuable than the one-off $300 energy bill relief flagged in this budget.

Health

There are some important investments in health, which will make a difference to patients in our community. 

However, it misses a huge opportunity to address one of the greatest challenges impacting Australians right now: mental health. Psychologists are closing their books and it’s almost impossible to get into a psychiatrist at the moment. The largest investment to help fix this is a new digital service for 150,000 “low intensity” patients, starting in 2026. I worry that this  won’t put a dent in waiting lists or make mental health services more affordable.

There is also no funding to really address the GP shortage or make seeing a GP more affordable. This is something we really struggle with in the ACT, as the place with the lowest bulk billing rate in the country.

The policy to freeze co-payments on medicines is very welcome and will hopefully help people squeeze a bit more into their budgets each week.

There is also a very welcome investment in making MRIs, PET scans and CT more accessible, particularly for people with rare cancers. This is something I hear a lot about, and am very pleased to see it in the Budget.

Housing 

Also missing are the big new investments like doubling the Housing Australia Future Fund or the bold tax reform such as winding back negative gearing and capital tax discounts for investment properties that we desperately need when it comes to housing. 

The Treasurer claimed to be “helping renters” but a 10% rise to Commonwealth Rental Assistance is less than $10 per week and won’t help 60% of people who rent. 

The government says it’s investing an additional $6.2 bn for a total spend of $32bn but it’s pretty unclear how much of that is actually new money to build desperately needed social and affordable homes.

There was a missed opportunity to expand the ambition of the Help to Buy Scheme by increasing it from 10,000 to 30,000 places per year and making it ongoing. Similarly, not extending the National Rental Affordability Scheme means more affordable housing will be lost.

Women’s safety

We’ve seen 35 women murdered this year but no new funding for frontline family and domestic violence service providers. Advocates say $1 billion a year is needed. The $925m over five years to make permanent the Morrison era Leaving Violence program (which was announced prior to the budget) is less than one fifth of that. And only 30% of women who apply for the payment in the ACT receive it - the lowest rate in the country. I’ve raised this with Minister Rishworth and will continue to push for equitable access. 

While the additional $44.1m in funding for community legal centres is very welcome, women’s legal services have clearly said that it is not enough and is the bare minimum to keep the doors open through to 30 June next year. We need to see a substantial and sustained increase. But based on the holes in the budget, the peak body for women’s legal services say that around Australia legal services supporting women experiencing gender based violence will need to start reducing their services due to a lack of funds. Already 1000 women a day nationally are turned away. In a national crisis, this is simply appalling. 

The safety of women also depends on security of housing, financial independence and equality across all aspects of life. On budget day, I attended a vigil organised by March4Justice on the lawns of Parliament House. Their view was that this budget would indicate what our government thinks a woman is worth. I think the answer we’ve seen this week is “not enough.”

This really disappointing gap has been highlighted by many advocates and I stood with them in solidarity at parliament.

Social security & cost-of-living

The expert independent Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee’s advice on most of their 22 recommendations - including raising the rate of basic safety net payments so people can afford life’s essentials - have been ignored.

Posting a $9.3bn surplus when the most vulnerable in our community can’t afford to buy food is - frankly - a disgrace. It is a deep betrayal of the people in the greatest need in our communities, especially as the committee said the current rate was “too low to live on” and an increase would not be inflationary.

The Government is making a small tweak to allow people to work more and extend eligibility for the existing higher rate of JobSeeker and extending the freeze on deeming rates.

But the calls to abolish the Activity Test, which prevents children from the lowest income households in the country from participating in early childhood education, have fallen on deaf ears.

Pensioners will benefit from a 5-year freeze on the cost of medicines and an extension freezing the deeming rate and medicare.

Disability and government services

The Budget contains $468.7 million to fund continued reforms to the NDIS and its infrastructure. It’s not funding that will find its way to participants or providers; it appears to be a boost to the NDIA and other agencies to improve some clunky systems and keep progressing reforms.

Outside of this, the largest investment in disability is $253.6m to create a new disability employment program. The budget papers are a bit light on detail on this one, so we’ll need to ask more questions to see what’s planned.

There is a very welcome boost of funding for Services Australia, including $1.8 billion for frontline staff. Phone wait times and application processing times are far too high, and I’m very hopeful new, permanent staff will start to turn that around.

Higher Education

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 might be lowered it looks like 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 prac for some students is a great step forward, placement poverty will continue for students outside of nursing, teaching, social work and midwifery.

While $350m for fee-free university-ready courses is welcome, without reform to Job Ready Graduates we are just setting these students up for huge debt.

Small business

Outside of the $325 one-off energy bill relief for 40 per cent of small businesses and the extension of an instant asset write-off increase from the last budget that still hasn’t passed the parliament, there is next to nothing for small business. It was good, though, to see some of the measures I’ve pushed for appear in the budget, like $20.5 million for the Fair Work Ombudsman to help small businesses comply with workplace laws and $10 million to provide support for small business employers administering the Commonwealth parental leave scheme.

Environment

The amount of new spending on Nature is embarrassingly low.

We’re a megadiverse country in an extinction crisis. Nature is under huge pressure and there’s nothing in the budget that will change that. 

While the government is dishing out millions to speed up approvals that often destroy Nature, there’s hardly any new money to protect against species loss and preserve the places we love.

There’s no way the government can make good on the commitment to no new extinctions unless there is a serious investment in conserving threatened species. Scientists have told us that we need to be investing $2 billion every year if we are going to turn the extinction tide. We’re at a fraction of that, and this budget does nothing to help.

There is a paltry $65.1 million for “extra research into threatened species so sensitive areas can be more easily avoided and suitable projects can be more quickly approved based on robust, existing publicly available data”. However, this appears to be geared towards approval for developments rather than conserving our incredible biodiversity.

In budgets, numbers speak louder than glossy brochures and cuddly social media posts. And the numbers say Nature is not a priority for this government.

On the upside, the government have made good on my agreement with them to better look after the Upper Murrumbidgee with $20 million for restoration work and further money for reviewing the deed that controls releases from Snowy Hydro, as well as money for water should the Upper Murrumbidgee run low. 

ACT-Specific Funding

The budget’s also pretty light on for the ACT. 

While we saw a big win in $249.7m of long-overdue funding for the AIS, we are again missing out on the city-shaping infrastructure investment we have needed for decades.

The budget contains $50m for light rail planning, $27m for the William Hovell Drive duplication and planning for a Belconnen Transitway, $9.7m for a TAFE EV Centre of Excellence and $4.1m for the Canberra Symphony Orchestra. These things are very welcome but underwhelming.

We didn’t see any mention of the National Capital Investment Framework, no funding for the convention centre, no funding for community sport infrastructure and no mention of upgrades to the Canberra-to-Sydney rail line.

The ACT is seeing $0 out of the $464.3m in federal funding for health-related infrastructure in 2024-25. And we’re receiving almost 20 per cent less than our per-capita share of general infrastructure payments.

It has been encouraging to see the shift starting to take place in how the Labor government is talking about Canberra. I’ll keep pushing for actions to start matching words with strong investment commitments for the ACT.

Support for people fleeing Gaza

There are several hundred people in Australia who have fled from the conflict in Gaza in recent months. Most are on tourist visas or other short term visas, which are not designed to support people fleeing conflict. These are not humanitarian visas, and they do not provide the support that is needed. 

I have repeatedly asked the government to issue a quota of humanitarian visas for people fleeing Gaza, and to give those who are here the social services support they need. They still have not done this, despite having provided these visa options for people fleeing Ukraine and Afghanistan in similar circumstances. 

Instead, they’ve announced in the budget a disappointing $2 million of emergency financial assistance for this group over two years. If paid to every person who has arrived so far, it would only be enough to sustain them for around 3 weeks. 

In good news, the government has provided $1 million to extend medicare to people fleeing Gaza who are on a bridging visa. This means they may not have enough money to support themselves, but they will be able to access Medicare. This is something, but it goes nowhere near far enough. 

Appallingly, despite multiple crises deepening across the world - not least the catastrophe in Gaza, we have seen no increase to the Humanitarian Emergency Fund for the sixth year running. This means it’s shrinking in real terms. Australians have been crystal clear that they want to see a dramatic increase in humanitarian aid to Gaza. Leaving this emergency fund static makes it difficult to see how this can happen. 

Budget asks answered

Seven of my 35 pre-budget asks on behalf of our community were answered. A number of other things that I have been calling for were also funded by the government. The major wins were the (partial) response to the US Inflation Reduction Act in the form of the Future Made in Australia policy and investment in the AIS. Although it's not everything I have called for, these are both things I have been pushing the government to do since before I was elected.

Although the ACT continues to lag behind the rest of the country on investment in infrastructure, many of the wins for the ACT are responses to our advocacy. 

Summary of key budget outcomes in response to advocacy

Budget in reply

The Opposition Leader used his budget in reply to talk primarily about housing, migration, family and domestic violence and nuclear energy but did not confirm locations of proposed nuclear reactor sites.

He said a Coalition Government would cut international student numbers, cut permanent migration from 185,000 to 140,000 a year, reduce humanitarian visa numbers by one third  from 20,000 to 13,750 and implement a ban foreign investors and temporary residents from buying established homes for two years.

He confirmed their policy to increase the small business instant asset write off from $20,000 to $30,000 and make it permanent - despite the Liberals fleeing the chamber when I moved an amendment to make it permanent just a couple of months ago. The entire crossbench supported this so it would have passed had the Coalition not abstained. Mr Dutton also said he would introduce a new criminal offence for coercive behaviour online and new knife laws.

There was not a lot of detail and no costings were released.

A final word

I understand that inflation is a massive issue, but there was scope to make a meaningful difference to Australians doing it toughest - those having to choose between food and medicine - without increasing inflation. And despite a budget surplus, the government has chosen to leave them further behind. 

What is worse is that the government won’t take steps to make the reforms we need in order to fund the support and services Australians rely on.

Only yesterday in an absolutely dud deal with the Greens and the government passed tweaks to the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax that were exactly what the gas companies wanted and won’t raise any additional revenue. This was despite describing the policy as ‘co-sponsored by the gas industry.’ The change does not achieve a fair return on the sale of Australian gas and I could not support it. You can read more about that here.

While there were some welcome smaller supports in the budget, I am really worried that the Government doesn’t have a plan to tackle the root causes of the growing social and intergenerational inequality we are seeing from housing to climate to cost-of-living.

Offering more constructive solutions and pushing for greater ambition in these areas is something that will be a big focus for me and my team in the coming months and leading into the next election.

Best,

David

https://www.davidpocock.com.au/