This week I’ve had ABBA’s 1976 song “Money, Money, Money” living rent-free in my head. I’ll confess, I’m partial to a bit of ABBA, and let’s be honest, even the staunchest ABBA sceptics know every word the moment it comes on the radio. So, in that spirit, let’s talk money. It really does make the world go around, and to spare you from wading through 78 pages of the (draft) Special Budget Adviser report to the 2026-27 Select Committee on Estimates, I’ve done it for you. This is a report that gets commissioned each year by the Estimates committee, as expert advice; this year from Pegasus Economics.
I’m no economist, but here’s the headline: the promised return to surplus has moved again. Last year’s Budget told us we’d be back in the black soon. This year’s Budget pushes that milestone out to 2028-29 — a full two years later than what was promised in the 2024-25 Budget. Follow the surplus long enough and it starts to resemble a mirage: always visible on the horizon, never any closer when you arrive. The 2026-27 Budget forecasts a net operating deficit of $323.4 million, and while an operating cash surplus is finally projected this year — $109 million, climbing to $842.9 million by 2029-30 — that too arrives two years behind the original schedule.
The report’s other criticisms are worth your attention. Government revenue is climbing nicely, up nearly $750 million to $9.6 billion this year, but the report notes there’s precious little transparency about exactly which policy decisions are behind the extra $181.6 million raised since last year’s Budget. Expenses, meanwhile, are growing faster than revenue — up 5.7 per cent to $10.2 billion — driven partly by new spending and partly by an interest bill that’s set to double by 2029-30, hitting $1.2 billion. That’s Canberra’s credit card, and the interest alone is now a very serious line item.
Then there’s the long-promised phase-out of stamp duty, replaced gradually by higher general rates. The report is blunt: at current settings, stamp duty will still make up around 10 per cent of our own-source revenue by 2029-30, and general rates simply aren’t rising fast enough to close that gap. Barring a dramatic policy shift, the 20-year tax reform timeline the government set itself looks unlikely to be met.
Our balance sheet is also quietly worsening. Net debt keeps climbing, net worth keeps falling, and this pattern holds right through to 2029-30. And on housing — despite Canberra being described as the country’s most affordable jurisdiction to buy or rent (thanks largely to our higher incomes and softer property values), public housing stock hasn’t kept pace with population growth in over a decade, even as the government works towards its 30,000-new-homes target.
None of this makes for a scandal. But it does make for a pattern: ambitious promises, quietly rescheduled, year after year. Perhaps ABBA had it right after all — it’s a rich man’s world, and in Canberra’s case, an increasingly indebted one too.
