The ACT Government’s 2025-26 Budget has passed the Legislative Assembly. It includes what ministers termed a record $1.19 billion investment in public health care and funding for new housing, training, and cost-of-living support.

The government says the budget supports the delivery of 30,000 new homes by 2030; increases subsidies for training fees in construction trades to 90 per cent; and expands the Try-a-Trade program aimed at young women to more ACT public high schools.

The electricity, gas and water rebate is increased by $800. The government says that rebates have been automatically applied to most Canberra households and businesses’ electricity bills. Many Canberrans, however, complain of increased rates in the ballpark of thousands of dollars.

“The Budget confirms that Canberra’s economy remains strong, with low unemployment, growing real wages and high business growth,” government ministers said.

“The Budget forecasts a return to surplus in 2027–28, with the Headline Net Operating Balance improving each year over the forward estimates.”

To be precise: the 2025-26 Budget projects a deficit of $1.15 billion by 2028–29, with a Headline Net Operating Balance deficit of $424.9 million this year, improving to a $47.9 million surplus by 2027-28 and growing to $330.6 million in 2028-29.

S&P Global Ratings downgraded the ACT’s credit rating from AA+ to AA earlier this month, due to high debt levels, persistent budget deficits, rising health costs, and large infrastructure projects. The agency expects the ACT to post five consecutive operating deficits (2022–2026) before returning to a slim surplus in 2027.

“The Government will continue to invest in services and infrastructure our growing city needs to make sure Canberra remains one of the world’s best places to live,” ministers said.

ACT Government responds to Indigenous over-representation in justice system

The ACT Government has promised a staged response to a major review that found Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Canberra are among the most over-represented in the justice system in Australia.

The Jumbunna Institute’s review, tabled in the Legislative Assembly earlier this year, identified a pattern of systemic failure across policing, bail, sentencing, child protection, youth justice, corrections, and education.

First Nations adults in the ACT are 22.7 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-Indigenous people; young people 14 times more likely to be in detention; and children 12.5 times more likely to be in out-of-home care. Nearly 90 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men in Canberra’s prison, the Alexander Maconochie Centre, had previously been incarcerated, and almost half of detainees were on remand awaiting trial.

The report made 99 recommendations, including overhauling bail laws, strengthening culturally led early intervention services, and expanding the Galambany Circle Sentencing Court. It also calls for urgent reform of child protection and an independent review into systemic racism at the Alexander Maconochie Centre.

The government handed down its interim response today. 45 recommendations have been identified for priority implementation, and the remaining 54 will follow. An Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led governance body will oversee the reforms. An update will follow in six months.

The government said it would work with the ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Elected Body and relevant Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs), in line with national Closing the Gap commitments.

“This staged and collaborative approach is designed to uphold human rights, build trust, and most importantly, deliver meaningful outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the ACT justice system,” the government said.

Legislation against coercive control

The ACT Government will introduce laws making coercive control a standalone offence by mid-2026, recognising that domestic and family violence is not an isolated incident.

“Rates of domestic, family and sexual violence in Australia are unacceptable,” Dr Marisa Paterson MLA, Minister for the Prevention of Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence, said.

“Coercive control is frequently part of intimate partner violence [and] a key risk factor in domestic violence homicides. We will move to see that our laws reflect this reality.”

The government says the laws will be shaped in consultation with frontline services, victim-survivors, and the Domestic Violence Prevention Council, with a steering committee to oversee the reforms.

“We’re committed to designing legislation that is evidence-based, inclusive and effective, and that makes a real difference in creating a safer community,” Dr Paterson said.

“Law reform is only one part of the story. This work must go hand-in-hand with training, education, and support for specialist services.”

The government has already put in place a $375,000 coercive control response package, including a public education campaign and training for police and courts; updated the Domestic and Family Violence Risk Assessment and Management Framework; and invested $30.5 million in frontline services, including culturally safe supports delivered by Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations.

Domestic Violence Crisis Service CEO Sue Webeck said the organisation supported the reform, and would work with police, courts, government, and community partners to ensure training and response met best practice.

 Women’s Legal Centre ACT CEO Elena Rosenman said coercive control was a pattern of behaviour seen every day at the Centre, and welcomed laws that reflect this.

YWCA Canberra acting CEO Cara Jacobs said coercive control was inextricably linked to domestic and family violence, and welcomed the government’s commitment to legislate by 2026.

First Nations policy advocate Cecilia McKenzie said criminalising coercive control sent a clear message to victim/survivors across Australia: “What you are experiencing or have experienced is not love, it is control, and it is not acceptable. Importantly, it is now recognised as illegal.” She warned that laws must be trauma-informed, culturally safe, and backed by holistic support services.

However, the Canberra Liberals claim the nine-month delay leaves victims of domestic and family violence “devastated”.

“Victims of coercive control should be shocked by the absence of commitment to introduce well-overdue legislation by the government,” Opposition leader Leanne Castley MLA said.

She noted that Tasmania had coercive control legislation for 20 years, and Queensland and NSW also have legislation in place. She said the government had ignored her March motion calling for coercive control legislation.

Ms Castley will introduce a coercive control bill in the next sitting week, and seek a vote in December.

New technology takes kilos off early universe’s supermassive black holes

One of the most powerful black holes in the universe is belching out gas at speeds of up to 10,000 kilometres per second, making its estimated mass more than 10 times lower than first thought.

Astronomer Associate Professor Christian Wolf, astronomer and his team at the Australian National University (ANU) first discovered the monster black hole last year.

Using brand-new powerful optical equipment at the European Southern Observatory in Chile, researchers have magnified the black hole’s light and looked closer at the gas swirling around it.

“Despite the quasar’s extreme luminosity, the black hole at its heart was found to have a mass equal to ‘only’ around one billion suns,” Associate Professor Wolf said.

“Instead of rapidly rotating as previously presumed, this black hole is belching up the gas it’s feeding on. The gas is being blown away by the ferocious density of light — this is the brightest object in the universe we know of.”

 The black hole is more than 12 billion light-years away, making it challenging to study its inner structure — until now.

“This points at a solution to the question of where all these huge black holes in the universe are coming from,” Associate Professor Wolf said.

“While the rate at which they grow is still too fast to be explained easily, the re-weighing of this object and ones like it means that supermassive black holes may well originate from collapsing stars in the early stages of the universe, which had until recently seemed impossible.”

Another ANU astronomer, Professor Michael Ireland, is helping the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO) advance its interferometry technology to look at many more objects across the sky in greater detail.

“My research area is the birth of planets around young stars, which will be revolutionised by the new technology at ESO,” Professor Ireland said. “In the near future, our own creation story will only get more colourful.”

 This study was a collaboration with the Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE) in Germany. Australia’s partnership with ESO supports the work.