This year’s deficit has been revised down slightly to $26.9 billion, but the deficits in each of the next three years will be some $21.8 billion larger than forecast earlier this year, Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced on Wednesday.
The Treasurer confirmed that the combined deficit over the next four years is estimated at $143.9 billion.
Chalmers also noted that the government made $14.6 billion in savings.
New spending, however, climbed to $8.8 billion, with the Treasurer referring to this as “unavoidable” because it funded services and programs that the Australian people rely on.
Namely, extra spending went on an extension of COVID-era health initiatives, aged care programs, infrastructure projects and domestic violence funding.
According to the Treasurer, the government is doing a good job with managing the economy.
“We’ve managed to get the deficit for this year a little bit smaller as well, but much smaller there was anticipated a couple of years ago,” Chalmers said.
“We’ve made room for pressures and for priorities with all of the savings that we’ve made, $92 billion of them by banking revenue, by showing spending restraint.”
Also speaking on Wednesday, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said: "While the budget position is $1.3 billion better off than forecast at budget, the slippage across the forward estimates is really down to urgent, unavoidable or automatic spending.”
"Unavoidable spending is half of those decisions in MYEFO," she added.
More to come.
