The winners and losers in the Queensland budget

The budget offered few surprises, given most of the spending announcements were made in the lead-up to the state election.

Here are the winners and losers.

Winners

Taxpayers: No new or increased taxes. The average Queensland is expected to pay $2767 in tax this financial year, about $185 less than the year before. A 1.8 per cent increase in fees and charges was already announced in June.

Construction industry: This year’s infrastructure program is the largest since 2009, when Queensland was recovering from the global financial crisis. By June, $14.8 billion will be spent on building roads, bridges, classrooms, footpaths and hospital expansions.

Train builders: For the first time in almost a decade, Queensland trains will be built in Queensland. The first 20 trains to run underneath Brisbane on the Cross River Rail will be built in Maryborough and $600 million has been budgeted for a pipeline of work over the next few years.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk at the Downer rail facility in Maryborough during the election campaign.Credit: Toby Crockford

Housing market: House prices can be driven up by population growth and Queensland is expecting to welcome 86,000 people from other states in the next four years. That is roughly equivalent to the net number of interstate migrants who will leave New South Wales, Western Australia and South Australia.

Teenage girls: Girls at 120 schools will be given free pads and tampons under a $2.6 million program starting in the middle of next year. Both private and public schools can apply for the program.

Neutral

Business: The state will come knocking for all the IOUs handed out to business during COVID-19. Relief ends this month and the government will begin to claw back all the payroll, land and gaming tax deferments offered this year. Pay-backs will be spaced out throughout 2021 so that businesses will not be hit with a giant bill on January 1. On the plus side, the state will spend $100 million investing in businesses that have growth potential and that will create jobs.

Losers

People looking for a job: Treasury modelling assumes it may take as long as four years until the impact of COVID-19 on employment is fully offset. By that time, Queensland's unemployment rate is expected to be higher than other states. One saving grace is that Queensland's jobless rate has already hit its predicted peak in September at 7.7 per cent.

The coffers: Revenue is forecast to be $12.3 billion lower than projected in December 2019. That includes a $4.5 billion reduction in forecast tax revenue, a $3.8 billion drop in GST revenue and a $4 billion fall in royalty revenue.

Future generations: Total debt will hit almost $130 billion in three years, leaving each Queenslander to shoulder about $25,000 worth of public debt.