Coalition ‘booby-traps’ will add billions to the deficit in May’s budget: Treasurer Jim Chalmers

Jim Chalmers has accused the Opposition of ‘booby-trapping’ the budget, saying he will need to find billions of dollars to pay for measures the Coalition left unfunded.

Jim Chalmers says ‘once again in May we will need to find billions of dollars to make up for those opposite’s propensity to make big announcements, but not actually fund them in the budget’. Picture: Dan Peled

Jim Chalmers has accused the Opposition of “booby-trapping” the budget during its previous term in government, saying he will need to find billions of dollars to pay for measures the Coalition left unfunded.

Speaking in question time, the Treasurer said “one of the biggest pressures on the budget in May will actually be programs which any normal human being would assume are ongoing programs, which those opposite only funded in lots of cases until the end of June this year”.

“In our first budget in October, we had to spend more than $4bn to make up for these cover-ups,” Dr Chalmer said.

“Once again in May we will need to find billions of dollars to make up for those opposite’s propensity to make big announcements, but not actually fund them in the budget,” he said.

Ongoing measures such as the eSafety Commissioner, the National Emergency Management Agency, the Australian Radioactive Waste Agency, My Health Record and subsidies for dental health were either not funded beyond this year or had major cuts to their funding, according to the Department of Finance.

“MyGov is not funded in an ongoing way. This is the way that those opposite went about vandalising the budget,” Dr Chalmers said.

“In this environment there is, as always, a premium on what’s responsible, and what’s affordable, methodical, and what is sustainable in the budget, but also making sure we can continue to clean up the mess that we were left by those opposite,” he said.

The Treasurer in a speech last week signalled there would be another “substantial” upgrade to the federal tax take come May, powered once again by ongoing labour market strength and high commodity export earnings.

Dr Chalmers also flagged Treasury had proposed lifting the budget’s very conservative commodity price forecasts to something more “credible”, in a move that would add billions of dollars to the Commonwealth’s forecast bottom line over coming years.

The underlying cash deficit by January was running nearly $14bn ahead of the October forecasts, at $28.4bn in the financial year to date. This compared to Treasury’s estimate that the underlying cash deficit for the whole of 2022-23 would be $36.9bn.