2025 Queensland budget: Super raid copycats face $200bn debt

Queensland Treasurer David Janetzki has revealed total debt will soar $20bn under the Crisafulli administration compared to the former Labor government’s projections.

Queensland Treasurer David Janetzki and Premier David Crisafulli at Parliament House in Brisbane on Tuesday. Picture: Dan Peled / NewsWire

You can now listen to The Australian's articles. Give us your feedback.

You can now listen to The Australian's articles.

Queensland’s total borrowings are forecast to top $200bn for the first time, even after the first Liberal National Party government in a decade siphons billions from the surplus of the public service superannuation fund to pay down debt.

Treasurer David Janetzki confirmed total government debt in 2027-28 would hit $190.4bn – about $20bn higher than the “untruthful” $172bn forecast in Labor’s final budget ahead of ­October’s state election – before spiking to $206bn the following year. Handing down his first budget, he claimed he did not break the LNP’s election promise to ­deliver lower debt than Labor, ­because his figure was not as high as the $218bn forecast in January’s mid-year financial and economic review.

Premier David Crisafulli slammed the former Labor government’s last budget figures as a pre-election “con” on Queenslanders, accusing the administration of failing to fund a slew of promised projects, including athletes’ villages for the Brisbane Olympics and the now-axed Pioneer-Burdekin Pumped Hydro scheme.

After a decade of Labor in power, the LNP’s first budget forecasts four successive deficits, as Queensland grapples with a $2.3bn cut to its share of GST revenue as well as lower coal royalties.

Rebuffing Labor’s election claims that an LNP government would cut services and public sector jobs, the Crisafulli administration says it will actually increase taxpayer-funded spending on health, education, transport, housing and public safety – as well as hiring an extra 6000 full-time-equivalent public servants.

More than $830m will be spent in the next four years to deliver the first five 2032 Olympics venues, but the costs of major Games projects such as the Victoria Park stadium and the aquatic centre have not been quantified.

Mr Janetzki dumped Labor’s generous pre-election electricity rebate to every Queenslander, restricting the measure to only the most “vulnerable” households, while promising to maintain popular 50c public transport fares.

The LNP government will spend $165m on what it says is a “nation-leading” scheme to get 1000 first-home buyers into the housing market in the next two years, and will see taxpayers investing up to 30 per cent equity for new builds and 25 per cent of existing homes, up to a value of $1m.

This financial year, the budget deficit will be $5.4bn – compared to Labor’s predicted $2.6bn – and the 2025-26 operating balance is forecast to blow out to an $8.6bn deficit. By 2028-29, the government forecasts the deficit will be $1.1bn, which Mr Janetzki ­described as a “path to surplus”. But it is a significant worsening of the budget bottom line than was forecast by the Miles Labor government last June, which predicted a narrow return to surplus of $887m in 2026-27.

Mr Janetzki said the previous Labor government’s budget numbers were “untruthful”, could not be trusted, and said he had delivered reduced deficits compared to the revised forecasts in the January mid-year update.

“Labor’s consistent worsening deficits, including the $9.2bn deficit in 2027-28, are reversed across the forward estimates as we ­deliver consistent budget improvements, reducing the operating deficit to $1.1bn in 2028-29,’’ he said. “This deficit is driven by a sharp drop in forecast GST revenue and the duty to deliver the jobs and services Queenslanders were promised.’’

He said the GST distribution – which left Queensland $2.3bn worse off this financial year – was a “kick in the pants”.

Mr Janetzki says the GST distribution was a ’kick in the pants’ to Queensland. Picture: John Gass

Mr Crisafulli said the way the GST was carved up was not fair to Queensland and should be changed by the federal government. “I’m not convinced that a $2.3bn whack in one year for one state that is being penalised ­because of failures in other states, I just don’t think that’s fair,” he said.

In an extraordinary move, the LNP government will raid $3bn from the $10bn surplus of the public servants’ defined benefit superannuation fund to help pay down debt. When Labor treasurer Curtis Pitt did the same in 2016, the then LNP opposition Treasury spokesman Tim Nicholls criticised the ALP government, alleging “they never saw someone else’s money without wanting to get their hands on it and waste it”.

Asked about the LNP’s policy reversal, Mr Janetzki said it was “responsible” and that Labor had not ended up using its super raids to pay down debt. Queensland’s now-closed defined benefit superannuation fund is fully funded, unlike similar schemes in other states and territories.

The state’s wage bill will balloon to nearly $38bn in 2025-26 – an increase of $1.8bn in one year – and it could blow out further if public sector unions successfully negotiate for wage increases.

Ratings agency S & P Global said the budget highlighted a “sharp deterioration in the state’s finances” and “debt is increasing to cover the state’s weak operating position and fund its large infrastructure pipeline”.