Secret spending: MYEFO’s hidden $4.7bn outlay

Hidden expenditure and revenue measures in the mid-year budget update include $4.7bn in spending rubber-stamped since May but not publicly disclosed.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Hidden expenditure and revenue measures in Jim Chalmers’ mid-year budget update includes almost $4.7bn in spending over four years on government policies and programs authorised since the May 9 budget but not publicly disclosed.

The “decisions taken but not yet announced and not for publication” budget line item is used by governments to withhold details they don’t yet wish to make public and sensitive programs linked with defence and national security.

The Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook released on Wednesday includes billions in payments on new undisclosed measures rubber-stamped since the May budget, with spending building over four years. Treasury says spending on undisclosed programs in 2025-26 will be $1.66bn before rising to $1.8bn the following year.

Policy and funding decisions made behind closed doors following the May budget are estimated to raise $2.45bn in revenue over the forward estimates, including $4m retrospectively listed for 2022-23.

The Australian in September revealed that a $1.2bn NASA-backed sovereign satellite program was secretly scrapped in the May 9 budget under the undisclosed spending and revenue budget line item.

After national cabinet last week struck a deal for the Commonwealth to boost hospital, health, NDIS foundational support and GST spending, only the GST No Worse Off Guarantee agreement is listed as a line item in MYEFO. The cost of the GST top-up deal will cost taxpayers $11.1bn over three years from 2027-28.

Asked by The Australian on Wednesday about the hospital and NDIS foundational support funding elements of the national cabinet deal, Dr Chalmers said “in some cases where it is a relatively straightforward change in the medium-term like the GST No Worse Off guarantee there is a specific line item”.

“We have accounted for developments at national cabinet in the mid-year budget update. In some areas where there were negotiations happening right up to the day and perhaps they are a little bit more complex, we have provisioned for and accounted for the kinds of developments that we saw at national cabinet without there being a specific line item against them,” Dr Chalmers said.

“You will recall that national cabinet was last week. We try and lockdown the documents not five minutes before we release them and so the spending at national cabinet is accounted for in the mid-year update. Where possible, we have given a specific line item.

“Where it hasn’t been possible because of timing we have accounted for it without providing that specific line item but it is all accounted for and provisioned for in what you see today.”

The Albanese government last week gifted Premiers and Chief Ministers more than $25.5bn in extra GST payments and increased health funding in exchange for doubling the annual increase in state and territory funding for the NDIS from 2028.

The agreement included a generous 50-50 Commonwealth-state funding split to establish new foundational supports for disabled people, an undisclosed increase to the health funding cap and an extra $13.2bn in hospitals funding over five years.