Queensland promised cost of living relief in budget

Struggling households are being promised cost of living relief in Queensland‘s state budget next week with a funding boost expected to address the homelessness and housing crisis.

Struggling households are being promised cost of living relief in Queensland's state budget next week with a funding boost expected to address the homelessness and housing crisis.

Treasurer Cameron Dick will next week deliver a record surplus in next Tuesday’s budget, fuelled by soaring coal prices and the government’s royalty scheme which has driven a $6bn jump in state revenues since December.

Queensland Council of Social Service chief executive Aimee McVeigh said the budget had to deliver both urgent relief and longer-term solutions to reduce household costs and fix the housing crisis.

“Community organisations across Queensland are seeing levels of need they have never seen before,” she said.

“We are hearing stories of working families living in cars, hotel rooms and tents and people who are fully employed approaching organisations for food.

“We need to see a cost of living package in the budget and some long term plans to get out of this crisis and prevent it happening again.”

The state’s housing sector will come under further pressure from strong population growth in coming years with federal budget papers showed Queensland is expected to gain an extra 20,000 interstate residents each year.

Under the Go Between Bridge in South Brisbane in March, where Queensland’s housing crisis is deepening as public spaces in major cities are being taken over with tent cities. NewsWire / Sarah Marshall

Already skyrocketing power bills are also set to increase by up to $350 in Queensland from July 1, as flagged by the Australian Energy Regulator last month.

Annastacia Palaszczuk has already flagged big energy rebates to all households in the upcoming state budget, after state-owned generators cut $175 rebate off bills last year,

The Reserve Bank on Tuesday raised interest rates from 3.85 per cent to 4.1 per cent, with governor Robert Lowe acknowledging some Australians were “experiencing a painful squeeze on their finances”.

Mr Dick said:“Cutting cost-of-living and inflationary pressures are the main priorities being addressed by the upcoming Queensland Budget,” he said.

Former commonwealth Treasury economist and director of Adept Economics Gene Tunny, said some of the temporary royalty windfall will likely be spent easing inflationary pressures on households, but warned the government against an all-out spending spree.

“I‘d say (Dick) is probably the luckiest treasurer in Queensland history really, I mean, he’s had this extraordinary boost to revenue from coal royalties,” he said.

“They’ve just got to make sure they are not committing to any unsustainable, new expenditures that permanently lift the amount of spending.

“That was a problem in the late 2000s in the Beattie and Bligh governments. They had a surge in revenue in the first phase of the mining boom and ended up committing to a lot of expenditure, but then that revenue dried up.”