Tourism clear winner in NT government’s 2023-24 budget

One industry is the clear winner of an otherwise ‘steady’ budget, an economics expert says. Read his predictions for the financial year.

NT Treasurer Eva Lawler handed down her first budget. Picture: Annabel Bowles

A former senior NT bureaucrat and academic says the NT government’s 2023-24 budget was “steady as she goes” to make way for big strategic moves next year.

CDU Central Australia research leader Rolf Gerritsen said there were no real “losers” in this year’s budget.

The former director of social and economic policy with the Department of Chief Minister said it was a “planning budget”, with big amounts of money to be spent in the future but “they’re unlikely to be spent in this financial year”.

“Next will be a pre-election budget and that’s got to have some sweetness,” Professor Gerritsen said.

“In the meantime, they’ve got to put some money in a little brown paper bag and put it in the Chief Minister’s bottom drawer so that when next year’s budget comes, they’ve got some money to make election promises.

“That’s where you see winners and losers – in this budget, you won’t see many winners and losers.”

Charles Darwin University Central Australia research leader Rolf Gerritsen said the NT government’s 2023-24 budget had few obvious “winners and losers”.

Professor Gerritsen said the stand-out winner of the budget was the tourism industry.

“The tourism industry has largely recovered from the Covid collapse,” he said.

“But there’s a huge shortfall of international visitors, and the government is going to try and do something to increase the tourism industry generally.”

The budget allocated $35.5m to re-energising the Territory’s tourism industry.

Professor Gerritsen said Smarter Justice for Safer Communities was also a budget-time winner “in terms of getting more resources to do stuff”.

He said there were no “obvious losers” in the budget.

“It’s basically as steady as she goes,” he said.

“This year’s budget, there’s really no – apart from the tourism people – obvious political gain.”

Professor Gerritsen said Treasurer Eva Lawler’s prediction the government would be able to balance the books by 2026-27 was “dubious”.

He said “you just don’t know” whether inflation would rise or fall, which would impact the budget’s forecast.

“We’ve got more control over expenditure than we have over revenue, because the GST is such an important part of our overall government revenue,” Dr Gerritsen said.

“Our general purpose grant is about 60 per cent of our revenue, and we ultimately don’t have any control over it.”

Originally published as Tourism clear winner in NT government’s 2023-24 budget