Your 5-minute guide to the 2025-26 SA State Budget: Everything you need to know at a glance

See all the headline figures, major announcements and big blowouts here in your comprehensive guide to SA’s 2025-26 State Budget.

Treasurer Stephen Mullighan working in his office at the State Admin Building preparing the 2025-26 South Australian State Budget. Picture: Mark Brake

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Baffled by the barrage of facts and figures? Fear not, The Advertiser team has you covered.

We’ve collected everything you really need to know in a hurry here in this year’s five-minute guide to the SA state budget.

How much is our surplus? How much debt are we in line for and what about ramping?

See today’s wrap up from State Treasurer Stephen Mullighan’s third budget below.

At a glance: Key figures in 2025’s SA State Budget

Law and order and debt have dominated the government’s sales pitch for this year’s budget – with some sweeteners for families.

– An extra 326 sworn police officers by 2030/31, taking the force total to 5000 – part of a $395.1m law and order package.

– New $10, 28-day public transport pass for school students from July 1

– State debt of $48.495bn by 2028/29 - with an annual interest bill of $2.453bn – or $6.72m per day.

– $384m set aside for potential six-month extension of Whyalla steelworks administration

– $50m to back start-up businesses with a new Early-Stage Venture Capital Fund

– Grants for businesses of between $2500 and $75,000 to improve energy efficiency.

– $200 cut to school materials and services charge continued.

– Construction of almost 3000 homes backed by $552.4m package, including 1300 homes apiece in developments at Munno Para East and Thebarton.

– Drought support of $55.4m, including $17.9m in grants and financial assistance and $7m for fodder delivery and water availability.

– Adelaide freight bypass gets $656.3m on a 80:20 basis - with funding talks continuing with federal government.

– A new 460-place birth to year six school in Adelaide’s north - $70m in a public private partnership.

– $1.9bn for health, to tackle increasing demand and higher costs. Takes the government’s total health spend to $9bn over four years. Includes $77m to establish a statewide cancer network and $42.9m for older people at risk of long hospital stays.

– Employment growth forecast at one per cent annually across the four-year forward estimates.

– Surpluses across the forward estimates, including $179m in 2025/26 and $315m in 2028/29.

Law and order

– $172m over six years to build the state’s “largest-ever police force” of 5000 sworn officers by 2030-2031.

– $46.8m to install new mobile phone detection, red light and point-to-point cameras.

– $7.5m for regional road safety infrastructure and $20m for road safety maintenance.

– $4.5m to new targeted road safety campaigns.

– $29.6m to recruit 98 police security officers by 2028-2029 - building on 189 extra officers funded last year - to be deployed into regional South Australia.

– $17.8m to double motorcycle police patrolling roads to 66 officers.

– $72.4m to increase prison capacity by 116 beds across the system.

– $6.8m to boost prison security.

Preschoolers will be on the fast-track. . Picture: istock

Cost of living: What’s in the State Budget for you?

Families with small and school age children are set to be the biggest winners in this year’s state budget.

While the Treasurer says he’s feeling confident about the health of the state’s books, he said families might not be so sure on the homefront.

The $118.3m cost of living relief package unveiled on Thursday will include:

– From July, students using a 28-day metrocard will pay $10, down from $28.60 – or $242 less per year.

– An annual $200 discount on public primary and secondary school fees will continue for another four years.

– The $200 sport and music voucher program will continue.

– The combined savings for families with two school-aged children will be up to $1084 a year.

Adelaide’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital is one of three facilities in line for $117m boost to mental health services. Picture: Ben Clark

SA’s Health budget blows out by $1.9bn

The South Australian 2025-26 Health and Wellbeing budget of $9.99bn includes $1.9bn in new spending over the next five years for health projects amid relentless demand on the system.

These include:

– $117m to support growing demand for mental health services, with 72 mental health beds across three new rehabilitation units at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Modbury and Noarlunga hospitals to open shortly;

– $77m in partnership with the federal government to support establishment of a statewide cancer network to maximise prevention, early detection and care;

– $45m for the new Mount Barker Hospital;

– $42.9m with the federal government to help move older people out of hospital beds and into more suitable residential aged care places;

– $13.9m to expand the mental health co-responder program to cover all of Adelaide, where mental health experts ride on police calls to find the best options for mental health call-outs;

– $8m to remove and replace aluminium composite cladding and upgrade fire protection systems at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital;

– $8m with the federal government to support aged care infrastructure upgrades at Bordertown;

– $7.3m to improve efficiency at SACAT hearings to assist in timely discharge of patients from hospitals to residential aged care facilities;

– $2.2m to expand the medical conditions pharmacists can treat so fewer people have to go to GPs or hospitals.

Education

– $27.7m over four years will be allocated in the budget to fasttrack more than 2000 three-year-olds to start preschool a year earlier in 2026.

– To assist with the delivery of the initiative, $178m in state government loans will be made available for infrastructure projects at private preschools.

– A new $70m birth to year 6 school will be built in Adelaide’s north, to meet population growth in the area, which could be funded by a partnership between the private and public sectors.

– $40m will be available over four years for air conditioning and other upgrades at a range of primary and preschools across the state.

– About $50m was allocated over four years to give schools more support for students with disabilities.

– $48.3m over three years was put towards secondary pupils at risk of disengaging from their learning.

Child protection

– An extra $85.1m has been allocated to look after children in the care of the Department for Child Protection over the next four years.

– Six extra staff will be hired to triage calls to the Child Abuse Report Line.

Infrastructure, environment and regions

Drought relief, the continued battle against fruit fly and the frightening algal bloom plaguing South Australia’s coast line dominate spending on the environment and regions in this year’s budget.

Among the biggest ticket items in the document are:

– $14m for sand replacement at West Beach and other coastal areas

– $44m over four years for the replacement of a coastal research vessel

– $45m for fruit-fly eradication

– $73.4m over five years for drought-relief

– $125m to the Greater Adelaide Freight Bypass in split 80:20 split with the Commonwealth

– $12.5m to make the Mount Barker On-Demand Keoride trial permanent

– $2.2bn towards the $15bn non-stop North-South Corridor

Originally published as Your 5-minute guide to the 2025-26 SA State Budget: Everything you need to know at a glance