Budget

As Tasmania's health system continues to face critical staffing issues, the government has ramped up its reliance on locums — who are paid more, but have fewer workplace entitlements.

A drop in spending has delivered a $15.8 billion surplus for the most recent financial year, despite tax revenue also falling in that time. It's a $6.4 billion improvement on what was forecast in May.

Labor's inability to come clean about who ordered the Treasury to work on negative gearing left the government and prime minister Anthony Albanese smeared as tricky, dissembling and guilty of treating voters with contempt.

The Prime Minister today hinted that negative gearing was back on the political agenda, as Laura Tingle explains.

The policy that just won't quit is back. Will Labor revisit its 2016 and 2019 election policies?

Here is a list of payments increasing — and by how much — from September 20.  

The Labor opposition says it wants to see a ban on "pork barrelling", to ensure community grants are funded at arm's length from politicians, but the premier says the proposal is "breathtaking in its hypocrisy".

The announcement comes just days after the state budget was handed down.

As Tasmania's public sector workers admonish the government's belt tightening, the treasurer has not ruled out selling state-owned assets to help balance the books.

Tasmania's treasurer says he has delivered a "budget for our times", but unions and a leading economist say high debt and five straight years of deficits before a projected return to surplus is worrying. 

Tasmanian Treasurer Michael Ferguson's third budget sells a message of restraint during an economic storm, with a return to surplus not projected until 2029-30.

A specialised Victorian day care says it will end specialised classes for children with autism next year due to changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Tasmanian Treasurer Michael Ferguson announces a record $5.1 billion infrastructure spend days out from this year's state budget, despite a warning from an independent review.

Today’s economic data shows just how hard interest rates are hitting households, and an economy growing at a rate not seen since the early 1990s.

NDIS Minister Bill Shorten defends reforms to the disability scheme passed last week, saying the $14 billion in savings come from "cost reductions", not cuts. 

After months reviewing Tasmania's finances, an independent economist suggested how to fix the state's budget position. It took only hours for the major parties to reject his suggestions. 

Tasmania's financial position is on track to "become worse than that of any other state or territory over the next three years", with $16 billion in debt by 2035, economist Saul Eslake's independent review of the state's finances finds.

Plummeting iron ore prices on the back of China's cooling property market could cost the federal government $3 billion in revenue and push the budget further into deficit this financial year.

Politics is best played as a game of offence, but for incumbents across the world in what feels like a never-ending cost of living crisis, it has become a battle of defence and managing souring public sentiment. 

A budget estimates hearing was adjourned on Friday night after the opposition repeatedly raised allegations of travel allowance misuse involving former Queensland Parole Board president, Michael Byrne.