Talk:Australian federal budget

Budgets in election years
Could anyone clarify what happens in an election year with the budget: I assume the budget introduced by the incumbent government remains for the rest of the financial year, even if the government changes. Is this correct? (Sorry if it sounds like a daft question...) —Sam Wilson (Australia) 10:07, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

federal budget
Yes the budget gets put into place int he following year reguardless of which government gets elected in the most recent election. Because the budget is deabted upon wihtin the democratically appointed system of politicians it should not contain bias towards a particular political angle. I hope that clears things up. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.53.32.194 (talk) 04:04, 10 May 2007 (UTC).
 * Of course it contains bias towards particular political angles. A budget delivered by a Labor government is going to look quite different to one from a Coalition government. Jimp 09:15, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

articles for each budget by year?
At present this article contains a subsection on the 2008-09 budgeet. I would have thought it justified its own article and so do other years - ie we should create a series of articles. I think it is giving too much prominenence to the one year to include it as a subsection in this article? Any objections to the subsection being made a separate article? --Matilda talk 05:49, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Budget night
... traditionally the second Tuesday in May.

Well, it's a very recent tradition. Until Hawke's (?) time, it had traditionally been brought down in August, afaik ever since 1901. That's about 90 years for the old tradition, and only about 20 for the new one. -- JackofOz (talk) 09:18, 27 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Never heard that before. I think twenty years is plenty long enough to make it established custom though. Economic history is broken up into decades you know. Ottre 09:31, 27 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. But, seriously, it was always an August event until the late 80s-early 90s.  It was brought down on the second night of the spring session, which started after the winter break.  That's why there had to be a special funding arrangement to keep the wheels of government going between 1 July and whenever the budget was passed.  I think it was called the "Treasurer's advance" or something like that.  I think that Peter Walsh might have been at the vanguard of the decision to make it a May event - very sensible, and 90 years overdue, imo.  --  JackofOz (talk) 13:10, 27 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The date was changed as arguements had persisted for a long time that changes were occurring after 1 July and alignment of tax measures with financial year ended 30 June plus with sitting dates for palrliament over the winter sessions was easier. The change was made in early-mid 1990's by Peter Costello and was applauded by business at that time as an innovative change. Changes announced in the August budgets used to mean that some tax measures requires apportionment over the full financial year or some were retospectively made from the prior 1 July which required special bills to be passed. Many budget announcements are now made that are effective immediately or take effect from the start of the next financial year. This provides more opportunity for education, discussion, passing law through Parliament and transition. 202.7.89.190 (talk) 00:41, 18 March 2010 (UTC)


 * Aha, got it! The first Australian federal budget that was ever delivered before the start of the year to which it related was on 10 May 1994, by Ralph Willis.  The previous budget was brought down by John Dawkins, on 17 August 1993.  It was a Keating Government initiative to bring it forward to May. The next one was held on 9 May 1995.  In 1996 it would have been May again, but the election in March and change of government cruelled that idea, so it was on 20 August.  From 1997 it's been back to May again.  So, the upshot is that we had 93 years of August budgets, certainly a tradition, followed (apart from a hiccup) by 18 years of May budgets, so far.  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  02:47, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

Link to the current budget
I went and changed the link at the top to the 2014/15 Budget but then I realised this was a mistake. The 2013/14 Budget is still current as we are still in the 2013/14 fiscal year. Yesterday's Budget won't be the current budget until 1 July. (I've made it so that the link switches automatically, six months and ten hours after the new year UTC.) It would, however, be helpful to link to yesterday's bad news too, at least until it is the current budget. Jimp 11:45, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

The top note gives (a) link(s) to the budget for specific financial year(s). The question is which year(s) it should link to. Should it
 * a) link to the budget for the coming financial year,
 * b) link to the budget for the current financial year or
 * c) link to both?

I had made it such that a link to the budget for the coming financial year would automatically be added once there exists an article about it (whilst retaining the link to the current one).

This was changed. The change would make it so that we'd always have a link to both regardless of whether the coming year's article existed. The explanation for this was "Remove template programming using AWB (10093)". Okay, perhaps such coding in an article mightn't be ideal but I cannot think of a better way to achieve what I was after. If we look at the articles for previous budgets, we find that they are not started until April of that year; there's a good reason for that. Thus with the aforementioned version we'd expect to have a useless red link at the top of the article for about nine months of any year. (By "useless" I mean that there really isn't anything to say about the coming year's budget until about Aprilish, red links can encourage article creation but when there's nothing to write there's nothing to write.) The so-called "template coding" in the article seems to me to be by far the lesser of the two evils. (An alternative would be to create a special template for just this page but that's pretty silly.)

So, I put the  back but I'd been thinking. I'd been wondering whether we really ever need links to both the current and the coming year's budget. By the time we have an article for the coming year's budget the current one will have become old news. There's not a lot of use as a navigational aid having both; each one has a link to its successor and predecessor where they exist. So I figured that it would make the most sense to link to the current year's budget until there exist an article for the coming year's one and then link to that instead, i.e. link only to one at a time (never to both and certainly not always). Here's the code.

I'll try a brief explanation of the code. Jimp 11:10, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * gives us a year.
 * The  is an offset to account for the financial year's being out of phase with the calendar year by six months.
 * Thus  gives the current calendar year from January to June and the next calendar year from July to December
 * and  gives the previous calendar year from January to June and the current calendar year from July to December.
 * The  is an offset to account for the fact that we are 10 hours ahead of UTC ... okay, not all of us but most of us (sorry WA, SA, NT, etc.).  (Note that daylight savings doesn't matter since the financial year changes during standard time.)
 * Thus  will be the article for the coming financial year's budget and   will be the article for the current financial year's budget.
 * checks for the existence of an article. If the article is on Wikipedia, we get the first thing, a link to it; if not, we get the second, a link to the current budget article.

Bgwhite continues to insist that "Ifexists is not allowed in articles. It is a template programming element." I suppose that his or her finding the time to show this to be the case rather than simply proclaiming it is a bit too much to hope for. Anyhow, as noted above, the alternative he/she is offering simply will not work. Rather than make a war out of it, I've created forifexist tucking the so-called template programming away in a template. Such a solution may not be optimal: it could well end up that this is the only article to use the template but it's better than an edit war. Jimp 10:35, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Titles of the annual Australian federal budget series
I note that the format of the annual Australian federal budget series is [year] Australian federal budget. This creates a sequence problem and is inconsistent with other series, such as federal and state elections. I propose to rename them in the format Australian federal budget, [year], unless if there is any objection. Enthusiast01 (talk) 05:59, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * The majority of various countries' budget articles begin with the year. Can you elaborate on the sequence problem? - Shiftchange (talk) 06:47, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * All the other Australian article series, eg. Australian federal election, 2013 and Victorian state election, 2014 and others have this format. Enthusiast01 (talk) 09:49, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, but why is it important? I am not objecting.  I just want to understand why you feel the need to change it. - Shiftchange (talk) 10:25, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
 * It is my sense of aesthetics and to establish consistency in presentation. Otherwise, it is of no particular importance. Enthusiast01 (talk) 10:33, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Previous budgets still online
In case anyone feels like backfilling our history of budgets, the current budget site has an archive and although, for me, the general pages for 1996-97 and 1997-98 don't work, the individual papers/statements listed do work. Mark Hurd (talk) 08:37, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

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Could someone explain why the Treasury of Australia, a sovereign country with the right to print its own money, decided to borrow hundreds of billion of dollars from outside the Australian economy?

Printing money produces inflation (if that money cannot be supported by assets). Borrowing money produces the same level of inflation except that eventually that money is withdraw from Australia.

Can anyone see the thousands of tons of hundred dollar notes PM Rudd and Treasurer Swann borrowed? Is such money stashed somewhere overseas reserved for Australia's exclusive use? During the Global Financial Crisis the UK and US 'printed money' and no-one is pursuing them with flaming torches.

Why did the highly educated and paid members of the Treasury make a decision identical with that of an inebriated sociopath (adorned with underpants as a hat) and elect to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars and spend them? We all know that the money Australia borrowed was a mere computer entry- we could have made that entry ourselves!

Note that printing money could result in a drop in the value of Australian currency. Is't that what the Treasury struggled to accomplish for several years after it borrowed the money!?

The proper process would have been for the Treasury et al to have loaned money to the States with an interest rate sufficient to absorb inflation. The federal government would then be able to spend that money on the States. If the Treasury had done this then We would have a circular economy and would not now be facing budget austerity measures and years/decades of repayments.

We spent year recovering from the Keating debt - did no-one learn anything? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1.129.97.173 (talk) 22:27, 9 May 2017 (UTC)

Rudd/Swann Treasury ought to have 'printed money'
Could someone explain why the Treasury of Australia, a sovereign country with the right to print its own money, decided to borrow hundreds of billion of dollars from outside the Australian economy?

Printing money produces inflation (if that money cannot be supported by assets). Borrowing money produces the same level of inflation except that eventually that money is withdraw from Australia.

Can anyone see the thousands of tons of hundred dollar notes PM Rudd and Treasurer Swann borrowed? Is such money stashed somewhere overseas reserved for Australia's exclusive use? During the Global Financial Crisis the UK and US 'printed money' and no-one is pursuing them with flaming torches.

Why did the highly educated and paid members of the Treasury make a decision identical with that of an inebriated sociopath (adorned with underpants as a hat) and elect to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars and spend them? We all know that the money Australia borrowed was a mere computer entry- we could have made that entry ourselves!

Note that printing money could result in a drop in the value of Australian currency. Isn't that what the Treasury struggled to accomplish for several years after it borrowed the money!?

The proper process would have been for the Treasury et al to have loaned money to the States with an interest rate sufficient to absorb inflation. The federal government would then be able to spend that money on the States. If the Treasury had done this then We would have a circular economy and would not now be facing budget austerity measures and years/decades of repayments.

We spent year recovering from the Keating debt - did no-one learn anything?


 * This isn't the place for such a discussion, sorry. --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  03:24, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

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Second 2022 budget
I just found out that Jim Chalmers will soon deliver his first budget in this year 2022 despite the fact that Josh Frydenberg had delivered his final budget earlier this same year.

Would this be the first time there had been two budgets in the same year and come to think of it were there two budgets in 1941, Fadden and Chifley's. 49.3.72.79 (talk) 03:07, 19 October 2022 (UTC)