Victorian budget 2024 as it happened: Cuts, delays, taxes revealed as treasurer hands down state budget

Thank you for following our live coverage today. To recap, here’s the main budget announcements.

• The Victorian government has announced new cost-of-living support measures for families with school children - including a $400 payment for about 700,000 students.
• A shared equity scheme that has helped thousands of Victorians buy a home will end next year, replaced by a pledged national scheme that hasn’t passed parliament.
• Interference from the new Metro Tunnel station at Arden has forced the Victorian government to ditch a $5 billion plan to build new hospital campuses there.
• Major projects will be stalled and key government promises abandoned as a bad news budget tries to rein in spiralling debt.
• The three-minute budget: Find out what will affect you most in this year’s Victorian budget.

From Treasurer Tim Pallas and I, goodnight!

Treasurer Tim Pallas’ 10th budget comes full of bad news and with a $25 million-a-day interest bill. There’s a bit to unpack.

State political reporter Kieran Rooney has cut through the noise with this two-minute explainer.

Five years ago, when Treasurer Tim Pallas handed down the 2019-20 budget, the expectation was that the state’s net debt would reach $54.9 billion by the end of June 2023.

Of course, this assumption was made well before the COVID-19 pandemic struck. When June 30 ticked over last year, the state’s net debt was sitting at $115 billion, largely because of money borrowed to pay for the state’s COVID-19 recovery.

Net debt is set to keep increasing, reaching $187.8 billion by the middle of 2028.

The amount of interest the state government is paying on this debt has been rising. In 2027-28 the interest bill is expected to be about $9.4 billion.

Because there is still some time left in 2023-24, there isn’t a figure for interest expenses for this year just yet. However, the budget papers state that the interest expense was $4 billion over the past nine months.

Treasurer Tim Pallas has delivered his 10th state budget, revealing major products will be stalled and key promises will be abandoned.

Ishan Jagaty said the budget failed to properly fund improvements to Victoria’s public transport system or improve road travel to the city’s west.

Jagarty said he looked forward to the Metro Tunnel project bringing the latest trains to the north-western suburbs.

“However, it begs the question: why isn’t there a budget allocated to improving myki, which frankly, is sub-par? We deserve better technology,” he said.

“Delays in project completion and insufficient funding for road infrastructure raise concerns about the Victorian government’s ability to effectively meet demands.”

In 2024-25, the state government expects to spend $98.3 billion and bring in $96.1 billion in revenue, which equates to a deficit of $2.2 billion.

This is less than some of the deficits recorded during the depths of the pandemic, when there was a deficit of $14.6 billion in 2020-21.

But in 2025-26 the budget is expected to go into surplus for the first time since 2018-19. A $1.5 billion surplus is on the cards for next year, with larger surpluses anticipated in the years that follow.

This graph shows whether the state budget has been in surplus or deficit over the past couple of decades.

The blue bars above the bold line are years that delivered a surplus, while the red bars under the bold line are years with deficits. The purple bars are the estimates from this year’s state budget.

Thousands of children in Victoria will miss out on hundreds of hours of free preschool promised during the 2022 election, as the state budget hits the brakes on billions of dollars in construction funding.

The Age last month revealed there would be significant delays to the government’s $14 billion Best Start, Best Life reforms, trumpeted as a win for working women and to improve the outcomes of Victorian children.

The program was due to finish by 2032, but its rollout will be slowed and is now not expected to be finalised until 2036-2037.

Treasurer Tim Pallas today said that the program, which he deemed “some of the biggest social reforms” in the state, would require 11,000 extra workers – more than double the current workforce.

The budget listed completion dates for $2.221 billion worth of construction supporting the rollout as “to be confirmed”. Last year’s budget had put the completion date at the end of 2027-28.

Read the full story here.