The Budget in eight charts

Thursday, 28 May 2026

Nicola Willis joined by Chris Bishop, David Seymour, and Shane Jones, Associate Ministers of Finance at the printing of the Budget.

ANALYSIS: There are dozens of ways to describe Budget 2026 in words, but really understanding it requires a dive into the data.

Every Government Budget involves not just decisions about billions of dollars in new spending, but also the carrying over or potential cancellation of tens of billions of dollars of spending each minister has inherited.

The charts below showcase the decisions made in this Budget, from $1b in savings from cancelling fees free to billions more to keep the lights on in the health system.

These eight charts that explain both Nicola Willis’ third budget, and the economic context she is making it within.

Catch up on all Budget coverage here: The Post Budget 2026

No rabbits in hat in new spending

Those after some election-year cash for middle earners won’t find it in today’s Budget.

There is billions of new spending but it is largely focused on now-familiar cost pressures in health, which gets an average of $1.5b a year in new everyday or operating expenditure.

Other areas with big boosts for operating spending include the very basics of the Government: $503m for education (offset by $354m in annual savings from the fees free cancellation), and $388m for defence and intelligence.

But this is just operating spending – the Government has also rolled out a serious capital spending package.

It is useful here to get an idea of budgets as a whole – the vast majority of spending always goes to welfare, health, and education. Below is a look at the last five years of Budgets in broad classification for an idea of that.

We can also look at next year specifically – here’s a look at where all the Government’s core spending will go in the year to June 2027.

“Social Development” is the largest single pot of money, but we’ve broken out superannuation from that so you can an idea just how weighted it is towards that one benefit - which costs more than every other benefit put together, at around $26b. It’s forecast to rise to $30b by 2030.

Health is the other massive expense at $33b in the next fiscal year, followed by Education at $21b. One should note here that the Government managed to save $1b across the forecast period (next four years) from cancelling fees-free.

Willis is trumpeting that this new spending will get her Government back to surplus one year earlier than expected at the Half-Yearly Economic and Fiscal Update in December, marked below as “HYEFU” – despite the fuel crisis.

But fiscal management is only part of that picture – the return to surplus is also possible because Treasury broadly predict the economy to bounce back fairly well from the fuel crisis.

Worse in the short term, better in the long

This set of charts from Treasury look more broadly at the economic picture. We’ve compared them to the last set of projections Treasury made in December at HYEFU – before the fuel crisis.

Broadly, Treasury expects the inflation spike to be serious but short, reaching 4% in the year to June.

They also expect unemployment to peak higher – even the $5.8b in “jobs-rich” capital spending won’t seemingly do enough to counteract the impact of both the fuel crisis and the higher interest rates it might provoke.

But Treasury believes the fundamentals, apparent before the fuel crisis, mean the economy will continue to grow – as you can see below.

Yet even with spending coming under control, debt also continues to rise.