New South Wales Treasurer Daniel Mookhey said the state has revised down its forward estimates for stamp duty and land tax earnings by $8bn, a blow that will hang over next month’s budget and sharpen pressure on Chris Minns’ government to explain how it will fill the gap. Mookhey delivered the warning in a keynote speech to the McKell Institute on Tuesday, just weeks before the state hands down its books.
The downgrade lands at a delicate moment for Minns, whose government is already facing a state budget built around slower revenue growth and higher demands on spending. Mookhey did not try to soften the figure. He put the shortfall at $8bn and framed it as a major revision to the government’s outlook as it prepares for the budget next month.
On the federal side, Tim Wilson used a speech at the National Press Club in Canberra on Tuesday to hammer last week’s federal budget as an “earthquake” that would need a “substantial clean-up job.” Wilson said, “We need courage to fight for a new dawn – a dawn that restores living standards and protects our way of life,” and added that the country needed “an economy that favours the Australian people, rather than Labor, big union and big superfund oligarchs.” He also said Australia did not need “a government that is empowered to kick the lemonade stands of the next generation.”
Wilson’s attack comes after the federal budget was released last week, and it reflects a broader Liberal effort to frame Labor’s spending and tax settings as an economic drag. His language was unusually sharp even by the standards of budget-day politics, with the “earthquake” line suggesting not just disagreement with the numbers but a view that the plan will need to be dismantled and rebuilt.
At the same time, Health Minister Mark Butler said the diphtheria outbreak unfolding across the Northern Territory and beyond is unlike anything Australia has seen in the 35 years it has tracked the disease. Butler said about 60% of the 226 diphtheria cases are in the Northern Territory, and about a quarter of all cases are ending up in hospital. He said the federal government would finalise a package on Tuesday to get more vaccines into the area and surge the workforce.
“It is by far the biggest outbreak we’ve had for many, many decades,” Butler said. He said the outbreak “is unlike anything we’ve seen in that period of time,” and warned that the “concerning thing” is the rise in respiratory cases of diphtheria. Butler said, “We need boosters every five years or so,” and added, “So that’s really going to be the centrepiece of the response.”
The outbreak has begun in the Northern Territory and spread across borders, adding urgency to a response that has already been slowed by staffing problems. Guardian Australia reported on Tuesday that a lack of nurses, doctors and other clinical staff had held back vaccine rollouts, leaving communities exposed even as case numbers climbed. Butler’s promise to finalise a package with more vaccines and a surge in workforce is meant to address that bottleneck directly.
What ties the three threads together is pressure: pressure on Minns to manage a bigger-than-expected revenue hole, pressure on the federal government from Wilson’s budget assault, and pressure on health authorities to get doses into arms before the diphtheria outbreak spreads further. By Tuesday evening, the political fight over money and the public health scramble over vaccines had both moved from warning to action.
