Key Points

• The Australian Labor Party's (Labor) 63 election commitments would improve the underlying cash and fiscal balances over the 2025‑26 Budget forward estimates, relative to the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook (PEFO) baseline, but lead to a decrease in the headline cash balance. Over the medium term (2025‑26 to 2035‑36) all balances would improve compared to PEFO.
• Labor's platform would result in an improvement in the underlying cash balance of $1.0 billion over the forward estimates and $4.4 billion over the medium term, relative to PEFO.
• This would result in an underlying cash deficit of $37.0 billion at the end of the forward estimates and total underlying cash deficits of $150.7 billion and $322.6 billion over the forward estimates and medium-term periods respectively.
• This impact is driven by a reduction in payments, partly offset by slightly lower receipts. The reduction in payments is largely from general public services.
• While Labor’s platform is estimated to result in higher government gross debt across most of the period, it is approximately $1.9 billion lower at the end of the medium-term period relative to PEFO at $1.5 trillion (31.9% of gross domestic product (GDP)). Public debt interest payments are not estimated to be materially different from the PEFO baseline.
• The PBO's estimates of the budget impact of Labor's commitments over the forward estimates are not materially different (less than 0.1% of GDP) from those published by Labor prior to the election.