While much of the federal budget conversation will centre around what’s in it for you – and for good reason – what’s not in the budget is equally as important.
And, given it’s a small, pre-election budget, there are quite a few omissions.
Here’s who is missing out on a piece of the pie this time around.
Welfare support
While the surprise of tax cuts sweetened the budget news for many, those on income support payments were overlooked.
In particular were those on jobseeker payments, which remain on levels below the poverty line.
The government’s own Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee released its 2025 report earlier in March recommending the jobseeker rate be increased to 90% of the aged pension. But despite a number of advocacy groups pushing for a boost to the payments, it was nowhere to be seen in Tuesday’s release.
Rental relief
Another area hurting the bottom lines of many Australians is housing – whether they’re renting or buying.
Unlike last year’s budget, this one did not raise the commonwealth rent assistance rates, which helped shave off about 1.3% in rental increases across the country.
Mental health
Peak health bodies pointed to the lack of initiatives in the budget to support mental health.
Dr Elizabeth Moore, the president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, said there had been no meaningful investment in expanding the psychiatry workforce and matching mental health funding to the level of community need.
The executive director of the Australian Association of Psychologists, Tegan Carrison, said the government’s claim the budget contains the largest investment in Medicare since its creation “continues to ignore one of the key aspects of health – mental health”.
Sugary drink tax
The peak medical body, the Australian Medical Association, highlighted the lack of investment in preventive health, adding it was particularly disappointed in the lack of a sugar sweetened beverage tax, despite the recommendations of the parliamentary inquiry into diabetes.
The Public Health Association of Australia said the budget maintains the “decades-long tradition of spending on treatments and hospitals, rather than investing in preventive health measures that stop people getting sick in the first place”.
In the face of commonwealth spending on public hospitals increasing by 12% in one year, chief executive and adjunct professor Terry Slevin said: “The only rational response is to reduce demand by investing in making people healthier, through real commitments in prevention.”
Jobs-ready graduates scheme
Despite being widely canned by the university sector, students, Labor and the Greens since its implementation, the jobs-ready graduates (JRG) scheme will have to wait until the next term of government for any reform.
The scheme, introduced by the Morrison government in 2021, increased fees for some courses, including humanities, to fund fee cuts in other courses as well as 39,000 extra university places.
Universities Australia estimates JRG has reduced university funding by about $800m a year and driven arts degrees to $50,000. Its CEO, Luke Sheehy, said the budget was a “missed opportunity” to address the student funding system.
“JRG has unfairly altered fees for students and reduced funding to universities,” he said. “We want to work with the next federal government as a priority to set new funding rates and it’s imperative that the next federal budget funds this work properly and fully.”
The Innovative Research Universities executive director, Paul Harris, said JRG remained the “elephant in the room” that needed to be addressed. “The primary driver of student debt is the cost of doing a degree and these costs are still rising for Australian students,” he said.
Arts
The arts sector is often overlooked in federal budgets and Labor’s 2025 budget did not reverse that trend.
There was one major announcement – $8.6m to extend the Revive Live program, which supports the continuation of Australia’s live music venues and festivals. The National Association for the Visual Arts was supportive of the package but said future budgets should provide “comprehensive, equitable support for all art forms”.
The Save Our Arts campaign suggested the government could look at increasing local content quotas for multinational streaming services with Australian subscribers as well as new laws to protect Australian creatives from AI.
The environment
The Australian Conservation Foundation calculated that less than one cent out of every dollar allocated went to protecting nature.
The foundation’s CEO, Kelly O’Shanassy, said there was no new funding for threatened species beyond a $3m commitment from existing resources for a captive breeding program for the endangered Maugean skate. “With rampant habitat destruction and the accelerating impacts of climate change, numerous ecosystems are on the brink and people’s livelihoods are at risk, yet investment in nature protection and climate action remains a tiny fraction of commonwealth spending,” O’Shanassy said.
The budget included $250m over five years for a “saving Australia’s bushland” program, promised to help meet a target of protecting 30% of land by 2030. The Biodiversity Council said it was estimated 20 times that amount would be needed to meet the 30% goal. It said estimates suggested $2.3bn a year would be needed to protect the country’s more than 2,000 threatened species from extinction.
Information and privacy
The federal government provided $14m in funding for the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, which is responsible for privacy and freedom of information in the government, in Tuesday’s budget, but the portfolio documents for the agency reveal that while there will be a slight boost in base funding in this current financial year at $40m, that is reduced in the next few years, down to $26m in 2028-29.
The commissioner, Elizabeth Tydd, revealed in Senate estimates in February the organisation had already shed 23% of its workforce, going from 200 staff to 138.
The current headcount is 179, according to the document, and will go down to 176 in the next financial year.
This comes despite increased responsibility for the agency, including overseeing the government’s digital ID – for which the agency received $5.3m in funding – but also the extra roles of investigating the growing number of privacy breaches affecting Australians, and dealing with the workload of reviewing freedom of information decisions.
