A promised grant, contract ceiling or multi-year package should not be added to one month of actual expenses.
Start with the source
The numbers behind this site.
| Data | What we use it for | Original source |
|---|---|---|
| September 2026 $63.194b expenses | Actual monthly expense snapshot by broad function. | Department of Finance ↗ |
| FY 2025–26 $812.117b expenses | Audited annual actuals and official sub-functions in all 17 categories. | Final Budget Outcome, Appendix A ↗ |
| Oct 2025–Sep 2026 $822.061b expenses | Rolling year = FY 2025–26 actuals + July–September 2026 actuals − July–September 2025 actuals. | Sep 2025 Sep 2026 ↗ |
| Whole-term spending / GDP 1972–2026 | Commonwealth cash payments (% of GDP), day-weighted across the financial years each prime minister served. Rudd’s separate terms are combined; Albanese's term is measured through 30 June 2026. Annual ratio is treated as uniform within each partially served year. Treasury notes historical accounting breaks. | Treasury FBO Appendix B, Table B.1 ↗ |
| Category mix by government | Single-year functional spending snapshots only, not term averages. Reporting bases differ over time. | Annual source links and notes ↗ |
| 20 grant-award examples | Approved grant values, not actual payments or verified savings. Multi-year awards shown in full and clearly labelled. | Revive Live 2024–25 recipients ↗ · Revive Live 2025–26 ↗ · Indigenous Languages and Arts ↗ · Carbon outreach ↗ · Energy grants ↗ |
| Foreign assistance Separate DFAT allocations and announcements | Country and regional ODA estimates for 2025–26 plus specific Gaza, Ukraine and Afghanistan announcements. These are not individual grants or necessarily actual paid amounts. | DFAT ODA summary ↗ · Ukraine ↗ · Gaza ↗ |
| Prime minister context | Contemporary economic shocks identified from the National Archives, Treasury and Reserve Bank, with original background sources linked below each blurb. | See individual prime minister source links ↗ |
All Treasury sub-functions are audited for FY 2025–26; for the rolling year and individual month they are only proportional illustrations. Where Treasury reports a function without finer detail, we show the published single line instead of inventing a split.
Removing an expense in the calculator doesn't measure replacement services, legal obligations, taxation effects or broader consequences.
What's considered discretionary?
It's not an official government budget category with one universally accepted value. Our classifications will be explained at program level, with clear distinctions between government obligations, essential services, optional policy choices and the reader's own preferences. The site does not currently publish a verified total for discretionary spending.
Even costs often called wasteful require evidence: large programs may be essential, while small contracts may be questionable. The spending files will document those claims separately.
What the budget builder does — and does not — measure
It compares reported Commonwealth accrual expenses with a reader-designed spending allocation. The change is a gross scenario difference, not a forecast of practical savings. It does not attempt to model tax receipts, delivery changes, legal constraints or economic effects.
Official spending functions include existing interest obligations and payments to states that cannot necessarily be eliminated through a budget preference alone.
Got a better source?
Future releases can include a record-based submission and correction system. The guiding rule is simple: show the paperwork.