Loading the budget editor…
Everything recalculates in your browser as you drag — nothing is sent anywhere until you choose to save. Consequences are modelled estimates, each shown with its assumption and source.
Your bottom line
$2.4BIn the blacksurplus
$2,400,000,000
You haven't changed anything yet — this is the government's own budget.
$780 for every person in WA, this year alone.
What this does to the debt
The WA government already owes $30.2B — roughly $9,816 for every person in WA.
Your budget pays back $2.4B of it, so next year it owes $27.8B. Not many governments manage that.
This is net debt — what's owed after subtracting the money the government holds. The number you see in the news is usually bigger, because that one counts everything borrowed before any of the savings are subtracted. Both are real. They measure different things.
The number above covers the day-to-day running of WA — what comes in against what gets spent on wages, services and payments. It is what these sliders move. It does not include the cost of building things: roads, hospitals, schools.
Careful — the day-to-day books look fine, but once you count the building program WA is still in the red. The building figure stays as published, because nothing on this page changes it. Source: Parliamentary Budget Office National Fiscal Outlook (CC BY 4.0).
Your overall score
54Mixedout of 100
A weighted blend of the nine measures below. Tune the weights to reflect what you value and the score recalculates immediately.
Step 1
Drag a slider to spend more or less on something. You can change each line by up to half, either way. Interest is locked because it follows the debt rather than any decision.
Hospitals, ambulances, mental health services and public health programs.
Schools, TAFE, universities and early childhood learning.
Police, courts, prisons, fire brigades and emergency services like the SES.
Roads, railways, buses, ferries, ports and airports.
Help for people who need it: pensions, disability support, family payments, child protection and homelessness services.
Support for industries and jobs: farming, mining, tourism, energy, and programs that help people find work.
Public housing, water supply, sewerage and street lighting.
The cost of running government itself: parliament, the premier’s or prime minister’s department, collecting taxes, and interest on money the government has borrowed.
The leftovers: everything the budget papers do not put in one of the categories above.
Sport and recreation, parks, libraries, museums, the arts and public broadcasting.
Looking after air, water, parks and wildlife, plus rubbish collection and recycling.
Spending the budget papers do not split into a category. It is shown so the totals add up, not because it is a service anyone can change.
Step 2 — optional
The score treats every measure as equally important. If some matter more to you than others, change them below and the score updates. Skip this and we use an even split.
Nine measures, each with the weight applied to it and a plain-English account of how it was derived.
Higher means the measure counts for more in the overall score. Values are rescaled to add up to 100%.
Step 3
Move a slider in Step 1 to see your result.
Change at least one figure — then this opens up.
Your scenario against the government budget. Pick a view.
| Category | Government budget | Your scenario |
|---|---|---|
| Health | $16,800,000,000 | $16,800,000,000 |
| Education | $9,900,000,000 | $9,900,000,000 |
| Police, courts and emergency services | $5,800,000,000 | $5,800,000,000 |
| Transport | $4,900,000,000 | $4,900,000,000 |
| Social protection | $4,500,000,000 | $4,500,000,000 |
| Jobs and industry | $3,000,000,000 | $3,000,000,000 |
| Housing and community | $2,700,000,000 | $2,700,000,000 |
| Running the government | $2,600,000,000 | $2,600,000,000 |
| Everything else | $2,200,000,000 | $2,200,000,000 |
| Recreation, culture and sport | $1,400,000,000 | $1,400,000,000 |
| Environment | $700,000,000 | $700,000,000 |
| Unallocated | $300,000,000 | $300,000,000 |
These are modelled estimates, not predictions. Each one is calculated by a data rule — a set formula applied to the figures you changed — using the assumption stated with it. Expand a consequence to see that assumption and its source.
No consequences fired yet. Move a slider to see the modelled effects.