NSW budget 2025 winners and losers

The Guardian

3 hours ago

Property developers are the big winners in the New South Wales government's 2025 budget, while injured workers' insurance is in the spotlight as Labor fights to bring down spending.
The premier, Chris Minns, and the treasurer, Daniel Mookhey, have found room for a handful of big-spending items but are leaving much of the state's cost-of-living support to expire.
Here are the winners and losers from Tuesday's state budget.
Housing developers could soon have the government as a guarantor, opt to build their own infrastructure or get permanent tax breaks on build-to-rent projects.
Developers are the big winners from Labor's third budget and the beneficiaries of the government's new measures to address the housing crisis.
The government will put up $1bn to buy homes in case developers can't get their sales over the line. Smaller developers had been crying out for such a system to guarantee pre-sales so they could start building projects without waiting to line up all the home buyers.
About 5,000 homes are expected to be built over the next five years with the help of the guarantee. Technically, the scheme is expected to cost the government nothing at all, unless developers can't find real customers to move in – in which case the state buys the homes.
The government is also allowing developers in NSW to choose to build infrastructure such as roads and parks themselves, instead of paying a levy of $12,000 per lot, also meant to speed up the construction of new housing.
Those working on build-to-rent developments will also enjoy a permanent tax break, with Labor making their 50% land tax discount permanent, when it was initially set to expire in 2039.
New schools, preschools and school buses are on the way for outer Sydney and regional NSW, while today's students will benefit from improved Tafe facilities.
Primary schools and new public preschools will be built in Emerald Hills, Grantham Farm and West Dapto, while a new high school will be built in Wilton. The four schools are expected to accommodate 2,500 students, while another nine schools will get major upgrades.
Thirteen comprehensive public schools will get a share of $50m for new libraries, laboratories and art and design workshop, targeted at gifted students. Another $2m will go to school careers fairs and work experience to encourage teenagers into trades.
Sydney's outer suburbs and some coastal regions will also see more regular school bus services, with the government committing an extra $150m to add to timetables including $26m to buy new buses.
People looking to work in construction will have a shot at snagging one of the 23,000 extra fee-free apprenticeships and traineeships the government will fund at a cost of $40.2m over two years.
In a bid to boost housing supply and ease shortages of plumbers, carpenters and electricians, the government will also encourage 4,800 workers into residential construction over next two years by formalising qualifications for migrants and other workers with unrecognised skills and helping workers specialise into trades.
Those workforce measures make up part of $300m of new spending on TAFEs for this year, along with money to repairing campuses, converting teachers from casual to permanent and moving Bankstown TAFE so it can be replaced with a new hospital – the cost of which has blown out by a further $700m.
The 17,000 children living in foster care in NSW are the focus of $1bn in new spending on out-of-home care services.
Foster carers will see their tax-free allowance rise by a fifth, which would see the carer of a typical 14-year-old rise paid $1,056 per fortnight, up from $880. Extra money will be invested in the system including $191.5m to recruited more than 200 new caseworkers.
The measures aim to lift the decline in the number of carer households after it fell to just 12,500, leaving non-government organisations responsible for a rising share of children children in out of home care in NSW.
Visitors to Western Sydney's airport will find it easier to get around the yet-to-be opened aerotropolis with new funding to build roads and install street signs.
The project already has $2.55bn allocated for the next four years but will now cost nearly $150m more, including $30m to put over 1000 new green directional signs across Sydney pointing motorists to the airport precinct.
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Another $50m will be spent on road upgrades, nearly $40m to plan new road connections and nearly $30m for an incident management to handle accidents and traffic delays.
A new police boat, to be called the Nemesis, will be sent to sea at a cost of $46.3m allowing NSW police to conduct extended offshore operations.
Law enforcement will also get an extra $6m to spend on communications and analysis equipment to as they investigate and disrupt crime. Police last year received one of the biggest pay rises granted in the NSW public sector.
Cost-of-living relief is fading from the state budget as Labor's signature road toll cap expires. No new income support measures were announced and the toll relief measure, which saw the government reimburse motorists for their weekly toll costs above $60, will cease at the end of 2025.
Minns decried Sydney's costly 'tollmania' before he was elected and committed $15.4m in 2025 to a new NSW Motorways body but promised reforms are yet to be announced.
The previous year's budget's flagship cost-of-living measure, encouraging more doctors to bulk bill by offering lower payroll tax, remains in place but with no additions.
Ahead of delivering 2025's budget, the government celebrated that NSW had the second-lowest expenditure and debt as a share of state economic activity in the country.
NSW household budgets have been been stretched further than other states amid soaring living costs. The state has the second-weakest household spending per person of any state, after declining since late 2022, Commonwealth Bank has found, resulting in sluggish growth in jobs and retail sales.
The government remains focused on cutting workers' compensation spending as it pushes to turn the budget to surplus.
Insurance expenses have blown out by nearly $900m since the end of 2024 and is expected to rise further when the schemes are revalued, which the treasurer attributes mostly to workers' compensation.
After Labor's proposed cuts to the compensation scheme were delayed by the state's parliament, the government is identifying the scheme as the leading pressure on government coffers – ahead of natural disasters, even though expenditure on natural disasters has increased more than 1,000% in the six years since the 2019-20 bushfires compared to the six years prior.
The long-promised 'great koala national park' has received no additional funding despite being a centrepiece of the state government's environment policy. Mookhey told Guardian Australia the government was making progress, after putting $80m aside in the last budget for planning the first stage and was developing a forest industry action plan.
Conservation groups calls to have an entire proposed 176,000-hectare site assessed and included as part of the park in northern NSW to protect it from logging have fallen on deaf ears.
Since Labor's 2023 election victory, more than 10,000 football fields of forests have been cut down in the footprint of the promised park, according to a coalition of groups campaigning for urgent action.