Forget about the NSW government’s claims about some sort of GST “hole“. It is swimming in revenue from Sydney’s turbocharged property market — and NSW Labor has used it to plunge into the red.
It’s an improbable achievement. The Perrottet government’s last budget in 2022 forecast a slow return to surplus, albeit a modest one, by 2024-25. The Minns government has engineered a whopping $9.7 billion deficit this year and $3.6 billion next — with the budget remaining in deficit across the forward estimates.
That’s not due to any financial trickery in the Coalition’s last budget in 2022: Premier Chris Minns and Treasurer Daniel Mookhey have around $3 billion in extra revenue this year and $8 billion next compared to 2022’s forecasts.
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