Federal budget expectations

Q. The Federal Budget will be announced on Tuesday 6th October.

In general, do you expect the Federal Budget will be good or bad for the following?

• Budget expectations are in line with March 2019, showing people are not expecting drastically different announcements this week.
• Over half of people think big business (53%), and those who are well-off (51%) to benefit from the budget, while the losers are expected to be those on a lower income (40% expect these to have a bad/very bad budget), older Australians (34%) and younger Australians (33%).
• More people expect the budget announcement to be bad for them than good. A quarter of people think the budget will benefit them personally (25% think the budget will be good/very good), which is less than those expecting it to be bad/very bad for them (31%).

By voting preference

• Labor and Greens voters are more likely than Coalition voters to expect a favourable budget for Big businesses (62% and 68% of Labor and Greens voters respectively, to 47% of Coalition) and for those well-off (62% and 67% to 41%.
• For all other groups, Coalition voters are more likely to expect a good budget than Labor or Greens.
• 32% of Coalition voters think they will have a good budget. This was higher than Labor (22%), Greens (27%) or those voting for another independent/minor party (18%).