NSW Labor has a secret weapon to fight off One Nation

June 18, 2026 — 5:00am

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If NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey had given any thought to a big, brazen pre-election budget splurge next week, the sight of his federal counterparts still trapped in the backlash to their capital gains tax changes would probably have given him more than a moment of pause.

Not that Mookhey – or the Minns government generally – was ever likely to have taken that path. Let me give you a world exclusive: next week’s budget, like the three Mookhey has delivered before it, will not be a barn burner. If Chris Minns, a Bulldogs fan, was ever to follow Lachlan Galvin and get an aphorism tattooed on his bicep, it would say “no surprises”.

On balance, it’s probably a good thing. As much as we might all want a new metro to our doorstep, big new infrastructure spending in the current context of high inflation would carry significant budget risks.

Here’s a comparator, not with the feds, but Victoria. My colleagues at The Age noted after Victoria’s budget in May that their state government expects to be paying $7.85 billion servicing interest on debt over the next year. That’s not totally unexpected, given the amount of debt all Australian states are carrying post-COVID, and the inflation environment. The most recent half-yearly budget update in December forecast NSW would pay slightly more in 2026-27: about $8.1 billion.

However, while forecasts may have changed........

© The Sydney Morning Herald