Heading into next year's election with a surprise deficit, ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr is trying to change the narrative.
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Handing down his eighth budget on Tuesday, the Treasurer came out swinging against the Commonwealth, trying to reframe his controversial program of tax reform and elimination of "bad taxes" as a way of bracing the territory against an indifferent federal government and chilly economic headwinds.
He used his address to media to speak at length about the "significant" gulf in Commonwealth infrastructure funding the ACT government had to step in and help fill, a theme he's been hammering home since Labor's federal election loss.
"Only Western Australia, with its infamous debate around its share of the GST, and NSW, which is broadly equivalent to the ACT, receive such a small level of Commonwealth contribution to our total state and territory budgets," he said.
He said the gap amounted to $125 per capita, or $300 million across the city, and trumpeted his infrastructure spend in this budget as "the single largest ... program in the city's history".
Portraying the federal Coalition government as shortchanging Canberrans works on two fronts for Mr Barr.
It splatters mud on the Canberra Liberals by association, while rationalising the year-on-year rates and land tax rises residents have borne since 2012.
As to whether Canberrans will accept this remains to be seen.
The majority of home owners (and down the line, renters) will have to absorb increases of between $100 and $200 in rates rises this year at a time when wage growth is largely flat and cost of living pressures are high.
And while the Quinlan review that laid out the road map for the territory's tax reform recommended abolishing land tax, the charge will add $151 million to the treasury's coffers this year.
Meanwhile the big spend promised on infrastructure in the budget paper looks a little lean in print.
As one journalist pointed out in lock-up, while there was a tram on the cover of the budget papers, there wasn't much for the second stage of the project contained within them.
Mr Barr says items like SPIRE are provided for, and big ticket items of budget papers past, like the city stadium and swimming pool, would make an appearance in the 10-year forward infrastructure plan to be released later in the year.
But on top of this, his election year surplus has gone up in smoke and Labor will be campaigning off the back of two deficits.
Mr Barr says the $67 million deficit now forecast for 2020-21 (it was expected to be $26 million last budget) is "within the realms of a balanced budget" and that Canberrans would not cop a delay in schools and health infrastructure while waiting for a "modest deficit to tick over into a surplus".
While prepared to bear a fair bit of political pain to bring his tax reform to fruition, Mr Barr maintained his economic record was strong, with the lowest unemployment rate in the country and nation-leading growth as proof. Whether that will be enough for voters is another matter.
