The ACT Budget will be a balancing act as we wobble into the post-COVID era

And how to convince the general public that this future is well and truly visible?

It's on the bridge between our uncertain present and the post-COVID future that leaders are having to walk a finely balanced line.

As the ACT government prepares for another COVID-era budget on Tuesday, this balancing act is all part of the government's broader challenge of, for want of a better term, "getting back to normal" after COVID.

Of course, as we all continue to acknowledge, the pandemic is by no means over. Case numbers are still high, hospitals overwhelmed and people are still dying.

But this time last year, Canberra looked very different. We were a week away from locking down - over a single case - for a long three months, with no idea of what lay ahead.

Today, businesses are open, schools are progressing, most of us are back in the office, and we're mostly walking around unmasked.

Thoughts of a post-COVID world don't seem nearly so remote, but budgeting for one will require an even hand.

Going "back to normal" will require significant investment in services and infrastructure.

As we learnt last month from the results of the 2021 Census, Canberra's population has grown faster than expected, and the government is releasing land for 30,000 extra dwellings over the next five years.

Many of these will be apartments, and will be sprinkled throughout existing city suburbs.

But many more will be designed to fill in the gap dubbed the "missing middle" - mid-sized townhouses and larger apartments that cater for the growing population while acknowledging that Canberrans deserve more the stark choice between houses squeezed into tiny blocks, or too-small apartments.

Another large-scale investment announced last week will be a design for a new theatre in the growing city arts precinct - $30 million towards delivering on the government's "commitments for enhancing the cultural offerings in the city".

This announcement represents a significant vote of confidence, not only for a city and its growing population, but also for the region.

Canberra is, for better or worse, the proverbial Big Smoke for many regional towns and centres, and any Big Smoke needs a decent theatre, the kind that will attract big-ticket shows that are worth travelling for.

This assurance that the long-planned theatre is more and more likely to materialise is another reminder that the post-COVID future is closer than we think.

While it's true that the ACT government will likely be working more closely with its federal Labor counterpart, federal assistance is not a given.

Andrew Barr will need to demonstrate that the territory is as self-sufficient as ever when it comes to delivering important infrastructure initiatives.

But it will be, as the Prime Minister himself has said more than once in the past week, a balancing act.

All the COVID measures that have been in place for the past two years have always been temporary, and cannot last forever.

The world as we know it will never be the same as it was before COVID, but we are now at a stage where the government is investing in the future, rather than keeping the city afloat as we navigate the current crisis.

Adequately housing a growing population, and investing in its status as a cultural centre represent a good place to start.