ACT budget: Health, housing and cost-of-living a focus, Andrew Barr says

Chief Minister Andrew Barr said the government was focused on cost-of-living, health and housing in the budget but there was a need to balance these expenses alongside fiscal repair.

"We acknowledge that at this point in time, some Canberra households are doing it really tough due to inflation," he said.

"Now in making these expenditures, we do so within an environment of fiscal repair."

The territory is now forecast to return to a budget surplus by the 2025-26 financial year due to an increase in tax revenue.

But this will not result in the ACT speeding up its tax reform program to completely eliminate stamp duty and replace the lost revenue in rates.

The program, announced in 2012, was expected to take 20 years.

The ACT is expected to receive more than $300 million from commercial and residential stamp duty next year and $757 million from general rates.

"Tax reform is always a 20-year journey, it was never going to be achieved in one single budget and today's budget continues to build on all of the previous budgets I've delivered to cut stamp duty," Mr Barr said.

"You're going to make choices in a budget and this year the focus is on health, housing and cost of living. Tax reform continues but it wasn't the number one priority in this budget."

While there won't be any changes to tax reform, large businesses will face higher payroll taxes with the government to introduce a surcharge.

The surcharge will be applied to businesses with Australia-wide wages above $50 million. There will be an extra 0.25 per cent on ACT wages above the payroll tax threshold and for businesses with Australia-wide wages above $100 million it will be 0.5 per cent above the threshold.

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It is expected to be only paid by large national and multinational businesses. The measure is expected to raise $66 million over the forward estimates.

"We've also made some decisions in this budget to move towards a fairer payroll tax system and asking some of the largest international and national companies to make a further contribution to our community," Mr Barr said.

"Payroll tax is now the single largest revenue source within our own-source revenue stream so it now collects more revenue than rates.

"It certainly is going to be more like dozens. That could get up towards 100."

The key health announcement from the budget is the construction of a new hospital for Canberra's north, which the government has said will cost $1 billion.

The budget papers show there will be nearly $65 million in the next two years on design work for the hospital. The government will also spend $50 million on the transition of Calvary Public Hospital Bruce, which the government will take over next week.

The government is forecast to spend $2.2 billion on health in 2023-24. There will be $92 million spent on housing and community amenities.

The government announced a $345 million package for housing ahead of the budget, which will focus on increasing the number of long-term affordable rentals.

There will be a review of targeted cost-of-living programs in the ACT but the budget has included an expansion of the utilities concession scheme, money for households on the priority public housing waiting list and an increase to the taxi subsidy scheme by 15 per cent.

But most government taxes and fees will increase by 3.75 per cent over the next year, including rates, driver licence fees and car registration fees. Public transport fares will not increase.

"We looked at which measures would make the biggest difference to particular cohorts of Canberrans. A very strict rule of thumb was to look at ensuring increases were below inflation where they did occur and where we could freeze certain charges we have," Mr Barr said.

"But we're also facing rising costs ourselves."

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