FOLLOWING the Commonwealth Government’s economic statement, ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr says more than $140 million has been wiped off the ACT’s share of the GST pool. 

This morning (July 23), Treasurer Josh Frydenberg announced massive budget deficits of $85.5 billion for the 2019-2020 financial year with $184.5 billion projected for 2020/2021.

The total GST pool lost for the nation for the 2020/21 financial year is about $7 billion.

Mr Barr says the ACT’s share of the total GST pool is just below 2 per cent.

“You can quickly do the math and work out that more than $140 million will be wiped off our share of GST,” he says.

“Our single largest revenue source has taken quite the cut and that is expected to remain a challenging situation for every state and territory for the next few years.”

Mr Barr says the Commonwealth’s anticipation of its total debt to gross state products, which is predicted to reach about 45 per cent, is an indication of the seriousness of the situation. 

“To put that into context the ACT’s debt to our gross state products are sitting at about 7 per cent now,” he says. 

Mr Barr’s prediction that the ACT will see a larger debt in the 2020/21 financial year, comes a few months after “CityNews” columnist and former ACT Labor leader Jon Stanhope exposed a $3 billion black hole in the government’s net debt.

The 2020/21 ACT Budget announcement has been postponed until later in the financial year, however, Mr Stanhope, on April 1 wrote: “The ACT 2019/20 budget review accordingly advises that by June net debt will be $3.076 billion and will increase to $4.030 billion by June 2022 at which time it will be equivalent to 63 per cent of the ACT’s annual operating revenue.”

Mr Barr will give an update on the fiscal situation in four weeks time.

Exposed: Barr’s $3 billion budget black hole