Victorian state budget LIVE: Treasurer Jaclyn Symes announces Allan government spending for 2026/27

A growing population that is sicker than ever before is placing unprecedented pressure on the state’s strained health system. This budget paints a grim picture of emergency care: just 65 per cent of code one “lights and sirens” ambulance call-outs are expected to be responded to within 15 minutes this financial year, compared with a statewide target of 85 per cent.

Victorians are also waiting too long to be offloaded from ambulances, and hospitals are failing to meet targets to provide timely emergency department care. To ease these pressures, the budget pumps a record $32.3 billion into Victoria’s health system, with $1.6 billion of additional funding for hospitals and more than $50 million to allow paramedics to deliver faster care.

There’s also $284 million to open and expand health services, such as a new emergency department at Werribee Mercy Hospital and additional services at community hospitals in Cranbourne and Craigieburn.

For many years, Victorians have faced lengthy, stressful delays to access colonoscopies in the public system. The budget includes $27 million to fund new equipment and endoscopy access teams to speed up detection and treatment. More than $109 million will be spent over four years to improve access to planned surgery and specialist care for sick children.

Falling property prices will make a significant dent in the budget’s revenue, reversing previous forecasts of continued growth in Melbourne’s housing market.

Treasurer Jaclyn Symes said treasury had cut its property taxation expectations by almost $900 million for the next financial year. “That is a result of interest rate changes and volatility that everyone was expecting,” she said.

Banks and economists are now expecting Melbourne house prices to decline in 2026 on the back of rising interest rates and the global energy shock linked to the Middle East conflict.

Stamp duty revenue is forecast to decrease in 2026-27, reflecting what the budget papers call a “cyclical decline in the property market”.

Victoria is forecasting a slashed surplus, rising debt and steeper interest bills, as Labor commits to an election-year overhaul of the state’s sentencing laws.

Tuesday’s state budget, which will also extend stamp duty discounts, will forecast a surplus for the next financial year of $1 billion – $900 million less than predicted in December.

Figures provided to The Age by the government forecast Victoria will record its first surplus since the pandemic, at more than $700 million for 2025-26. The figure is predicted to grow to $1 billion in 2026-27.

The state did not provide figures for the remaining budget years but said surpluses would average $1.7 billion over the forward estimates out to 2030.

Read the full story here.

As Premier Jacinta Allan prepares for what’s looming as Labor’s toughest state poll to win since taking office in 2014, the government has made a series of pre-budget announcements to grab our attention.

The highest-profile of all has been free public transport, which was first announced in April, then extended into May. This freebie, followed by half-price fares to the end of 2026, will cost Victorians almost half a billion dollars.

Transport also figures in another pre-election sweetener: a rebate on car registration fees. Motorists will have two months from June 1 to claim a $186 rebate on their registration fee paid in the 2025-26 financial year. That promise, sold by the premier as a cost-of-living budget measure, will cost Victorians $750 million.

And schools will see around $300 million for building upgrade works, with hundreds of millions more over the next four years to build and expand schools in rapidly growing suburban areas like Melton, Casey and Wyndham.

Stay tuned to this live blog for more as the details of this afternoon’s budget as they filter in.

Welcome to The Age’s 2026 state budget blog, where Treasurer Jaclyn Symes will hand down her second budget this afternoon – and her first in an election year for Victoria.

While dozens of reporters are in the budget lock-up on Collins Street, reading the budget papers and quizzing both the treasurer and bureaucrats on hand about the details of what’s contained in its pages, we know – thanks to reporting this morning by our state politics reporters Kieran Rooney and Daniella White – that the budget will forecast a surplus for the next financial year of $1 billion – a figure $900 million less than the government predicted in December.

While we won’t know all the details of this year’s budget until the treasurer stands up in the state parliament about 1.30pm, plenty has already been dripped out to the media in the weeks leading up to today.