The 2026-27 Budget: A Humanist Scorecard

The Federal Budget is, at its core, a statement of national values. Where a government chooses to spend, and where it chooses to cut, reveals what it truly prioritises. The 2026-27 Budget, handed down on 12 May, offers humanists several areas to welcome and several more to challenge. Rather than catalogue every line item, we focus here on the themes that matter most to a humanist vision of Australia.

Housing: A Step Toward Dignity

The centrepiece housing reforms represent the kind of evidence-informed policy humanists have long championed. After decades of mounting evidence that tax settings were inflating property prices beyond reach, the government has acted: negative gearing will be limited to new builds from July 2027, and the capital gains tax discount is being reformed to reflect actual inflation rather than offering a blanket 50 per cent concession. These changes, forecast to support 75,000 additional owner-occupiers over the next decade, signal a welcome shift toward treating housing as a human need rather than purely a wealth-creation vehicle.

The budget also commits $59.4 million for youth homelessness support and $2 billion for enabling infrastructure to unlock new housing developments. These are meaningful steps, though with around 50,000 older Australians still waiting for home care packages and homelessness rising across every demographic, much more remains to be done.

Science and Evidence-Based Policy

CSIRO will receive an additional $387.4 million, with $38 million per year ongoing, a significant boost after years of erosion. The Medical Research Future Fund will see growing disbursements reaching $1 billion annually by 2030-31. For humanists who hold that knowledge and inquiry are the foundations of a good society, these investments matter deeply. They represent a commitment to solving problems through evidence rather than ideology, and exactly the approach we need on challenges from climate change to public health.

Aged Care: A Victory for Dignity

The government reversed its unpopular proposal to charge older Australians co-contributions for basic personal care services such as showering and continence management, committing $1 billion to fully subsidise these supports. This is a genuine victory for human dignity. Charging people for essential care would have undermined the principle that every person, regardless of age or means, deserves to be treated with respect.

The Most Vulnerable Left Behind

The most troubling feature of this budget is what it does not do. The expert Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee has now told three successive governments that payments like JobSeeker are too low to keep people out of poverty. Yet the budget's main cost-of-living measure, a $250 Working Australians Tax Offset, flows exclusively to those in paid work. People on JobSeeker, the Age Pension, the Disability Support Pension, and Austudy receive nothing. No increase to Commonwealth Rent Assistance. No surge funding for food relief. The Australians who are doing it hardest remain invisible in the budget's biggest relief measure.

The NDIS faces $37.8 billion in cuts over five years, by far the largest single savings measure. While the long-term sustainability of the scheme matters, reforms of this magnitude demand transparency and genuine consultation with people with disabilities. Humanists must insist that efficiency never comes at the cost of dignity or safety.

The Debt We Leave Behind

One dimension that deserves more attention is the sheer scale of national debt, which will reach $982 billion by the end of this financial year. A humanist ethic demands that we think intergenerationally. Every dollar of debt is a claim on the future, on the choices available to our children and grandchildren. This does not mean austerity for its own sake; investing in housing, science, and human welfare can be the most responsible use of borrowed money. But it does mean we should scrutinise whether the $63.8 billion in savings are being drawn from the right places, and whether the spending they fund will genuinely build a more capable and compassionate society in the decades ahead.

Environment: A Concerning Retreat

The environment portfolio has absorbed significant cuts: $255 million from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency, $283 million from the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, and no meaningful increase in nature protection. Roughly half of Australia's GDP depends on healthy ecosystems, and yet the budget allocates $500 million to speed up project approvals while offering next to nothing for the ecosystems those projects will affect.

It is worth noting that some proposals for new fossil fuel taxes, such as a 25 per cent levy on gas exports, carry their own risks from a humanist perspective. Building government revenue dependence on fossil fuel extraction could create a perverse incentive to slow the very energy transition we need. The challenge is to fund the transition without entrenching the thing we are transitioning away from, and this budget does not resolve that tension.

What This Means for Humanists

A humanist assessment of any budget starts with a direct question: does this help build a society that is more dignified, more equitable, and more guided by evidence and reason?

This budget gets some things right. Housing reform and science investment reflect the kind of rational, long-term thinking humanists value. The aged care reversal shows that advocacy works. But the persistent neglect of people on income support, the scale of NDIS cuts without adequate consultation, and the erosion of environmental funding reveal a budget that too often chooses fiscal caution over human need, while the growing national debt raises serious questions about what kind of country we are building for the next generation.

As humanists, our role is to hold every government to account, not through partisanship, but through an unwavering commitment to human welfare, reason, and justice. This budget invites that scrutiny, and the people it forgets deserve our voice.