GSTWhere the numbers come from
Every figure on this site comes from an official government publication. Nothing is bought, leaked or made up. A script checks the federal data every day and rebuilds the site when something changes; state and territory figures are entered by hand from their Budget papers, because most are published only as PDFs. Projections are made from these figures by the rules on the assumptions page.
When the data was built
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Sources
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Licences, publisher by publisher
The list above covers the Tracker and MP expenses data. Every other page lists its own sources at the bottom, each with its licence. Here is every publisher in one place.
| Publisher and source | Licence | Used on | Changes we make |
|---|---|---|---|
| Department of Finance: Monthly Financial Statements (via data.gov.au) | CC BY 3.0 AU | Tracker, Interest | Year-to-date figures copied; we work out monthly amounts, per-person figures and projections. |
| Department of Finance: website, Portfolio Budget Statements, Audit of Employment, AusTender procurement statistics | CC BY 4.0 | Staff, Public service | Figures copied; we add and compare them. |
| Department of Finance: staffing tables tabled at Senate Estimates (hosted on aph.gov.au) | CC BY 4.0 (Finance's licence; the copy is hosted by Parliament, and we take position counts only) | Staff | Counts copied and added up by office and party; the tables aren't reproduced. |
| Department of Finance: AusTender contract notices (OCDS API) | CC BY 3.0 AU | Contracts | Contract notices added up and ranked; we don't change them. |
| The Treasury: Budget papers, MYEFO, Final Budget Outcome | CC BY 4.0 (© Commonwealth of Australia) | Tracker, Interest, Public service | Figures copied; spread across the year and projected between releases. |
| Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority: expenditure CSVs (via data.gov.au) | CC BY 3.0 AU | MP expenses | Claims added up per person, party and chamber, and ranked; IPEA's descriptions unedited. |
| Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority: explanatory notes (ipea.gov.au) | CC BY 4.0 | MP expenses | Used to describe each category. |
| Australian Electoral Commission: Transparency Register | CC BY 4.0 (© Commonwealth of Australia) | Donations | Returns added up and ranked; transfers between a party's own branches removed. Not endorsed by the AEC. |
| Attorney-General's Department: Register of Lobbyists | CC BY 4.0 (© Commonwealth of Australia) | Lobbyists | Entries counted and sorted; we don't change them. |
| Australian Public Service Commission: APS Employment Data and Statistical Bulletin (via data.gov.au) | CC BY 3.0 AU | Public service | Headcounts copied; shares and changes worked out by GST. Not endorsed by the APSC. |
| Australian Bureau of Statistics: population, public sector employment | CC BY 4.0 | Every per-person figure, Public service | Used to work out per-person and per-1,000 figures. |
| Remuneration Tribunal: determinations and reports | CC BY 3.0 AU | Staff | Pay rates copied. Not endorsed by the Tribunal. |
| Parliament of Australia: Parliamentary Handbook API, Parliamentary Library paper | Parliament of Australia copyright, believed CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 AU (not yet confirmed). We take only facts: who is in the current Parliament, and position counts | MP expenses, Staff | Facts only; no text or tables reproduced. |
| NSW Treasury; Victorian Department of Treasury and Finance: Budget papers and financial reports | CC BY 4.0 (© the State) | Tracker | Figures copied by hand; spread across the year and projected between releases. |
| Queensland, WA, SA, Tasmania, ACT and NT treasuries: Budget papers and financial reports | Not yet confirmed: we're reading each document's imprint page. Most Australian treasuries use CC BY 4.0 | Tracker | Figures copied by hand; spread across the year and projected between releases. |
Release calendar
The counters only move onto new real figures when these come out.
| Release | Who | When | What changes here |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly Financial Statements | Department of Finance | About 4 weeks after each month ends, usually a Friday. July and August come out together in early October. No June statement. | Federal spending actual, net debt, 17-area breakdown, tax and GST collected. |
| Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) | Treasury and Finance | December | Federal full-year estimate and forward years. |
| Budget | Treasury and Finance | Usually May (March in some years) | Federal estimate for the new year and three forward years. |
| Final Budget Outcome | Treasury and Finance | Late September | Federal final total for the year just finished. |
| State and territory Budgets | Each state and territory treasury | Mostly May to June | State estimates for the new year and forward years. |
| State mid-year reviews | Each state and territory treasury | Mostly November to February | Revised state estimates. |
| State annual / final outcome reports | Each state and territory treasury | Mostly September to November | State final totals for the year just finished. |
| Quarterly / half-yearly reports | Some states and territories | Varies | In-year actuals, where published. |
| National, state and territory population | Australian Bureau of Statistics | Quarterly | Per-person figures (currently 31 March 2026, released 17 September 2026). |
Next expected, government by government
| Government | In-year reports | Next releases |
|---|---|---|
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Download everything
Free to use. All money is in Australian dollars as plain numbers; dates are YYYY-MM-DD; financial years look like 2026-27. CSV files are long format with the columns jurisdiction, series, period_end, value_aud, kind, published, source_url.
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Reuse and credit
Our work (the projections, uncertainty ranges, write-ups, charts and site design) is © 2026 NB E-Commerce and free to reuse under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). You can share, quote, chart or republish it, including commercially, as long as you credit it like this, with a link:
Source: GST, the Government Spend Tracker, by NB E-Commerce (gst.nbecommerce.com.au)
Please also say when you looked: the counters move every second and our projections change when new figures are released.
The government figures underneath belong to their publishers: the Department of Finance, the Treasury, the Australian Electoral Commission, the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority, the Attorney-General's Department, the Australian Public Service Commission, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the Remuneration Tribunal, and each state and territory treasury (© Commonwealth of Australia, or © the State or Territory). They are used under the Creative Commons Attribution licence each publisher names (CC BY 3.0 AU or CC BY 4.0), linked against each source above. We have changed them: we add, group, rank and per-person them, and between releases we project them. The originals are at the links. None of these publishers endorses this site, our projections or how we present their data.
Check our numbers yourself
- Open the federal Monthly Financial Statements on data.gov.au (link in the sources above) and download the "Aggregates" workbook.
- Find the sheet for the financial year (e.g.
2026-27) and thePaymentsrow. The latest column is the year-to-date cash payments in $ billions. It should match the "last published actual" under the federal counter. - Open the Budget papers (Budget Paper No. 1, Statement 3, or the state equivalent) and find total payments or total expenses for the year. That's the full-year figure the counter ticks towards.
- Compare with the JSON or CSV above: every figure carries a
source_idorsource_urlpointing back to where it came from. - Anything between those figures is our projection. Every rule and formula is set out in plain English on the assumptions page, so you can rebuild the numbers yourself.
Spotted a mismatch? Tell us and it gets fixed.
Corrections
Every confirmed error is fixed and listed here, with the date, what was wrong and what changed.
No corrections so far.