Category Archives: Australian budget 2025

Australia to redirect $100m in foreign aid to Indo-Pacific region after Trump pulls funding

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Foreign affairs minister Penny Wong says ‘hard strategic decisions’ need to be made

Australia will redirect more than $100m in foreign aid toward the Indo-Pacific region to urgently plug funding gaps after Donald Trump announced the US would cancel around $US54bn worth in overseas development assistance programs.

The official development assistance budget for 2025-26 will reach $5.1bn, an increase of $135.9m from 2024-25, but $119m will be reprioritised to support economic, health, humanitarian and climate responses in the neighbouring regions.

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Changes in Help to Buy housing scheme will make ‘most first home buyers’ eligible, Labor says

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Minister announces increase in both income and property price caps as part of 2025 budget

Labor will increase the income and price caps for its signature Help to Buy scheme as part of next week’s budget, which it has promised will deliver cost-of-living relief.

Under the shared equity scheme, the commonwealth provides first home buyers with 30% of the purchase price of an existing home, or 40% for a new home.

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PBS-listed medicine to cost no more than $25 a script if Labor re-elected

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Election pledge part of Albanese’s focus on cheaper medicines as a cost-of-living measure that will also help reduce inflation

A re-elected Labor government would reduce the price of PBS-listed medicines to no more than $25 a script, in a major new election pledge to be included in next week’s budget that builds on Anthony Albanese’s focus on cheaper medicines as a cost-of-living measure.

With the formal election campaign to start within weeks, where Labor will focus strongly on health as a key issue, Albanese will on Thursday deliver a major speech promising that four out of five medications on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme would become cheaper under the plan which would cost the government $689m.

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