FOCUp

Follow the Money

Where the money actually goes, one step at a time

A budget total tells you almost nothing. This follows it down: from a government, to the department that gets it, to the program it funds, to the projects and the signed contracts at the end of the line. Every figure is the one an official publication printed, with a link to that publication and the day it was read.

  1. Level 1

    Government

    What the nine budgets spend in total.

  2. Level 2

    Department

    The entities the budget hands it to.

  3. Level 3

    Program

    What each entity is funded to do.

  4. Level 4

    Project

    The named things being built.

  5. Level 5

    Contract

    Who was actually paid, and for what.

Pick a government

Every card shows the same four levels, so a blank one is a fact about what that treasury publishes rather than a gap in the page. Open a government to see, level by level, which document was looked for and what was in it.

What these numbers are not

  • Not estimates. Every figure is copied from a budget paper or a tender register. FOCUp does not model, apportion or fill gaps, and a record whose source is unclear is left out rather than guessed at.
  • Not a budget bottom line. What a government's entities are given and what its budget says it spends are two different published figures, and they do not match — in either direction. Each government's page prints both and the difference between them. The headline totals are on the budget pages, and they remain the source of truth for what a government spends.
  • Not spending, in the case of contracts. A contract notice is the value of an agreement over its whole term, not money paid out in a year, so contracts are never added to budget figures.
  • Not comparable between governments, at least not exactly. Each register is kept on its own terms: New South Wales publishes contract values including GST, Tasmania publishes them excluding it, most say nothing either way, and the periods they cover differ too. Every figure here is the one its register printed, and the citation on each row says what it is. Adjusting them to match would produce a tidier table of numbers no government published.