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

Not loaded yet

These governments publish their budgets, but not yet in a form FOCUp has read end to end. They are listed as empty rather than filled with estimates, because an estimate here would be indistinguishable from the real thing.

  • NSW budget papers

    The NSW budget open-data release is whole-of-government aggregates only — no cluster or agency breakdown. The contract register at tenders.nsw.gov.au refuses automated requests, and the capital projects map is an ArcGIS dashboard rather than a published dataset.

  • South Australia budget papers

    The only jurisdiction whose contract register is behind a login: tenders.sa.gov.au sends its contract search to a sign-in page, and FOCUp does not create accounts. Treasury has eight datasets on data.sa.gov.au and its budget releases stop at 2017-18, as a PDF.

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.