The Youth Coalition has published its response to the ACT Budget 2026-27. It sets out what the Budget means for young Canberrans and for the services that work with them.
We welcome the substantial community sector investment the ACT Government has made in this Budget. The $23.7 million permanent funding uplift to community sector organisations over four years begins to address a structural inequality in the way community organisations have been funded, and because it is permanent rather than time-limited, organisations can plan against it. We also welcome the Government’s decision to bring the Budget forward earlier in the year, which allowed services to give their workforce greater certainty about the continuation of program and service funding.
A full summary of new funding allocations that directly affect young people and their families is provided at the end of our budget response.
No overarching Youth Strategy
We remain concerned that the ACT has no overarching Youth Strategy. Addressing the needs of young Canberrans sits across many portfolios and directorates. There continues to be no investment in developing a whole of government framework that identifies and prioritises their needs and provides indicators to assess how young people’s needs are being met.
We urge the ACT Government to fund the co-design of a Youth Strategy with both young people and youth organisations, supporting a whole-of-government and community approach to youth wellbeing. On 7 May the Legislative Assembly agreed, without amendment and without dissent, a motion moved by Laura Nuttall MLA calling on the ACT Government to develop and release a youth homelessness strategy, co-designed with young people with lived experience of homelessness and with the sector, and to report back to the Assembly on progress by 2 December 2026. The motion names the Youth Coalition’s sector mapping work. That work received no direct funding in this Budget, and it remains a priority. A youth homelessness strategy addresses one part of a young person’s life, and it should not stand in place of a broader Youth Strategy.
Investment across many portfolios
That framework matters because the Budget invests in young people in so many places at once. We welcome $47.8 million over four years for domestic, family and sexual violence services, part of it ongoing rather than time-limited, including support that responds to young people as victim-survivors in their own right. We welcome continued investment in housing and homelessness, including new public housing and support for frontline services, and the cost of living measures that reach young people and their families: additional funding for the Future of Education Equity Fund, the Housing Crisis Support Fund, a new Crisis Support Payment, and a reduced cap on public transport fares for tertiary students. We welcome $9.3 million for the Future of Education: One Public Education System reform, and $600,000 over two years for a feasibility study into expanding flexible education and specialist schools, while noting that the Budget provides no additional support for the immediate staffing and infrastructure pressures at Muliyan, which is oversubscribed. Each of these investments is worth having on its own.
Gambling harm
The Budget’s treatment of gambling harm shows the same gap. It contains no new investment in preventing harm from gambling products. The Gambling Harm Prevention and Mitigation Fund provides about $2 million a year and is raised principally from poker machine licensees, against $89 million in gambling tax collected in 2026-27. Tax on online wagering is forecast to rise from $25.3 million in 2026-27 to $30.6 million by 2029-30, and online wagering pays no levy toward prevention. Our view is that what government invests in prevention does not reflect the scale of either the revenue gambling generates or the harm it causes. We welcome the development of a new gambling harm strategy, and we are concerned that it is to be delivered within existing resources, with no funding identified for putting it into practice.
We urge the ACT Government to commit dedicated funding to gambling harm prevention that reflects the scale of the harm, including harm from online gambling, and to resource the new strategy for implementation.
The response makes 13 recommendations in all, covering youth engagement, mental health, the Therapeutic Support Panel, education, flexible education and gambling.
