Every Commonwealth portfolio. Every agency. Every dollar — and now every staff classification too — sourced directly from Parliament's own budget papers and the APSC, presented without the jargon. State and territory data included where available.
Budget Papers is an independent, non-government tool for exploring how Australian governments at all levels allocate public money. Commonwealth data is sourced directly from Budget Paper No. 4 (Agency Resourcing), tabled in Parliament each May. State and territory data is drawn from each jurisdiction's own published budget papers.
Use the Budget Expenditure explorer to browse Commonwealth portfolios and agencies — see departmental vs administered spending, compare across years, drill into individual entities, and inspect each agency's staffing alongside its dollar figure. Switch between jurisdictions to compare Commonwealth, NSW, Victoria, Queensland, and other states. The Organisational Chart view maps the full hierarchy of Commonwealth agencies within their portfolios, with workforce composition shown on each card.
Commonwealth budget figures cover 2024–25 (historical), 2025–26 (Estimated Actual), and 2026–27 (Budget Estimate), sourced from Budget Paper No. 4. State and territory data is included for 2024–25 where available — this coverage is still growing and is more limited than the Commonwealth dataset. All figures are in Australian dollars.
Each Commonwealth agency now shows three workforce signals alongside its budget. Average Staffing Level (ASL) — the full-time-equivalent headcount averaged over the financial year — comes from BP4 Staffing Estimates, covering 2023–24 through 2026–27. Classification splits (APS 1–6 / Executive Level / Senior Executive Service) come from the APSC Employment Data release, as point-in-time snapshots at 31 December 2024 and 2025. Contractor–to–APS conversions are reported per portfolio in BP4 Table 2.1, cumulative since the October 2022 Budget. Non-APS bodies (ABC, SBS, Reserve Bank, Australia Post, etc.) sit outside the APSC dataset by design and link to their annual reports instead. The Commonwealth’s aggregate workforce history (2006–07 onwards, including ADF military and reserves) is shown as a sparkline on the Commonwealth jurisdiction node.
Each state and territory publishes its own budget papers in different formats, on different schedules, and with different agency classifications. Building consistent, comparable data across all nine jurisdictions is an ongoing project. The Commonwealth dataset is the most complete — state expenditure and (later) workforce data will be expanded progressively.