The Australian Land Conservation Alliance's 2025-26 Federal Budget analysis asks, what's in it for nature?
There has been modest increase to nature investment in the 2025-26 Federal Budget, but it still falls well short of what is needed to stop nature decline:
- Biodiversity spend is approx. $480m, which is less than 0.1% of the Federal Budget.
- Funding for 30 by 30 is underdone, especially if Australia is to achieve CAR principles
- There is no new spend on the Saving our Species program, and we see the usual problems with data transparency related to investment through the National Heritage Trust.
- The ‘environment’ budget is only approx. 2% larger now than it was 10 years ago – despite 10 years of economic growth with an annual average of ≈ 2.4%
- Taxbreaks/subsidies for fossil fuels are worth over 20 times what's spend on looking after nature, and nature negative subsidies 50 times larger than biodiversity spend ($26.5 bn in FY22-23)