About this site

The Federal Spending Explorer shows where Australian Government spending goes, from the whole-of-government total down to individual contracts and grants. Every figure sits inside a published total, and every total shows how much of it can be traced to named suppliers and recipients.

Where the data comes from

All figures come from documents the government publishes:

• Budget Paper No. 1 and the Final Budget Outcome (Treasury): total expenses by function and by type.
• Portfolio Budget Statements (each portfolio, via data.gov.au): spending by portfolio, entity, outcome and program.
• AusTender (Department of Finance): contract notices.
• GrantConnect (Department of Finance): grant awards.
• Transparency Portal (Department of Finance): what each entity reported in its annual report.
• Australian Business Register and the global LEI register: who suppliers are, and which corporate groups they belong to.

Sources and changes lists every file we use, with its SHA-256 fingerprint, and every data load.

How we prepare the data

Where we combine, remove or adjust a figure, it is labelled on the page, and the rule is set out in the methodology. This includes amounts removed as double counting, the whole-of-government adjustments that reconcile programs to the Budget total, annualised contract values, and contracts classified by an AI model.

Source code

The code that loads the data and runs this site is open source, on GitHub.

Corrections and suggestions

If a figure looks wrong, a name is matched to the wrong entity, or a source is missing, open an issue on GitHub. Include the page address and, if you can, the source document that shows the correct figure. Code changes are welcome as pull requests.

Who built it

Built by James McHugh at Local IT Help. The site is independent and is not affiliated with the Australian Government.