The 2026/27 Federal Budget arrived with a familiar promise: gender equality is supposedly at the centre of government decision-making. On paper, there is a lot in the Women’s Budget Statement that speaks directly to women, from child support reform and paid parental leave to childcare, women’s health, safety and cost-of-living measures.
But when you look a little closer, the picture gets more complicated. While there are some genuinely important measures in the Budget, experts say much of the heavy lifting is being done by policies that were already announced, already underway, or only loosely targeted at women.
Political commentator Lauren Beckman told PEDESTRIAN.TV the return of gender-responsive budgeting itself matters.
“The fact that we have gender-responsive budgeting and a Women’s Budget Statement can’t be understated in terms of considering gender impacts when it comes to government policy,” she said.
“There are some meaningful impacts in here for women, but a lot of the heavy lifting is in continuing existing policies and announcements.”
So, what’s actually new for women in the 26/27 Budget?
One of the clearest new measures is $182.6 million over four years to reform the Child Support Scheme, which the government says will help address weaponisation, financial abuse and unpaid child support.
The executive director of the Working with Women Alliance, Dr Gemma Killen. said this was one of the standout announcements.
“There was 182 million for child support reform, and that’s something that we’re super excited about because we’ve needed it for a long time,” she told P.TV.
“At the moment, there’s 2 billion dollars in unpaid child support, and the majority of the recipients that that money is owed to are women, and it has a huge impact on women and their children, keeping them in poverty.”
Killen said the rest of the gender equality measures felt much thinner.
“Apart from the child support reform, there wasn’t anything in the budget that we didn’t already know about,” she said.
She also pointed to the $61.2 million to extend the 500 domestic, family and sexual violence workers initiative as another new measure, but said “most of the other things in the gender equality and domestic violence women’s safety space were continuations or extensions of existing funding”.
The biggest gaps
For Beckman, childcare remains one of the biggest missed opportunities.
“There is still so much that is not working in the early childhood education and care sector and addressing access and affordability of childcare has so many benefits and flow on effects in almost every other area in the lives of women and their children,” she said.
“Universal access to affordable childcare is still something this government has yet to meaningfully deliver, despite it being a clear ambition for them.”
Killen said sexual violence funding was also a major gap.
“Funding to tackle sexual violence would be one of our top priorities and to lift funding in line with demonstrated need,” she said.
She also wanted to see a stronger gender lens applied to skills recognition for migrants, saying many migrant women in Australia are working well below their qualification level.
“It has an impact on their economic security and their access to safety because they can’t get jobs that pay them enough to live well and to live safely,” she said.
Will the cost-of-living measures help?
The Budget includes a Working Australians Tax Offset of up to $250 from 2027/28, higher Medicare levy low-income thresholds and a $1,000 instant tax deduction for work expenses.
Beckman said the tax changes were “on the small side” and unlikely to be meaningfully felt by most people.
“The cost of living pressures people are under go far beyond what tweaks to income tax settings can realistically address,” she said.
Killen said measures like lifting income support would have a much bigger impact on women’s economic security.
“Really, what would help women economically, and the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee says this every year, and the Women’s Economic Taskforce said this when they did their report, would be to lift income support payments,” she said.
Women’s health is mostly a continuation
Women’s health received major attention in last year’s Budget, including funding for contraception, menopause, endometriosis and pelvic pain. This year’s Budget mostly builds on that work, including the expansion of 33 endometriosis and pelvic pain clinics to include menopause and perimenopause support from July 2026.
Beckman said that continuity is not necessarily a bad thing.
“These are long-term investments that need to continue to be funded and expanded,” she said.
But Killen said access is still a major issue, especially outside the cities.
“The women that are most impacted by wait times and high costs are women living rurally in Australia,” she said.
“Sometimes, you know, in order to see a specialist, they have to travel for half a day and this requires could require up to three days out of work just to go to an appointment, let alone have treatment.”
So, did the Budget deliver for women?
The answer seems to be: partly.
There are wins, especially child support reform. But for many women dealing with housing stress, unpaid care, low incomes, sexual violence services stretched to breaking point and healthcare that is still too hard to access, this Budget may feel more like a holding pattern than a breakthrough.
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