Australia politics live: Bob Brown says Chris Bowen would ‘bring the house down’ if he amended emissions cap

Labor signals spending to avoid 30 June budget cliffs

The Albanese government has hinted it will spend billions to avoid going off the edge of funding cliffs in the budget, with arts institutions, e-safety, My Health Record and even the radioactive waste agency otherwise slated for cuts.

The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, and finance minister, Katy Gallagher, have released details of agencies and programs they say the Coalition failed to budget for, with many set to run out of funds from 30 June.

The move is the strongest signal yet that arts and collecting institutions, including the National Library’s Trove database will see funding restored in the May budget.

© Provided by The Guardian A screen capture of online image library Trove, which will see its budget run out on 30 June. Photograph: http://trove.nla.gov.au/

It follows $4.1bn of additional spending in the October budget to avoid so-called budget cliffs.

According to Chalmers and Gallagher, the My Health Record and public health dental schemes were due to receive no funds from 1 July, leaving 23 million people without access to health records and 180,000 without subsidised dental services.

The Australian Radioactive Waste Agency was to receive no funding from mid-December 2023.

The National Emergency Management Agency and the eSafety Commissioner were both due to have “significant” reductions in funding from 1 July.

Labor made the funding cliffs a significant focus in question time on Monday, with dorothy dixers to the communications minister, Michelle Rowland and arts minister, Tony Burke.

Burke told the lower house that additional funding is due to run out on 30 June for the maritime museum, portrait gallery, national museum, the national film and sound archive, the national gallery, and old parliament house.

He said:

Part of telling the Australian story isn’t just the institutions themselves but it’s about digitising that story and keeping it through the process of trove and many members on this side and across the crossbench have contacted me for some time about Trove. Trove is one of the Australian government’s most visited online services. More than 50,000 visits a day. Over 1,500 digitised newspaper titles. 900 partner organisations. But under their proposal, it would be funded until, guess what date? 30 June. And at 30 June, the money for the National Library to be able to continue funding Trove was all going to finish.