Treasurer Jackie Trad has told Queenslanders they'll have to swallow rising debt if they want more jobs and better hospitals.
Ms Trad delivered her second budget on Tuesday, announcing a surplus for 2019/20, but with a stinging $7.3 billion debt increase on last year.
She says the rise in debt, estimated to blow out to more than $90 billion in four years, is manageable and necessary to help get more people into work.
"We know how critical it is that government spends in regional economies," she said.
"We need to be doing that and we are unapologetic about it."
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says the government must deliver services no matter where people live.
But it comes at a cost.
Total government debt is expected to grow from $71.4 billion in 2018/19 to $78.7 billion in 2019/20, peaking at $90.7 billion in 2022/23.
The government has forecast a $189 million net operating surplus for 2019/20, and a $313 million surplus the following year.
But it has beaten its expectation for the current 2018/19 year, with a surplus of $841 million pencilled in, on the back of higher coal royalties.
An $866 million cut to the state's share of the commonwealth GST, a $1.3 billion bill from a spate of natural disasters and a drop in stamp duty revenue have created some problems.
They will be countered by tax revenue, which is expected to increase by $1.159 billion in the next financial year and a boom in exports, which reached a combined $85.2 billion in the year to April.
Ms Trad has spared the coal industry from royalty changes, for now.
But she will take more from gas, hiking the rate from 10 per cent to 12.5 per cent from July 1 to raise $476 million over four years.
That measure is a kick in the guts for the resources industry that's delivered a combined $900 million more in revenue than had been forecast last year, Queensland Resources Council chief executive Ian Macfarlane says.
Queensland will now have the highest gas royalties in the country, but Greens MP Michael Berkman says they don't go far enough.
Economists have compared the government's projected surpluses, after a $3.8 billion hit to its bottom line, to a magic trick.
But the state Opposition says it's a bad budget and the government has it sights set on the hip pockets of Queenslanders.
"You can't afford Labor," Liberal National Party leader Deb Frecklington said.
Companies and trustees with holdings over $5 million will pay 0.25 per cent more in land tax, and the absentee land tax surcharge has been lifted from 1.5 to two per cent.
Foreign companies and trustees of foreign trusts will be hit with a new two per cent foreign land tax fee, while Australians and permanent residents will become exempt from absentee land taxes.
Payroll tax changes will rake in an estimated $341 million over four years.
Australian Associated Press
