Achieving and maintaining a sustainable fiscal position is a major policy objective for governments at both sovereign and sub-sovereign levels in Australia, underscored after fiscal responses to the pandemic and climate-related disasters in recent years.

In New South Wales, the legislative framework has since 2012 been provided by the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2012 (the Act), which has as its object the maintenance of the State’s triple-A credit rating. The Act also mandates the reporting of the State’s long-term fiscal gap – updated on a five-yearly basis in the NSW Intergenerational Report, with the impact of Budget measures on the fiscal gap reported annually.

This paper explores using the NSW Treasury Intergenerational Report (TIGR) model to estimate the NSW structural budget balance.