Australia’s 2025-26 Budget is the news of the week. Instead of digging into fiscal minutiae and scrutinising political motivations— which economists and the press will do from now to the election— we instead pick out some implications for Australian equity investors. And we’re going to keep it long-term, discussing big-picture themes and the businesses that stand to benefit.

Let’s start with iron ore. It impacts the budget through mining profits and the flowthrough to tax receipts. Every $10/t increase in the price adds almost half a billion dollars to the bottom line— and on a forecast deficit of $28 billion this fiscal year, it’s not immaterial.

But we expect the price of our biggest export to fall to our assumed marginal cost of production, $70/t, by fiscal 2029, from around $100/t today. We’ve laid out our case in the past. In short, the structural forces that powered iron ore through the last two decades look to have run their course. Chief among them is China’s rapid urbanisation, which triggered a construction boom and, in turn, insatiable demand for steel. But the urban migration story is largely over, and China’s total population is now in decline.

But where does this leave our mining giants, BHP, Rio Tinto, and Fortescue? And what might help fill an iron ore sized hole in the budget if, as we expect, the best days are behind us? Read on using the links below.

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