Beneath the headline debt, the ACT's underlying financial position keeps deteriorating - what it owes is racing ahead of what it owns.
Net financial worth is the whole Territory's financial assets - cash, investments and receivables - minus everything it owes. It's a direct read on what the government actually has available to meet its obligations, and a standard gauge of fiscal sustainability.
The broader "net worth" figure - around $20 billion - also counts non-financial assets like land, roads, stormwater networks and buildings. Those can't be sold to pay the bills, and they're carried at replacement cost - broadly what it would cost to build them again today, adjusted for age. So when construction costs climb, an ageing stormwater or road network is revalued upward, lifting net worth - even though the asset is wearing out and its eventual replacement is a looming future cost, not money in the bank. Net worth can rise precisely because tomorrow's costs are rising.
That's why net worth is a poor guide to financial health. The ACT's has held up since 2020 mainly because asset values rose - while over the very same years its net financial worth went backwards. Because net financial worth leaves those physical-asset revaluations out, it tracks the real financial position.
A note on the chart: the few years where the line ticks up - 2012–13, 2016–17 and 2021–22 - aren't the budget improving. They're revaluations on the financial side, chiefly the superannuation liability being re-measured as bond rates move (in 2021–22, rising rates shrank it sharply). In each of those years the Territory still ran a deficit. Set the one-offs aside and the direction is unbroken - backwards.
Net financial liabilities is the broadest common measure of what the Territory owes. It adds up borrowings, superannuation obligations and other provisions, then nets off financial assets - so it captures more than headline net debt, which leaves superannuation out altogether.
It matters because it shows how much of the Territory's future revenue is already committed to paying for past decisions. The larger it grows, the more of every future budget is spoken for before a single dollar reaches services. For the ACT it has risen sevenfold - from $2.5 billion in 2010–11 to a forecast $18 billion - which is why ratings agencies treat measures like this as a core test of fiscal sustainability.