Labor postpone Victoria state budget, blame federal election

Victoria's state budget will be postponed by a month with Treasurer Tim Pallas blaming the federal election.

The budget will now be delivered on May 27 instead of April 30, Mr Pallas announced today, after the federal election was called yesterday for May 18.

"It would be, I think, foolhardy to finalise a budget in advance of any election outcome," Mr Pallas told reporters.

Fifty per cent of Victoria's revenue came from federal receipts and it was important to know what they would be, given the priorities of the two major parties are so different, he added.

He denied it was because the budget was going to be politically damaging to his federal Labor colleagues and repeated that it would be a budget of "hard choices" given the drop in property revenues.

"People can concoct any theories that they want," he said.

"But the aim here is to give some certainty."

Victoria's Labor administration was returned in November on a rich infrastructure platform and the Commonwealth has committed billions of dollars to building projects in the nation's fastest-growing state.

"Federal Labor is promising to partner with our state to roll out three-year-old kinder, put more funding into our schools and hospitals, build the Suburban Rail Loop and properly fund the NDIS," the treasurer said.

"In stark contrast, the Liberals are short-changing Victoria when it comes to infrastructure, clawing back money from our hospitals, not funding our schools fairly and hoarding money from the NDIS to prop up their bottom line."

The federal government has been contacted for comment.