For someone who is obviously educated in economics this simplistic comparison to house mortgages misses a few pertinent points.

A 6% debt against your house is small and easily manageable compared to most who have mortgages up to 90%. However, what Andrew cheerfully skips over is that it needs to be compared against some one who only a year ago, not only had 0% mortgage, but a few shekels in the bank too.

In the space of a year the house owner has racked up 6-7% debt. If he has used equity to acquire something needed, then the debt is a source of funds for other capital.

The Labor government in this case used it on the stimulus spending, and for the hundreds of billions spent has very to show for it. The insulation program has left a sizeable expense to come, and the BER is notable in producing extremely expensive partially useful buildings.

And what for? The Labor government would have us believe that 200 000 jobs were saved, but this figure is closer to 20 000 as mining never really slowed down, and most businesses, having suffered previously from releasing valuable personnel held onto their staff all be it at lower hours.

As any house holder knows, one has to live within one's means, otherwise debt accumulates until it is no longer acceptable. Labor has a consistent reputation for racking up the debt on pork barrel projects, and this last term was no exception.

Shadow Minister,
While much of what you say is true,there is a bigger picture ie how new money is created.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D22TlYA8F2E 'The Secret of Oz' .This doco by Bill Still has already won two awards this year and puts debt in real perspective

Arjay,

thanks for that, very interesting doco; i am listening to the latter half.

I am astounded that government debt is considered a problem in Australia.

Our public debt is expected to peak at 5.1% of GDP in 2011.

At present, 121 countries have public debts greater than that figure.

Japan leads the group at about 195% of GDP.

Only four countries have public debt lower than Australia's as a percentage of GDP, none of whom are in the OECD.

That's interesting TrashCanMan. What was it when Labor got in?

There was a time, I can recall, when one would eagerly seek to consume work authored by graduates of such prestigious universities as those those listed in Andrew's resume.

Alas, this piece, with all the factual errors and flawed logic, is but a brilliant display of just how far standards have slipped.