There is no mystery where public debt comes from.

What a collection of infants, whining for the teat.

Of course the people of the country must pay for these things one way or another. The idea that they can get something for nothing by paying for it through government is mere unweaned behaviour.

"Government is the great fiction through which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else."
Frederic Bastiat

I terms of external debt per capita, Australia is slightly less than France, but more than Greece, Portugal and Italy.

Reliance on too much taxpayer funded welfare can quite easily bankrupt a country. Of the three in the group mentioned in the article, “children, mothers and older people”, two cannot be greatly productive due to age, and this means that men and women have to increase their productivity.

Australia has to learn a lesson from this, and I would think that women in Australia have to be more than aware that they have to pay their way.

I think it unwise to use public debt as the only metric of criticism, not to underplay it's role but several other factors need to be kept in mind otherwise Government can seem somewhat successful look at our low public debt !) and yet while providing poor policy. Other important considerations for example:

Productivity: Our terrible IR and OH&S legislation, no this does not mean just lowering wages. Our productivity has been going BACKWARDS, a very dangerous trend to allow to continue.

The national account: Eventually this HAS to come home to bite us, much like the Euro countries with too high Gov't debt. 10% of the GDP , ie Mining and Agri, do 60% of the heavy lifting in earning export income. Taking each others laundry in ( ie the service industry) and increasing the GDP, does NOT make a nation wealthier.

and private debt: Some of the highest in the OECD).

The other item to note if the continued use of GDP as a useful metric, of economic success, it isn't really. As Bill Bryson notes, a terminally ill cancer patient, going through a nasty divorce has a very positive impact on GDP. Is that how one should be measuring the "success" of an economy ?

http://www.usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html

Note; Australia's "public" debt to GDP ratio is 35.9 percent (France's is 84.2). "External debt o GDP ratio for Australia is 105.5 percent, while for France it's 254.8 percent.

The welfare state is far from the only problem. France's rigid labour laws make getting a job extremely difficult for its young people; the feather bedding of its public services is a national disgrace; its addiction to agricultural protection is reducing the countryside to a museum piece populated by ageing and inefficient framers; and French institutional racism has resulted in the outer suburbs of its largest cities, populated mostly by unemployed immigrants, becoming cesspits of drugs and crime, virtual 'no-go zones' for the French police. Reform proposals are met by massive strikes, managed by the labour unions and government after government gives up the fight.

Soon, France will become like Italy: parts of it a charming museum, the best bits owned by foreigners; and the rest a corrupt, dysfunctional state, run by criminal organisations. But then, the French did give us Robespierre and his gang of thugs. Maybe nothing's changed.

Poriot,
If external debt is measured on a per capita basis, Australia’s external debt is slightly smaller than France.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt

Regardless, Australia’s external debt continues to climb, even with the resources boom.

Time to reduce all the pork barrelling that occurs at election time, and time for women in particular to stop thinking that all they have to do is ask for more and more money to be given to them from someone else.