No Dave, it's much easier to sell the farm to the Chinese. The social dislocation is similar to the fall-out from your own version of flogging the poor to prop up the rich!

Some areas of agreement David, all government benefits should be means tested!

Welfare for the rich must go, as should access to fee free public hospitals for those who can afford to pay!

Moreover, the top tax rate should never be less than the 35%, lower paid employees and staff have to pay regardless. Ditto super concessions for the rich; and family trusts which are trusts in name only, but rather are onshore tax havens!?

Furthermore, government spending could be reduced by as much as 70 billions per by just eliminated state governments and their armies of bureaucrats,and without foregoing a single service or amenity, which could be done more efficiently by councils, in conjunction with the federal government?

Direct funding and autonomy the rest of the answer which if applied intelligently with bench marking best practice comparisons, guiding the way, we could halve spending on public health and reduce the education spend by as much as 30%? Alan B.

Some very good ideas; it's a pity that we don't have politicians with the courage and intelligence to put the ideas into practice. Self-preservation and greed rules in Australia - almost half the population gets government handouts for doing nothing or very little for the economy, and the political class is so useless that it has to continue buying votes and borrowing money to do it. The end is nigh for selfish Australians.

The economy needs stimulus. The government should be takng on a lot more debt, not paying it down.

The proposed spending cuts would cause an economic decline and a loss of taxation revenue, so we wouldn't even get any closer to surplus.

Australia is financially soveriegn so we can never run out of money. Surpluses are sometimes desirable to reduce inflation, but inflation is currently negative. So again I say: WE NEED STIMULUS NOT SURPLUS.

I had high hopes for this article, but they were dashed when I looked at the proposed list of cuts.

The most important cut, one that would be cheered by a vast majority of the population, and which would demonstrate that EVERYONE was taking a haircut, would be:

A significant cut in politicians salaries and perks.

Wow! If a single senator with few staff, & a small party backing him can produce such a detailed plan, what are the tens of thousands of bureaucrats costing us billions doing, other than dream up spending opportunities. Well done David, now lets hope you can get the ideas out to the general public.

One place I doubt you'll get much help in dissemination is our public broadcasting industry. Suggesting you reduce the budget of that useless mob will have you a marked man.

Oh & plerdsus, please drop the politics of envy. Yes I know many of our pollies are a waste of space, but really the total cost of them is a minor drop in the bucket. Pay them nothing at all, & you would only be saving a few cents per head of population. Peanuts compared to how much they can waste on fool missions like alternate electricity generation, or the arts.