This "rich and prosperous country" is in debt to the tune of more than $1 trillion - half its economy.
ttbn,
That's economists for you. I wonder if they could run a school Tuck shop without going broke in three days ?

If we want a strong economy going forward? Then we must get the price of energy down. And if we continue to spend money on renewables and new transmission lines etc. All we will achieve and at the worst possible time, economically, are massive energy price hikes.

And given absolutely everything we use or consume has an energy component, then everything else will also go through the roof, price wise. Imagine if we could get it down to 1.98.

Currently, nobody pays less than 24 cents PKWH. Imagine if we could get it down to 1.98 cents PKWH. And we could in around twelve months as all the current energy suppliers bellow doom and gloom and scream blue murder about stranded assets. And if was so good why doesn't everybody have it? Why indeed?

And only because successful campaigns by all those whose profit margins would be decimated or disappear, have successfully mounted their anti-thorium campaigns for years and poured billions into the Propaganda campaign.

And have done so, so successfully to date, that nearly all progress on MSR thorium was stalled for decades. That was the case but not the case now, given the American atomic agency is committing millions to keep this American technology in America.

He who controls energy controls the world! But given the abundance of thorium and the fact that nearly every country has some, that control would disappear with the rollout of MSR thorium.

Thorium delivers everything fusion promised but never ever delivered. Time, we, i.e., (conflicted or, I believe, corrupt) Ozzie Pollies stopped allowing others to control our destiny and economic wellbeing. And stopped wasting our money on their pet if enormously expensive projects.

Projects only made viable by the self-imposed embargo on nuclear energy. If nuclear subs finally make sense? Then so also does nuclear power and the massively overdue energy independence it would confer on us!
Alan B.

Then we must get the price of energy down.
Alan B,
The cost of energy is more than likely ok, it's the cost of the share holders & other hangers-on in the industry that we must force down !

"We should note that even if the terms of trade did fall as rapidly as the budget papers suggest, they would still be much higher than they were in 2015/2016 and very much higher than they were in the 1990s"

Things are not in any way better now than they were in the 1990's.
I don't know what numbers you people are crunching, but it seems to me you can't see the bigger picture, in real terms.

I was born in 73, and turned 17 in 1990.
I got my first job at Coles when I was 15, I did trolleys and checkouts.
I saved up money for my first car before I was even old enough to have a license.
By the time I was 17, I was earning $170 week at Coles part-time permanent 4 days a week, and when I got my license I was delivering pizza as a second job earning about $10 hour.
A few months later I left Coles and got a job in a factory starting at $250 week.

Moral to the story is that even at 17, it was well within my means if I worked hard to earn $400 a week.

When I saved up that $3000 at age 16, if I'd have bought a cheaper car for $1000 for pizza delivery when I got my license and saved the other $2000 towards a house loan, then at $400 a week with both jobs I would've been merely 20 weeks away from the $10000 home deposit.

I could've bought a 3br house for 70k.
- Meaning I'd only have to have borrowed 60k after I got my house deposit.

$400 a week is $20800 year.
If I'd have rented the 3 bedrooms out for $50 week
(Built a room for myself in the garage, or built an extra detatched bedroom or garage shed converted into a living area)
- 3 bedrooms at $50 a week = $7800 year, which brings the total to $28400 a year, add in my tax check and I'm over 30k a year.

[Cont.]
I could've paid back 30k a year off that home loan, and paid back the principle in 2 years,
- Owned my own 3br home outright by the time I was 19, thanks to checkouts and pizzas.

The median price of a house in the same location in now 825k

You tell me how it's possible for a 16 or 17 year old to pay off a house worth 825k in 2 years and be a home owner at 19?

It's not possible.
Even if you started out as fully a qualified structural engineer at 17 on 250k a year,
- And filled the whole house with cannabis ITS PROBABLY STILL NOT POSSIBLE to pay off 825k in 2 years.

You say things have gotten better, well I'm not sure what planet you're on.

There's no way possible a kid can buy a house 45mins from Brisbane CBD and pay it off in 2 years working Coles checkouts and pizza deliveries.
- But in 1990 it was possible.

Finally, comparing Australia to Europe is just stupid.
Europe were so dumb they cut themself off from the source of their own wealth.
Without cheap Russian gas, there will be no cheap BMW's.
Not now, and not ever, Europe is stuffed.

Saying we're doing well compared to people in Europe, is like saying the person living in the housing commission house is doing better than the person who lives in his own car or on the streets.
- It in no way implies that the person living in the housing commission house is ACTUALLY doing well.

"These are still very good numbers, and they are extremely good numbers in the situation of the expanded welfare programs contained in this budget."

Welfare doesn't in any way build lives, it just merely improves ones existence.

My question is how come you idiots see everything as being rosy;
When the situation in real terms is actually a whole lot worse than it was then?
How do you get it so fundamentally wrong?
What planet are you living on, and how did you get there?

[Cont.]
If I could've owned my own 3br home outright at 19...
- I could've easily gotten a transfer from Coles and Silvios in Capalaba to Coles and Silvio's at the Gold Coast, and repeated the same process again there, owning 2 houses outright by the time I was 21.
I could've then built 2 duplexes and paid them off too, owning 4 rental properties outright at 23, whilst still having a permanent place to live in the outdoor garage turned granny flats in the first property in Brisbane and the the second on the Gold Coast.

I could've more or less retired at age 23 with 4 rental properties, paid for by checkouts and pizza deliveries.
- And this wasn't an opportunity that ONLY I could have.
ANY KID in 1990 could've done it, if only they had the knowledge, the plan and the motivation to do it.

Now in 2022, there's no way possible any kid could own 4 properties outright in Brisbane and the Gold Coast by the time they are 23 working checkouts and delivering pizzas.

These are the facts,
No matter how many numbers you crunch or which way you crunch them.
- Things are not the same in 2022 as they were in 1990.

For today's young adults, the future is more-or-less hopeless.
You obviously didn't crunch the numbers for them.