With some union officials earning $300000 a year plus lurks and perks you can see why many of the current crop of Labour party pollies spend like drunken soldiers. Even that wasn't enough for some of them. They are use to 'entitlement'money not having to work for it themselves. They have spent other peoples money all their lives. Spending other peoples money does no harm to the Pollies. They know in the end they can raise workers taxes to pay fom their wanton waste. Greece is the textbook of our Government. Don't forget the thousand or so that had junkets to CopenHagen for the world's biggest 'moral 'challenge. Have a laugh otherwise you will cry.

The Office of Financial Management shows the government offering bonds
for bids each week. The offers are usually around $1,000,000,000 each
week. The maximum allowed was recently increased by parliament from
$220 Billion to $250 billion.
This is the $150 million a day borrowing that you hear referred to.
So thats where I got my figure from when I said that there are a
number of categories of debt.
Direct government borrowing is separate to the bond sales.
It will be about 20 weeks before we need to increase the $250 billion.

Right. I see now where you went wrong, sonofgloin.

<<Pericles I took the $20 BILLION govt surplus that Kev inherited and divided it by the population, we were all in credit of roughly 90 cents per citizen. In the same manner I divided the Labor govt debt by the population and came up with $90K debit per citizen.<<

In fact, you took a current account surplus - which is an annual measure of the difference between the amount the government extracts from us in taxes and the amount it spends on government services - hospitals, that sort of thing. And compared it to the total external debt.

A common mistake, don't feel too bad about it.

I suspect you may have found your numbers in the Barnaby Joyce encyclopedia of fiscal fantasy. You can tell, because it's the one written in crayon.

You should try the Australian Bureau of Statistics instead

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/5302.0June%202012?OpenDocument

In Table 31, you will find that our gross external debt has indeed risen in the past five years - hardly surprising, if you have been watching the news recently. But the 2007 figure is only a smidgeon under a trillion dollars - that's debt, not surplus.

You can also check your other assertions while you are about it - they don't stack up either.

>>The Fraser govt inherited NO debt from the Whitlam govt.
The Frazer govt passed on a debt of 40 billion to the Hawke govt.
The Hawke govt passed on a debt of 96 billion to the Howard govt
The Howard govt retired the debt and passed a surplus of 20 billion to the Kev govt.<<

I'm not going to do all your research for you, that would be patronizing. But to save you wading through all those non-crayon-written numbers, I can tell you that the amount of gross foreign debt when John Howard became Prime Minister in March 1996 was $262 billion.

When he left office in December 2007, it was $964 billion.

That's a pretty impressive achievement.

That's not fair Pericles. Using actual real verifiable facts on a poor right whinger like that.

He just wanted to rant, couldn't you just leave him alone?

Pericles, your good self and Bugs are debating from a flawed premise. I clearly delineate between “total gross national debt” and “govt debt. Australia’s total gross debt may well have been 262 billion, but the govt debt handed down to Howard was 96 billion.

You have to differentiate between gross national debt and govt debt, I did. Just to explain in terms that you might understand, we right now have a record govt debt of nearly 200 billion, so how could Howard have a govt debt of 262 billion…..that figure is the gross national debt Pericles.

Crayons is it Pericles lol.

It's rubbish because I am not personally liable for your mortgage payments and you are not liable for my credit card debt.

The suggestion that total debt is divided evenly among the entire population is plain wrong.

The debt truck was a Howard election stunt that used the same misleading suggestion but had to be dropped because the private debt was exploding while government debt decreased. It had become more than triple the amount he started with and naturally continues to grow as the economy expands.

Another false premise the media use is comparing the national budget to a household budget.

No household has a population that continues to grow or can increase its income with the stroke of a pen or counts IOUs that may never be paid (like HECS fees) as income.