World watcher, many of those bonds are bought by foreign governments and financial institutions.
They all have to be paid back.
What makes you think the debt is $140 billion ?
It is more like $600 to $700 billion if you count everything that has
to be repaid with interest.

Bazz - slap my hand for understating the amount of our enormous deficit. Now I stand corrrected - thank you for scaring me even more with your probably more accurate calculations!! Any ideas on how just over 20 million of us will ever pay this back, even though interest rates are historically as low as they've ever been?
It is a given that this government doesn't even seem to care about the enormous monkey the've put on our backs. Our present government has an inflated sense of it's importance on the world stage. They are like children attempting to play adult games, which impresses no-one except those who take the handouts being so generously distributed every time our P.M. opens her mouth.
Is the present government so heedless of consequences for the people of Australia that they will continue this path to our destruction? I fear the desire for personal power at all costs, together with trying to impress on the world stage has completely eclipsed any hopes we may have had of good governance for the people.

Well said ww.

Not to worry world watcher, it is not easy to get exact liabilities
when it comes to government debt.
When Barnaby Joyce said the gross figure was something bear $900 billion
he was attacked by Wayne Swann as a financial illiterate.
However Joyce explained that government deficit is the one government
likes to use, but you do have to add on bonds that have been sold and
not yet redeemed plus a number of other outstanding debts such as
unfunded superannuation liabilities.

I am no expert on these matters and I think govt tries to hide it all
by scattering the debt about under different names.
That was the point Joyce made, doesn't matter what you call them,
they still have to be repaid and interest paid.