Some people seem to have no idea how serious Australia’s debt is.

Perhaps this will make it clearer:

1. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that we would have to take half of everything earned by every Australian for the next two years to pay it off.
2. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that we would have to stop every Social Security payment for the next three years to pay it off..
3. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we spent no money on health for seven years the debt would be paid.
4. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that if we spent no money on education for 14 years the debt would be paid.
5. The debt left by the Labor party is so great that we would have to spend no money on defence or defence personnel for the next 19 years to pay it off.

Just like a family, Government cannot spend more than it earns without getting into trouble.

This is real money and real debt. If money has been paid in wages, or spent on Batts or set top boxes, it has been spent, it needs to be paid.

There are three ways of paying federal government debt.

1. Don’t pay it. It still has to be paid, but it is paid for almost invisibly, through inflation. This means the poor end up paying more than their share, because the price of food, clothing, housing, etc, all go up. This is the route taken by Zimbabwe.

2. Increase taxes. The problem with this is that it punishes anyone who produces anything. The end result, as in Finland and California, for example, is that businesses cannot compete with other states or countries. Farming, mining, manufacturing, all go belly up, or leave. There is a smaller and smaller tax base, and again, the poor end up getting slugged.

3. Reduce government spending. Well, duh! That means not everything can go on being free. It means we cannot pay defence force staff what we would like to. It means university bureaucracies need to be trimmed, and university students need to pay a fairer share of the cost of their education. It means people need to take some individual responsibility for the cost of their health care. It means we can no longer afford to run Australia’s largest media organisation at taxpayer expense.

There is no use complaining about this. The time to complain was when money was being thrown around on pointless projects and compulsory $6000 internet connections.