^^^Have to agree with CMC on that one - all that pretty graph shows is that during Howard's time, he managed to decrease the country's deficit to a surplus by increasing taxes, reducing government spending and basically hoarding cash. The upside of what he did may have (coincidentally) saved us from hitting rock bottom as we had some coin for the Rudd-Gillard Govt to throw out there for a soft landing.
I'm always a bit suspicious when someone shows me a graph with rather select information and unusual axis. 2 Labour governments and 1 Lib government? What about the previous Lib government? (I genuinely don't know to be honest, but that graph has 'biased' written all over it)
What are the black bits showing?
I don't like the Liberals or Labour, but in the interest of fairness it's interesting to see a comparison of Australia with other countries
source http://www.australiandebtmeter.com/2009/10/a-history-of-public-debt-in-australia-my-first-assignment/
Hey Laurie, what happened to that facepalm emoticon?
Politics, politics, politics...
@CMC... oops... typo... all fixed
The one that gets me is Labour... sigh
I am quite sure I understand the definitions... If Labor are socialist, is it true that whilst they are in government, Australia lives outside of its means (at least for the last two governments)
A quick search using google images, and the graph from cisco is easily found, and another version back to 1983. Not sure about M Frase, I was only 4 when Bob came to power
It's funny because you can reduce debt by selling everything and slashing investment and at the same time increase the Debt to GDP ratio, like Howard and co. did. Circa 2004 it was far higher in Australia than any other industrialised country except the US. Now it is far lower.
There's cash and there's cash flow. It's not as simple as plus or minus.
An analogy. Last year you owed $200K on your mortgage. You just received a $50K raise at work. Are you better off now or not? You still owe exactly the same.
...but you just go on believing whatever Murdoch tells ya if ya like cisco. I'm sure he has your best interest at heart.
To be clear debt by itself means nothing. It is just a number. It only actually means something when it's compared against something else, like income/GDP. Only then is it clear whether it is a lot or not (and it's not).
Is a $2mil business loan a lot of debt?
the third party is called the "Commentariat"
those unaccountable experts who comment on a narrow aspect of pretty much everything and get disproportionate attention from the media
ref. Lucia Cade, Engineers Australia Civil Edition June 2011 Vol 83 No 6
I thought there might have been a utility or two (telstra, water suppliers, power companies etc) that got sold to reduce that debt?
