In today’s Australian newspaper, Barnaby Joyce warns of impending debt crisis:
AUSTRALIA’S gross foreign debt, taking into account both the public and private sectors, is more than $1.232 trillion.
The net foreign debt is about $638 billion. It is one of the highest net debt to gross domestic product ratios in the developed world.
As Treasury official David Gruen told a Senate estimates committee recently, it is higher than the US, Japan and Britain. The only country that could be confirmed as higher than ours, at the latest estimates hearing, was New Zealand.
Australia’s gross sovereign (government borrowing) debt during that estimates hearing was $123.11bn, but by last Friday it had climbed to $125.483bn.
What does Barnaby think of the Labor Government’s stimulus spending?
We have, approximately, a $90bn package of eclectic economic trinkets, noted as stimulus, that would look good hanging from any rear-vision mirror in a car doing hot laps on a Friday night in downtown Dubbo.
Did we get something substantial, clearly identifiable in the form of the Snowy Mountains Scheme, or inland rail or massive water infrastructure to alleviate the problems of future droughts? Did we invest in a method to encourage people in a growing population to settle away from the crowded capitals of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane? No, we didn’t.
Read all of Barnaby’s article here, and The Australian’s editorial on Barnaby’s warnings – with reader comments – here.
Barnaby Is Right 
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