Here’s a picture that speaks volumes.
From the government’s 2009-10 Mid-Year Fiscal and Economic Outlook, Appendix D, Table D4, I’ve made the following chart tracking official ‘net debt’ since 1982 (click on chart to enlarge) –
Australian Government - Net Debt
I’ve marked the first full budget year for each successive government, from Labor’s Bob Hawke through to Labor’s Kevin Rudd.
See that steep fall in government net debt on the chart? The one that took the nation from $96.2bn in net debt, down down down to negative $44.82bn in net debt?
Yes. That was a Coalition government.
See the rocket-like launch back UP to unprecedented levels of net debt? Yes, that’s the Rudd Government’s panicked, totally unnecessary spending binge for you. The one they’ve been lying about.
With much more debt still to come.
After all, they borrowed another $1.6bn just this week. See the AOFM website, and click on the links under ‘Recent Tender Results”.
And next week, they’re planning to borrow another $2.1bn.
The massive, multi-billion dollar cockups in every single “stimulus” spending program, will only add to their… OUR… huge and unpayable debts.
Barnaby Is Right 
Re: “The net debt picture”.
It appeared very much to me, even before the GFC hit, that the Rudd government intended to engage in reckless spending anyway. Their purpose? To destroy private capital. Public debt is funded with private capital.
Checking back on the newspaper reports of each Hawke budget will show that the Hawke government engaged in a systematic destruction of private capital by first promoting investment in a particular sector then changing the rules to bankrupt that investment. Two outstanding examples of the budgetary measures I refer to were the racehorse industry and tourism, where the measure used for destruction was Hawke’s very bizarre pilots’ strike.
Hawke’s personal promotion of Bond was one of the outstanding examples of systematic destruction of private capital. The signs are that the Rudd government is working from the same textbook.