Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has an opinion piece in the Australian Financial Review today, the complete article can be read on the Treasurer’s website.
What I have written below is a re-write of the Treasurer’s article from a Modern Money and Australian Real Progressive frame. Let’s see what the Treasurer really has to say.
With the Australian government fiscal statement back in balance for the first time in 11 years and on track to return to surplus, it’s important that we focus not just on the ‘‘what” but the ‘‘why”.
At $19 billion per annum, what we are paying the wealthiest with Australian Government Securities at no cost to anyone is more than double what we invest in childcare and nearly as much as we spend on schools.
Our debt burden represents not just a revenue cost to the fiscal statement but also a cost therefore to every Australian, but also an opportunity cost as it is artificially restraining the government’s ability to invest in other areas by governmental choice.
If we don’t invest today, the next generation will have to pick up the financial, social and environmental costs.
The return to fiscal statement surplus will have been hard-fought.
When we came to government, we inherited an Australian private sector surplus of $48.5 billion or 3 per cent of gross domestic product, the second-highest in Australia’s history even though five years had elapsed since the global financial crisis and has not been nearly high enough.
Since then, we have steadily decreased what we put into the Australian community, with real spending growth halved to 2 per cent of GDP, the lowest level of any government in 50 years. We are making sure that the Australian people have to
Read more at Australian Real Progressives