It is well established fact that it is the dose that makes the poison; many things are relatively harmless like common salt, paracetamol, aspirin, alcohol and some even some narcotics.

Such compounds can and often do improve the quality of life at a low dose.

POISONOUS

But when used to excess they are poisonous and can result in suffering, organ failure and sometimes death.

The first low dose of the vile poison called debt, was administered to the body of the Australian economy by Kevin Rudd when he became prime minister in 2007.

Over the years, as we will see, the dose of debt poison has been gradually increased to the point where some of the vital organs of the Australian economy are starting to fail and structurally collapse.

It hasn’t always been this way.

Between 1996 and 2007 Prime Minister John Howard and Treasurer Peter Costello paid off the nation’s debts of about $90b; a debt which had been left behind by Hawke, Keating and Malcolm Fraser.

Howard and Costello delivered to Australia a decade of budget surpluses; they saved Australia from their predecessors’ oversights and blunders.

When they established the Future Fund, a new pot of money which ensured the government could pay the hitherto unfunded superannuation liabilities of the civil service, they knew what this country needed.

In 2007 the people showed their gratitude to Howard and Costello for a decade of good money management by kicking them out of office; preferring instead the fast talking and charismatic (at the time) Kevin 07.

Costello also bequeathed a budget surplus of about $20b to the incoming Rudd Government.

John Howard, the second longest serving prime minister after Menzies, lost his seat of Bennelong, (which he had held since 1974) to an unremarkable ABC journalist called Maxine McKew; who, after the election, was never heard of again.

When in 2007 Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Treasurer Wayne Swan got hold of the Treasury purse strings, Australia’s gross debt was 5 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Pre-election, Rudd claimed to be a fiscal conservative, which turned out to be a monumental lie.

Rudd’s claim resurrected the tradition in governments telling lies –a custom not seen since the last days of Paul Keating.

DEBT

By 2009, Rudd and Swan had spent the Howard/Costello surplus and we were heading for a debt of $315b; which was at the time the largest borrowings of any Australian government in peacetime.

In just a few years it went from bad to worse; Rudd, Gillard, Rudd. The poisoning of the economy had started; the common denominator during that time was Wayne Swan as Treasurer.

By the time Rudd was kicked out by Julia Gillard the debt to GDP had risen to about 13 per cent.

By the time Rudd got rid of Gillard and got back into the Lodge in 2013, our debt, (for that is what it is, the government incurs the debt, and the people have to pay it off) was 16 per cent of GDP and Swan was still on the Treasury bench.

Still, nobody in the successive Labor governments raised the alarm, certainly not Swan, they were too busy spending and proving that low doses of poison can make the people feel confident and sanguine; that was all they wanted for the people, for them to feel good about Labor.

The mantra was: “Give them what they want, even give them what they don’t know they want, like pink bats and school buildings. It’s the re-election that counts, stupid.”

In 2015, when Tony Abbott had beaten Rudd and then after not quite two years lost to that Labor-lite quisling Malcom Turnbull, the debt to GDP was about 22 per cent.

During the Turnbull years between 2015 and 2018 it rose to 28 per cent.

The four years of Scott Morrison and Josh Frydenberg and three of Anthony Albanese and the Wayne Swan disciple Dr Jim Chalmers, Australia’s gross debt ratio to GDP in 2024 was 49.6 per cent, nearly half of our GDP.

Morrison and Frydenberg managed to run up a debt of some $300b during the pandemic. Whether that expence was necessary is a debate which will go on for years and never be settled.

Suffice to say that lessons were learned. Money was spent in large amounts; some say it was unnecessary; Labor said at the time that the Coalition should have spent more.

Nothing can change the fact that as a nation we have gone from having no federal debt worth speaking of in 2006, to a debt of $1 trillion dollars and rising in 2025.

MASSIVE

This massive debt is not the end of the pain for the people of Australia, because in 2006, the total debt of the States was just $28.6b; today it is $600 billion and rising.

In the eighteen years post Howard, the population of Australia has grown by nearly 5m and our national debt has grown from $28.6b to approaching $1.6 trillion or $1600b, whichever causes you the least pain.

And, as close as damnit is to swearing, the federal debt is at 50 per cent of GDP; the combined State debts are an additional 23 per cent of the national GDP; ipso facto in 2025, the gross national debt is a frightening 73 per cent of GDP.

Interest payments on the federal debt will be about $28b by 2026, and the interest paid by State governments will be about $17.4b in 2024-25 rising to $25.7b by 2027-28.

Interestingly, in the ten years before the start of the Howard era 1986 to 96, net migration was just 320,000; and between 1996 and 2006, the Howard era, it was 326,000; so, in the twenty years between 1986 and 2006 only 646,000 migrants settled in Australia.

But, in the eighteen years since the Howard era, successive governments of all persuasions but predominantly from the Coalition, have encouraged and allowed the population to grow by five million.

During the first three years of this Labor Government it deliberately encouraged and allowed the population of Australia to increase by close to 1.4m; that is growth equivalent to three cities the size of Canberra, in three years.

That is an increase of about 1300 people a day, every day, seven days a week.

The accommodation needed for those people at the national average of three people per dwelling, was 433 houses a day; or just over 3000 a week, or about 158,000 a year, just to house the most recent migrants.

That effort needed to be repeated every year for three years. We failed and now all of Australia suffers.

That is the damage that this Labor government deliberately inflicted on the people of Australia. They knew those housing targets could not be reached but they pressed on with no regard for the welfare of the people.

It is also plainly evident from the statistics on debt, that during the tenure of all prime ministers since the Howard era, the national debt has risen as the number of migrants per annum has increased.

Did successive governments over the past twenty years or so deliberately encourage migration so they could benefit from the short-term sugar hit to the economy?

Did they do that knowing full well that because the new house building targets were not being met, that the price of houses would surge?

Did those prime ministers deliberately ignore the golden rule of supply and demand?

Whether it be strawberries or houses the world has known for as long as it has traded that when the supply is low, the price goes up.

If you doubt, ask the Dutch about tulips in 1634 to 1637 when huge fortunes were made and lost over the supply of a flower bulb.

The evidence is that is exactly what they did; they ignored, even fed, and capitalised on the law of supply and demand; and because of that gross act of mismanagement, they are culpable, and Australia is suffering from the poison of debt.

Every prime minister except Abbott, claimed by their actions, that migration was good for the country.

The effect of Albanese and his government, cramming another 1.4m people into Australia in three years has meant that the standard of living for all 26m people, living here, sweating here, and building their dreams here, has declined.

Once the envy of the world, Australia is now on the decline, a proud people being driven down by their government and in many vital areas Australia is the worst performer in the OECD.

The pain is there for all to see. The median house price in Australia is now nearly $1.2m. In all capital cities it is over $1m. Prices have risen by 4.3 per cent over the past year.

National productivity has stalled in concert with an increase in the bureaucracy; this increase in the number of civil servants hides the deep cynicism in the ALP both in Canberra and in the States; this is socialism writ large.

STRAIN

An additional 1.5m migrants has put an unmanageable strain on the already struggling health system Medicare.

The number of doctors and nurses and other health professional needed to care for the increase has not been provided, more importantly neither have the hospitals and other facilities. Ambulance ramping is rife!

There was a time when we laughed at the problems the British were having with their National Health System.

Now we compete with them on the ladder of health-care mediocrity; the sick and the aged suffer in Australia because of inadequate funding. The current government would sooner subsidise overseas investors in the renewable energy net-zero campaign, than build hospitals.

The World Economic Forum is now publishing statistics that show life for our millennials, those born between 1981 and 1986, who are now aged 26 to about 40, could become or are already, the first generation to earn less than their predecessors. That is less than their parents and grandparents.

In the UK it has been found that people under the age of 35 earned £8000 less in their twenties than the previous generation; a similar statistic can be found across Europe and America.

The inability to match, to do, to acquire, what mum and dad did at their age is a constant frustration to our young people.

It is starting to show. They are renting and buying a 4WD rather than buying a house and starting a family.