Australia's Greek government

The Australian government can't stop its spend-thrift ways.

Australia has a workforce of about 11.8 million people. Sixty to seventy percent of those are full-time workers, the rest are part time.

This is to support a population of almost 24 million.

According to the tax office, it would take $17B this year just to pay off interest on the federal debt which is at hundreds of billions. It has been almost ten years since this government had a balanced budget.

The current leftist prime minister is happy to commit us to billions in junk-science climate funding. Billions to "create jobs". Over $1B per year to the government owned broadcasting service which is nothing more than a mouth-piece for leftist tripe. All while ignoring the high tax rate and whole government activities which don't contribute.  He and his kind believe you can tax your way to prosperity.

One group of special snow-flakes gets well over $25B per year just to wake up every day, have kids and get a government check. And that is a low figure compared to the money spent on other kinds of special snow-flakes.

Defence, one of our biggest protected welfare queens and in at number 4 as our biggest annual federal budget expense, gets almost $45B per year. $32.7B on Defence activities and $12B or so on Veteran's Affairs. The VA is an output of Defence activities.

There is a lot of low-hanging fruit in Defence. Getting rid of most of the 170-some flag ranks, the M-1 tank, the MRH-90 and Tiger helicopters are a small start. All this is hard to do when Defence gets approval for impulse buys on things like 2 extra C-17's for $1B based on Operation:USELESS DIRT activity in the Middle East. Also Australia is still paying for the bed-down of USMC troops which were not needed.

Defence is one of our protected class that just cannot stop spending on bad ideas. Note that little of this funding will stop terrorist threats or actually defend us well in a war. We would get the same result if we spent half on Defence. Spending more on Defence does not equal increasing the quality of our national security posture.

Here is the deep analysis from government:

"Over the next decade, net debt is projected to peak at 18.0 per cent of GDP in 2016‑17 before falling to 7.1 per cent of GDP by 2025-26."

Sure. And, any cuts you do see in portfolios are a drop in the bucket compared to the big picture.

Unlikely in a land where nanny-statism is the biggest religion.

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