Australia’s debt is not now at $725 billion
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on April 17, 2019 at 10:20
- 2 min read
- By AFP Australia
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This image has been shared more than 800 times since being uploaded to Facebook on February 5, 2019, here.
Below is a screenshot of the post:
Using Google reverse image search, AFP also found the image uploaded in August 2018, here on Twitter and here on the Big Footy Forum, which has more than 100,000 members.
The government gives monthly updates of the nation’s current net debt levels in its monthly financial statements that are collated on the Department of Finance’s website here.
The nation’s net debt in February 2019, coinciding with the time of the Facebook post listed above, was $370.9 billion, according to the government’s financial statement for that month available here.
Australia’s net debt in August 2018, was $352.5 billion, according to that month’s financial statement available here.
The government also releases debt forecasts in its annual budget papers.
Below is a screenshot from the latest budget papers, released in April 2019, that summarise the nation’s debt levels and forecasts. The full budget papers are available here and below is a screenshot of the debt summary.
The screenshot shows the net debt was forecast to be $361 billion in 2019-2020.
Alongside net debt, the government provides data on "gross debt". This is defined in budget papers as Australian Government Securities.
This gross debt, also shown in the screenshot above, is forecast to be $560 billion in 2019-2020, declining to $416.8 billion in the “medium term” of 2029-2030.
In the 2017 budget papers, the gross debt in the “medium term” of 2027-2028 was forecast to be $725 billion. Here are those budget papers and below is a screenshot of the debt summary.
That “medium term” gross debt forecast was cut the following year to $532 billion. Below is a screenshot of that data taken from page 187 of the 2018 budget papers available here.
That “medium term” gross debt forecast was further cut in the latest budget papers, as shown above.
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