Australia's national debt could hit $1 trillion as Scott Morrison warns of recession
Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison will warn for the first time today that the national debt will blow out to $1 trillion in ten years if budget savings measures do not pass.
In the first of a series of speeches in coming weeks, which will attempt to appeal to the Senate cross-bench, Morrison is set to warn of a recession if the government's plans are not put into action.
Morrison has six billion dollars of savings measure he wishes to pass and will switch to alarmist language of the $1 trillion debt and possible recession to get them through the senate and parliament.
“Whether the measures that are necessary to return to budget balance are supported is yet to be seen,” he will say in his first speech today.
“Failure to do so, in the worst-case scenario, will see our gross debt rise to more than $1 trillion — one thousand billion dollars — in the next 10 years.”
Morrison will caution that the country has between five and seven years to deal with the debt problem and will claim Labor’s plan to raise taxes is not the answer.
“I do not want my kids to know what a recession is and everything that goes along with that.
“I recognise that in the absence of a ‘recession we have to have’, or the threat of ‘becoming a banana republic’, achieving necessary change will be more frustrating and more difficult," Morrison will say.
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Morrison will state that the current government inherited $240 billion in accumulated deficits and a debt of $317 billion projected to increase to $667 billion over the next 10 years.
"As a government to date, we have acted to reduce that projected debt by $55 billion.
“However we are still a long way from where we must be, and time is running out to get there.
“Deficits have proven stubborn, despite applying significant expenditure controls. Our debt now stands at around $430 billion, with interest payments at $16 billion this year," Morrison will add.
