Let's not blow our big chance for progress on climate change

Our attitudes to climate change are becoming like our attitude to death: we know we must face up to it one day, but right now we'd prefer to think about something else.

This may explain why the media's coverage of a potentially breakthrough report from the government's Climate Change Authority focused on environmentalists' criticisms of it rather than its actual content.

Similarly, why focus on the world's two biggest greenhouse gas emitters, China and the United States, using the G20 meeting in Hangzhou to ratify the Paris climate change agreement – thus encouraging other countries to do likewise and raising hope the deal will come into effect this year – when you can speculate about conflict over the South China Sea and foreign investment?

Forgive me, but I'd never make a card-carrying greenie, righteously condemning any proposal to act on climate change that's less than heroic – as both the Paris agreement and the climate authority's report on the policies we need to ensure we deliver on our commitment, most certainly are.

I've never believed that if you can't have it all, you're better off having nothing. Nor that if you make a less than perfect start, this precludes you from getting better over time.

Our commitment – reached when Tony Abbott was still in charge – is to reduce our emissions of carbon dioxide by 26 to 28 per cent on their level in 2005 by 2030.

This is less demanding than many other countries' commitments and, in any case, all the commitments aren't enough to achieve the stated goal of limiting global warming to below 2 degrees.

Although the climate authority was established by Julia Gillard, the Coalition has replaced most of its members with people not known for their deep commitment to environmentalism.

It's chaired by a former director of the National Farmers Federation, joined by, among others, a former Liberal chief minister and boss of a top industry lobby, and a former National Party minister.

When Abbott abolished Gillard's euphemistically named "price on carbon" – it was an emissions trading scheme, but initially with the price set by the government at $23 a tonne of carbon dioxide – he replaced it with a "direct action plan" consisting of a taxpayer-funded emissions reduction fund used to pay farmers and others to reduce their emissions.

This was combined with a "safeguard mechanism" designed to prevent gains from the purchased reductions being undone by increases in emissions elsewhere in the economy.

Under the safeguard, about 140 large businesses that each have plants with direct emissions of more than 100,000 tonnes a year have been given an emissions "baseline" they must not exceed.

Many experts have criticised direct action as inadequate to achieve our new commitments, especially considering the government's budget pressures.

The greenie evangelists are calling on the government to confess the error of its ways, repent its manifold sins, scrap its evil direct action plan and replace it with measures so politically painful as to prove it is truly born again.

The climate authority's proposals are a little more conscious of politicians' aversion to losing face. They thus have a good chance of being accepted.

Whatever it says, the government must know its present arrangements are insufficient to meet its international commitments without hugely increased cost to taxpayers.

That's particularly true since, as the authority points out, the Paris agreement itself requires countries to review and improve their commitments over time.

The authority avoids the trap of proposing the government scrap what it's doing and start again from scratch. Rather, it shows how the government can build on its existing policies to strengthen its efforts.

Rather than proposing restoration of an emissions trading scheme, or the imposition of some economy-wide carbon tax, the authority takes the less economically virtuous but more practical approach of choosing between price-based and regulation-based measures, depending on the circumstances of particular industries.

That's why its report is titled Towards a Climate Policy Toolkit.

Since electricity generation is by far the greatest emitter of greenhouse gases, the authority proposes that the industry's present baseline under the safeguard mechanism be replaced with an "emissions intensity scheme", whose baseline would be reduced to zero between 2018 and "well before 2050".

In practice, this would require fossil fuel-based generators to subsidise renewable generators, eventually causing almost all generation to be from renewables. It would raise retail electricity prices somewhat, but by far less than under the Gillard scheme.

For other industries covered by the safeguard mechanism, their emissions baselines should decline in line with our Paris commitments.

Elsewhere, the authority wants the government to impose emissions reduction standards on new vehicles, continue and strengthen household appliance standards and building codes, and tighten regulation of emissions from landfill waste.

This toolkit approach minimises the risk of hip-pocket opposition from consumers. Building on existing arrangements rather than starting again is attractive to business groups.

The proposals not only build a bridge for the government to move to policies more adequate to the challenge we face, they build a bridge to a bipartisan climate change policy because the authority's proposals fit well with those Labor took to the election.

And bipartisan policy provides just the certainty needed for business to stop arguing the toss and accept that, since our move to a decarbonised economy is now inevitable, it should get on with adjusting.

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Morrison's unplanned plan to fix the budget

Scott Morrison can use scare tactics in seeking greater support for his task of getting the budget back on track, but he'll do better by spreading the needed sacrifice more fairly. That means holding the line on his superannuation reforms against his own backbenchers.

Morrison isn't alone in fearing that our completion of 25 years of continuous economic growth has left many of us complacent, unaware of the tough measures we needed to put up with to make this success possible and, equally, the further discomfort needed to keep it going.

There's truth to this, no doubt. But I doubt that scare tactics are the way to puncture that complacency and win wider acceptance that we all need to take some pain for the greater good.

Morrison's claim in his latest speech that, given a host of dire but unstated assumptions, federal gross debt could reach a trillion dollars in a decade, is an easy way to get a headline but is unlikely to make anyone more amenable to unpopular budget measures.

Does the man not realise that, after decades of dishonest dealing with voters by both sides of politics, no politician has the credibility to have such extreme claims believed – or even remembered?

More fundamentally, do Morrison and his Treasury advisers not realise that their practice of exaggerating the budget deficit by refusing to distinguish between capital and recurrent spending – by, in effect, claiming that failing to pay for long-lived public infrastructure fully in the year of construction is financially irresponsible – is wearing thin and robbing them of support from the more economically literate?

The truth, if the budget papers are to be believed, is that the recurrent budget is already close to balance – which is not to say we shouldn't now aim for a period of recurrent surpluses so as to liquidate the part of our accumulated debt arising from earlier recurrent deficits.

No, a better way to win public acceptance of unpleasant budget measures is to demonstrate that the burden of restraint is being spread fairly between the bottom, middle and top income-earners.

The biggest single reason the Coalition has, from the beginning, met such resistance to budget repair from the public – and, therefore, the Senate – is its blatant lack of concern for fairness.

Remembering our tightly means-tested welfare system, to start from the premise that the budget has a spending problem, but not a revenue problem, is to pre-ordain that your savings measures will focus on spending programs benefiting the bottom and middle, while ignoring the "tax expenditures" favouring the top.

The Coalition's first term is testament to the truth that making budget repair conditional on achieving smaller government – lower government spending without any increase in taxation – is a recipe for failure on both.

Ostensibly, Morrison's talk of "the taxed and taxed-not" and repetition of his mendacious claim that "you don't encourage growth by taxing it more" suggest he's learnt nothing about the compromises he himself must make if he's to succeed in repairing the budget.

But things have changed, as witness Morrison's weasel-word acceptance of the need for measures to "protect the integrity of our tax base".

This year's (still unpassed) budget was aimed not at budget repair but at tax reform. To this end it nicked Labor's plan for further huge increases in tobacco tax, introduced convincing measures to greatly increase taxes paid by multinationals and cut back and redistributed superannuation tax breaks for high-income earners.

Even its $6-a-week tax cut for the top quarter of taxpayers is insufficient to prevent income tax increasing through continuing bracket creep, let alone give back proceeds from the creep that occurred under the Coalition's previous two budgets.

These tax increases were made to help cover the initial costs of the 10-year phase-down in the rate of company tax, of course. Over its life, however, the tax package looked to be "budget negative".

But here's the trick: Morrison looks a lot more likely to get his various tax increases through the new Senate than his cut in company tax.

If so, he'll end up doing a lot to improve the budget balance, and doing it in a much fairer way than all the collected penny-pinching in his $6 billion "omnibus bill", as revealed by Jessica Irvine.

But the perception of greater fairness, as well as the saving to the budget – both initially and in subsequent build-up – will be hit hard should the revolt by a few government backbenchers over the super changes succeed in letting a handful of rich Liberal supporters off the hook.

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Combatting climate change: let's try Plan D

Just as they say there's more than one way to skin a cat, so there are a lot of ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and "decarbonise" the economy. We've tried three ways so far, and now we may try a fourth.

The Rudd government tried to introduce an emissions trading scheme in 2009, but it was blocked in the Senate when the Greens joined the Tony Abbott-led opposition in voting it down.

When the Greens came to their senses, the Gillard government introduced a carbon tax in 2012, which it preferred to refer to euphemistically as "a price on carbon".

When Abbott came to power in 2013, he abolished the carbon tax and replaced it with "direct action" - using an emissions reduction fund to pay farmers and others to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.

But this week the government's Climate Change Authority recommended that the fund be supplemented by imposing an "emissions intensity scheme" on the nation's generators of electricity, so we could be sure of achieving the commitments the Abbott government made at the Paris climate conference last year.

Confused? Let me explain how an emissions intensity scheme would work and how it differs from its three predecessors. I think, given all the circumstances, it would be an improvement.

All four approaches are "economic instruments" which seek to use prices - rather than simple government laws about what we may and may not do - to encourage people to change their behaviour in ways the government desires.

Direct action just involves paying people to do things, whereas the other three are more sophisticated schemes, designed years ago by economists, to change market prices in ways that discourage some activities and encourage others.

Historically, economists have debated the relative merits of carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes, even though they are close relations.

If you look closely, however, you find that Julia Gillard's "price on carbon" was actually a hybrid of the two. It started out as a carbon tax because the government fixed the initial price at $23 a tonne.

But the plan was that after a couple of years, the price would be set free to be determined by the market, thus turning it into a trading scheme.

An emissions trading scheme - also called a "cap and trade" scheme - involves the government setting a limit on the total quantity of carbon emissions it's prepared to let producers emit, then requiring individual producers to acquire a permit for each tonne of carbon they let loose.

Producers who discover they're holding more permits than they need are allowed to sell them to (trade them with) producers who discover they're not holding enough.

The government would slowly reduce the number of permits it issued each year. This reduction in the supply of permits relative to the demand for them would force up their price.

The higher cost would be reflected in the retail prices of emissions-intensive goods and services, but particularly the prices of electricity and natural gas.

This, in turn, would encourage businesses and households to use energy less wastefully, as well as encouraging producers to find ways of reducing emissions during the production process.

The third scheme economists have invented, the emissions intensity scheme (a class of "baseline and credit" schemes), has similarities with emissions trading schemes.

The government takes the total emissions of an industry - in this case, the electricity industry - during a year and divides it by the industry's total production of electricity during the year, measured in megawatt hours, to give the industry's average "emissions intensity" - C0₂ per MWh.

Those producers within the industry whose emissions intensity exceeds this "baseline" must buy "credits" to offset their excess emissions, from those producers whose intensity is below the baseline, or face government penalties.

In practice, this would mean brown and black coal generators having to buy offset credits from combined-cycle gas, wind and solar generators, benefiting the latter at the expense of the former.

The Climate Change Authority recommends that the intensity baseline be reduced each year by a fixed percentage until it reaches zero "well before" 2050.

If the scheme began in 2018 and was to reach zero by, say, 2040, the baseline would have to be reduced by 4.5 per cent a year (100 divided by 22).

So the absolute size of the reduction in emissions required would be high in the early years, but get smaller over time.

A great political attraction is, whereas the other schemes raise the price of every unit of electricity, the intensity scheme just shifts costs between different parts of the industry, meaning the average price increase should be small.

There would be some price rise, however, because the production costs of renewable generators are higher than those for fossil-fuel generators, and the scheme would increase the proportion of renewable energy in total production.

Just how high the price had to go would depend to a big extent on the effects of further economies of scale and further advances in technology in reducing the average cost of producing renewable energy.

An economic advantage of the intensity scheme is that it wouldn't be open to trading permits with other countries' emissions trading schemes (especially the European Union's, where the carbon price has collapsed) nor to dodgy emissions credits from developing countries.

The main economic drawback of an intensity scheme is that, by not doing a lot to raise the price of electricity, it wouldn't do much to encourage businesses and households to reduce their demand for electricity.

To counter this, the authority proposes that generators needing to buy offset credits be allowed to meet their requirements by purchasing "white certificates" from existing state government schemes which offer incentives to firms that do things to reduce their power use.

Let's hope the new approach brings some action.

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THE STRUGGLING AUSTRALIAN ECONOMY

September 2016

We are living through times when there’s a fair bit of bad economic news, but most of that news is coming from abroad. America’s economy is not growing strongly enough for the Federal Reserve to risk getting on with its intention to raise the official interest rate from its present level not far from zero. Britain’s decision to leave the European Union means it economy is likely to slump, which won’t help the rest of Europe, whose growth is weak as it struggles to hold the euro currency area together. Japan is continuing many years of weak growth. And China’s economy has slowed as it makes the transition from investment-led to consumption-led growth.

All this bad news is well publicised in Australia, so many Aussies assume our economy must be quite weak, too. Or, if it's been going OK to date, it must be slowing. It’s true that we can’t be unaffected by the weaker growth of our trading partners, but it’s also true that our economy is affected mainly by purely domestic factors. And the effects of those domestic factors mean it’s not true that our growth is weak, nor that our economy is slowing. Recent quarterly national accounts show the economy is growing at the annual rate of 3 per cent, and the Reserve Bank’s forecast is for it to stay growing at 3 per cent for the next few years. This a much better rate than most other developed economies are achieving.

As we’ll see in a moment, growth of 3 per cent is actually a fraction faster than our “potential” growth rate, which should be sufficient to at least hold the rate of unemployment steady, even allow it to fall a little. And, indeed, over the year to July, the trend rate of unemployment has fallen from 6.1 per cent to 5.6 per cent, where it seems to have stabilised.

But since 5.6 per cent is still above our NAIRU - our non-accelerating-inflation rate of unemployment - as demonstrated by our high rate of under-employment, but also by our exceptionally low rates of inflation and wages growth, it’s clear the labour market and the rest of the economy still has a fair bit of idle capacity. In other words at present we have a negative “output gap”. Earlier years of below-potential growth mean the economy could grow for a few years at a rate well above our medium-term potential growth rate as we return to full capacity - full employment - without any risk of excessive inflation. This is why, though our present growth rate is OK, it would be good to see it a bit higher.

The new era of slower growth

It’s tempting to think the slower rate of growth in the world economy is essentially “cyclical” - that is, many economies are still in the process of recovering from the global financial crisis of 2008 and the Great Recession it precipitated. There is truth to this, but many economists have concluded that part of the slowdown is “structural” - it has deeper, longer-lasting causes. In other words, the world economy - but particularly the developed economies - seem to have entered an era of slower growth. Remembering that the causes of economic growth can be decomposed into the Three Ps - population, participation and productivity - the developed countries have slower rates of population growth and growth in the population of working age (15 to 64). Population ageing as the baby boomers retire is lowering the overall rate of participation in the labour force. And the rate of productivity improvement (output per unit of input) has slowed and seems likely to stay slow, for reasons economists are still debating. One factor is that a slower-growing and ageing population has less reason to increase investment in business equipment and infrastructure.

Australia’s lower potential growth rate

Australia is no exception to this move to permanently slower growth for structural reasons. You can see this in the way the econocrats have been revising down their estimate of our “potential” growth rate. Our potential growth rate is determined by the supply-side of the economy, rather than the demand side. It is the average rate of growth in the economy’s capacity to produce goods and services over the medium term. It can be raised by growth in the labour force, growth in investment in business equipment and infrastructure and improvement in productivity. Once the economy is operating at full capacity utilisation - full employment - it sets the speed limit at which the economy can grow without excessive inflation. But while the economy is operating with spare production capacity - that is, while it has a negative “output gap” - it can grow at rates exceeding the potential rate without worsening inflation.

An economy’s output gap is a measure of the extent of its spare production capacity. Where its actual rate of growth is lower than its potential growth rate, the difference contributes to a negative output gap. Where the actual rate of growth is higher than the potential rate of growth, and economy is at full employment, the difference is a positive output gap, which will be causing inflation pressure to build. Note that, because the economy’s ability to produce goods and services gets a bit bigger almost every year, potential is a rate of growth.  By contrast, the output gap is an absolute amount - the deference between one level of GDP and another level.

It’s hard to calculate an economy’s potential growth rate (or, for that matter, its NAIRU) with any degree of certainty. And the rate will change over time as the factors affecting it change. For a long time Australia’s potential rate - often referred to as our (forward-looking) “trend” rate of growth -was taken to be 3.25 per cent a year. But then this was lowered to 3 per cent and last year it was cut further to 2.75 per cent. Why? Because of slower population growth since the end of the resources investment boom, because the retirement of the baby boomers is lowering the labour force participation rate (only partly offset by the trend to later retirement) and because, as is true for all the developed economies, Australia’s rate of productivity growth is lower than it used to be.

It’s roughly estimated that, because of many years of weak growth until the past year or so, our negative output gap is equivalent to about 1.5 per cent of GDP. That is, actual growth could be a cumulative 1.5 percentage points higher than the potential rate before we reached full capacity and had to slow down to the potential rate to avoid excessive inflation. But each year that we grow by more than 2.75 per cent will take up spare capacity and reduce the output gap.

Now let’s turn to recent developments in the management of the macro economy using monetary policy and fiscal policy, starting with monetary.

Monetary policy

Monetary policy - the manipulation of interest rates to influence the strength of demand - is conducted by the RBA independent of the elected government. It is the primary instrument by which the managers of the economy pursue internal balance - low inflation and low unemployment. MP is conducted in accordance with the inflation target: to hold the inflation rate between 2 and 3 pc, on average, over the cycle. The primary instrument of MP is the overnight cash rate, which the RBA controls via market operations.

The RBA cut the official interest rate hard in response to the GFC in 2008, but then put rates back up once it became clear a serious recession had been averted.

In November 2011, the Reserve decided the resources boom was easing and would not push up inflation. It realised growth in the non-mining sector of the economy was weak - held down particularly by the dollar’s failure to fall back in line with the fall in export prices – at a time when mining-driven growth was about to weaken. So it began cutting the cash rate, getting it down to a historic low of 2.5 per cent by August 2013.

For the next 18 months the Reserve sat back and waited for this very low interest rate work through the economy and have its effect. Not all that much happened, with the economy continuing to grow at a below-trend rate. The dollar did start falling in the first half of 2013, and by June 2015 it had dropped to about US77 cents (from its peak of US1.10 in mid-2011), but this would have been explained much more by the continuing fall in coal and iron ore export prices than by our lower interest rates relative those in the major advanced economies. The Reserve continued to note that the exchange rate hadn’t fallen by as much as the fall in commodity prices implied it should have, explaining this as a consequence of the major advanced economies’ resort to “quantitative easing” (money creation), whose main stimulatory effect on their economies came by forcing their exchange rates lower (thus causing ours to be higher than otherwise).

So in February 2015, after a gap of 18 months, the Reserve resumed cutting rates, dropping the official rate another notch, and again in May, to reach a new low of just 2 pc. It resumed cutting a year later, in May 2016, and then by another notch in August, taking the cash rate to a new record low of 1.5 per cent. There is little reason to doubt that the total fall of 3.75 percentage points since November 2011 has helped to hasten growth the non-mining sector of the economy. In particular, it prompted the boom in the housing market, causing big increases in house prices and new home building, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne. How much the lower rates contributed to the fall in the exchange rate is debatable.

The further rate cuts in 2016 were made possible by the weakness in inflation and wages growth, with the inflation rate falling short of the target range. It’s doubtful whether the Reserve expects the recent cuts to do much to encourage borrowing and spending. More likely it is hoping that lowering our rates - which are still high relative to rates in the major economies - will exert some downward pressure on our exchange rate, thus improving the international price competitiveness of our export and import-competing industries. In his final speech, retiring Reserve governor Glenn Stevens acknowledged that the effectiveness of monetary has been reduced by the already-high debt level of Australian households, which has limited their willingness to borrow more so as to spend more - the main mechanism by which lower interests stimulate demand. Mr Stevens noted that Australia’s households are far more heavily indebted than our government, arguing that, if further policy stimulus is needed, it should come from fiscal policy: increased public borrowing and spending, provided that spending is on useful infrastructure rather than recurrent expenses.

Fiscal policy

Fiscal policy - the manipulation of government spending and taxation in the budget - is conducted according to the Turnbull government’s medium-term fiscal strategy: “to achieve budget surpluses, on average, over the medium term”. This means the primary role of discretionary fiscal policy is to achieve “fiscal sustainability” - that is, to ensure we don’t build up an unsustainable level of public debt. However, the strategy leaves room for the budget’s automatic stabilisers to be unrestrained in assisting monetary policy in pursuing internal balance. It also leaves room for discretionary fiscal policy to be used to stimulate the economy and thus help monetary policy manage demand, in exceptional circumstances - such as the GFC - provided the stimulus measures are temporary.

The Abbott government’s first budget, in 2014, set out a program of largely delayed measures to return the budget to surplus over a number of years. The measures focused heavily on cutting spending programs of benefit to low and middle-income families, ignoring the many overly generous tax concessions on superannuation, negative gearing and capital gains tax, whose benefits go predominantly to high income-earners. Because many of the spending cuts were contrary to Mr Abbott’s election promises, and many were judged to be unfair, the budget caused a plunge in the Abbott government’s popularity, from which it never recovered. Many of its cuts were blocked in the Senate.

The Abbott government’s second budget, in 2015, made little further attempt to reduce the budget deficit and seemed to focus mainly on measures intended to restore the government’s standing in the opinion polls. The deficit in 2015-16 was twice the size of the deficit in 2012-13.

The Turnbull government’s first budget, in 2016, attempted to do no more than hold the line on the deficit while it introduced a package of tax reform measures. It propose a minor cut in income tax, but its centrepiece was a plan to cut the rate of company tax from 30 to 25 per cent, phased in over 10 years. To help cover the cost of this cut, the budget sought to increase taxes in three main ways: by big increases in the tax on tobacco, a very worthwhile reduction in superannuation tax concessions and a serious crackdown on tax avoidance by multinational companies. The government is likely to have more success in getting these tax increases through the Senate than its cuts in company tax for big business. If so, its budget may end up making a useful contribution to reducing the budget deficit.

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There are few "taxed-nots" apart from the elderly

It's a sad day when economic commentators like me have to spend so much time explaining what's wrong or misleading about the things the federal Treasurer says, rather than backing up his efforts to educate the public on economic realities and helping him fight for sensible though unpopular policies.

To be fair, Scott Morrison did have useful points to make in his big speech last week, his first major contribution since the election.

But then he veered off onto reinforcing the mythology of the greedy well-off, who resent being taxed to help those less fortunate than themselves.

He announced there was a new divide in the community – "the taxed and the taxed-nots".

"A generation has grown up in an environment where receiving payments from the government is not seen as the reserve of those who unfortunately will be forever dependent on support or in need of a hand up, but a common and expected component of their income over their entire life cycle," he said.

"On current settings, more Australians today are likely to go through their entire lives without ever paying tax, than for generations.

"More Australians are also likely today to be net beneficiaries of the government than contributors – never paying more tax than they receive in government payments."

Get it? Here are you and I, working hard all our lives, having far too much of that income taken off us in tax. Yet out there somewhere, living in suburbs we rarely visit, is a growing army of bludgers who don't bother working, but find some way of conning the government into paying their way.

Now, apparently, a lot more of them will go their entire lives without paying more in tax than they get back in benefits.

This is self-pitying fantasy. It's not the disadvantaged we should feel sorry for, it's you, slaving away in Mosman or Brighton.

It's an imaginary picture of the world. It's the conspiracy theory you'd expect from One Nation, not the federal Treasurer.

It's built on a few simple tricks. It hopes you won't remember that Australia's social security system is the most tightly means tested among the developed countries, paying flat amounts that aren't at all generous – which is the main reason we pay less tax than most.

And it hopes you won't remember that we pay many more taxes than income tax. Personal income tax accounts for only a little over half the federal taxes we pay. Add in state and local taxes, and income tax accounts for 40 per cent of all taxes.

So the notion that people who don't work don't pay tax is silly. Even taking account of benefits received, next to no one goes through their life being "taxed-not".

It's true we spend almost $160 billion a year on social security – most of it going on pensions and benefits – which accounts for more than a third of all federal spending.

Official figures show there are about 5.2 million recipients of federal "income support". So who are these bludgers? People on the dole? They account for just 13 per cent.

Sole parents? They're 5 per cent. People at home being "carers"? Just 4 per cent.

I know, all those people faking bad backs on the disability support pension. Sorry, that's only 16 per cent.

So where are the rest of the people not pulling their weight and expecting us to support them? Well, half the people on income support are people on age or service pensions.

Oh. You mean the people who keep saying they're entitled to the pension because they "paid taxes all their lives". The people whose investment advisers helped them have lots of other income, but still get the pension.

And that doesn't count all the retired people paying no income tax on their income from superannuation, at present no matter how huge.

Nor does it count all those bludging parents getting the family tax benefit or those bludging mothers expecting us to help with the cost of childcare so they can go to work.

Family benefits and childcare subsidies account for more than a quarter of federal spending on pensions and benefits.

What, not quite so many lazy loafers as you expected?

The Australian Bureau of Statistics conducts a study where it attempts to allocate as many taxes as possible from all levels of government to each of Australia's 8 million-plus households, while also allocating as many cash and in-kind benefits as possible from all governments.

Morrison ought to look at the most recent study, for 2009-10, particularly page 41. It shows that whether we pay more to the government than we get back in benefits changes as we move through the life cycle.

It shows that, on average, single people of working age pay a lot more than they get back, as do couples without dependent kids.

Couples with a few kids pretty much break even or get back a bit more than they pay, but the people who really clean up are the retired.

Elderly couples are ahead to the tune of about $690 a week, on average, with elderly singles getting $475 a week, mainly because they pay little income tax but get huge health benefits along with the pension.

ScoMo isn't smart enough to know it, but in disparaging the "taxed-nots" he's really attacking the old.

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Our other problem: xenophilia towards foreign investment

There are few topics on which there's more irrational thinking than foreign investment. Trouble is, the illogic comes as much from economists and policy makers as it does from uncomprehending punters.

Sometimes I think the wonky thinking by the economic literates is an overreaction to the crazy prejudices of the economic illiterates.

The punters think we can decide not to sell off the farm – not to allow foreigners to buy Australian businesses – without that having any economic consequences. Without the decline in foreign capital inflow leading to slower economic growth and a slower-rising material standard of living.

Of course, there's no reason the electorate shouldn't decide to trade off less foreign ownership for a standard of living that's lower than it could be, provided people understand the price they're paying.

The econocrats go the other way, exaggerating our dependence on foreign investment and other capital inflow.

Econocrats have the knowledge that we're a "capital-importing country" burnt into their brains. They live in eternal fear that one wrong move could reduce the inflow to a trickle, stuffing us completely.

They preach the need for us to attract more foreign investment even while they worry that the dollar's too high – another example of how long it's taking economists to adjust their "priors" (long-held beliefs) to a world of floating exchange rates.

I can't think of a time when we've had too little foreign investment. Even when the dollar briefly fell below US50¢ in 2000 there was no obvious problem.

Another silliness about the econocrats' conviction that we can never have enough foreign investment is their assumption that prices – specifically, the rates at which various taxes are set – will be the overwhelming factor determining how much we get.

Treasury continually lectures us on how globalisation has made it easier to move financial capital between tax jurisdictions, thus making the quest for foreign investment far more "competitive".

This, we're assured, makes it imperative we have tax rates that are competitive with far less attractive investment destinations, including developing countries a fraction of our size, where cronyism and corruption are rife, and you can't be sure of getting fair treatment in the courts.

Only economists, mesmerised by their model – which ignores all factors that can't be measured in dollars – would be silly enough to imagine that decisions about where in the world to set up business would be made without reference to non-quantifiable factors.

That global companies such as Google or Apple would refuse to do business in Australia because our company tax rate is higher than Singapore's.

Yet the need to be more price-competitive in the quest for foreign investment is advanced as almost the only argument needed to justify a cut in company tax. That there'd be nothing in it for domestic shareholders is treated as beside the point.

John Howard's decision in 1999 to discount by half the rate of tax on capital gains was justified on the grounds that it would attract lots of investment by foreign fund managers. Never mentioned again.

In their revulsion against the public's "economic nationalism", the econocrats have gone to the opposite extreme of assuming all foreign investment is good and we can never get enough.

When it suited the world's big mining companies to come to Oz and engage in a decade-long frenzy to build more mines before China went off the boil, it never occurred to our policy makers to make the miners form an orderly queue.

Rather, we let them turn our economy upside down. We saw our job as ensuring the miners' frenzy didn't cause an inflation surge, using high interest rates and tolerating a hugely overvalued exchange rate to suppress the non-mining economy and allow the miners to get all the resources they wanted.

We did lasting damage to our manufacturing and tourism industries to allow the miners to have their rowdy party.

We're left with a huge, capital-intensive, 80 per cent foreign-owned mining industry that employs just a handful of Australians.

Its foreign ownership wouldn't matter so much if it was paying its fair whack of tax. But we let the miners con us out of imposing a sensible resource rent tax, and now we discover they're turning legal somersaults to minimise the company tax they pay.

The econocrats have become so defensive towards foreign investment they've forgotten the most basic reason for having and managing an economy: self-interest.

Foreign investment is a means, not an end. It's not our job to make our economy a playground for foreign companies.

We should welcome them and tolerate their self-interested, rent-seeking behaviour only to the extent that it leaves us better off.

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Foreign investment helped to make us rich

If foreign investment in Australian businesses is so unpopular with so many people and such a hot potato for Malcolm Turnbull and his government, why do we persist with it?

Short answer: because we prefer our material standard of living to go up, not down.

This week an Essential poll revealed the full extent of the public's reservations about foreign investment. Foreign investment in mining was regarded as "bad for the economy" by 28 per cent of respondents.

For investment in ports it was 37 per cent and for investment in agriculture it was 44 per cent. For investment in infrastructure such as electricity it was 45 per cent and for investment in real estate it was 54 per cent.

The most opposed to foreign investment were voters for minor parties such as One Nation and the Xenophones​, but Greens voters weren't far behind. Then came Labor voters and, finally, voters for the Coalition.

But even among Coalition supporters there were almost always more saying it was bad than saying it was good.

When you remember that our level of material prosperity has been dependent on foreign investment since the arrival of the First Fleet, it's a wonder so few punters can join the dots.

Viewed through economic eyes, the First Fleet was just the arrival in this country of its first foreign investor, in boats laden with labour, materials and supplies, intent on getting a new subsidiary going.

There were a lot of imports with, on the other side of the transaction, an inflow of foreign capital owned by the British government.

The term's gone out of fashion, but since white settlement Australia has always been a "capital-importing country".

To develop a country economically you need lots of money - known here as financial capital - to pay for all the construction and equipment, known as physical capital. Where does this money come from? Someone has to save it by not consuming all their income.

Ideally, all the savings necessary to finance the economic development of our country would come from Australians. Then we'd own everything ourselves and all the profits would belong to us.

But we've always had a small population relative to the huge opportunities to farm our land, exploit our untold mineral wealth and develop our economy in many other respects, such as making ourselves an attractive destination for tourists and university students.

So, from the beginning, we've always invited foreigners to bring their savings to Australia and help us develop our economy much faster than we could if we relied solely on our own savings. That's what makes us a capital-importing country.

The attraction to the foreigners is that they own the businesses they build and keep the profits they make.

The attraction to us is we get a bigger economy than we otherwise would. The foreign firms provide a lot of employment for Aussies, buy a lot of their supplies from local businesses and, of course, pay tax to our government on their profits.

That's always been the deal. Had we kept the foreigners out, our economy and population would now be much smaller than they are and, in consequence, our standard of living would be much lower than it is.

At first the foreigners most willing to invest in Oz were the Brits. Then it was the Americans, then for a few decades the Japanese, and now the Chinese.

I'm old enough to remember when it was American investment that people objected to when we first started worrying about "selling off the farm".

But when the Japanese economy was riding high in the 1970s and '80s, and Japan began looking for profitable investments here, I remember how much the farmers carried on. They thought Japanese feed lots were the beginning of the end of Oz.

The Japanese came and stayed and eventually the farmers realised they were no threat. But now it's the Chinese, and farmers are back to manning the barricades. They're going to dig up our farms and take them back to China.

You know they will because their skin's a different colour. Or maybe they'll sabotage the communications and power networks they now own, just before they invade us.

The globalisation of financial markets has made it much easier for money to move between countries and thus complicated the picture I've just described.

These days, we can borrow foreigners' savings, not just let them set up new businesses here. And it's easier to sell them existing businesses.

It's easier for foreigners to buy some shares in listed Australian companies (known as "portfolio investment") rather than acquiring a controlling interest in a new or existing business ("foreign direct investment").

Before globalisation, countries tended to be either owners of many foreign businesses ("equity capital") or to have a lot of their businesses owned by foreigners. They either owed a lot of money ("debt capital") to foreigners or foreigners owed them a lot of money.

These days, every country does a lot of both. At March this year, we owed $2126 billion to foreigners, while foreigners owed us $1098 billion, leaving us with net foreign debt of $1028 billion.

Foreigners had equity investments in Oz worth $996 billion, while we had equity investments in other countries worth $1012 billion, leaving us with net foreign equity assets of $16 billion. You read that right.

But if this makes you think we'd be better off borrowing all the savings we need rather than selling off the farm, remember this final complication: foreign direct investors in Australian businesses don't just bring their savings, they also bring their managerial skills and often their more advanced technology, which Australian workers learn to use and then take on to local businesses.

And in this ever more integrated world, foreign investment and international trade tend to go together. Going for trade without investment is another way to be poorer than necessary.

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We shouldn't feel bad about leaving public debt to our kids

There are a lot of nice people in the world, people who worry about all the debt we're leaving to our kids and grandkids. I know this from the letters I get from people.

I got an email from a retired couple who said they'd be happy to pay more – a 15 per cent goods and services tax, medical co-payments or even a 10 per cent increase in income tax – if only it was guaranteed that the money was spent "to pay down debt, not rack up more with populist promises".

Unfortunately, there are no nice people in politics. Or, if a few start out that way, they soon get it beaten out of them.

Last week, in his first big speech since he was re-elected – the one so rudely interrupted by some woman who thought the mistreatment of asylum seekers on remote islands was something worth drawing to our attention – Malcolm Turnbull decided to tug on the heartstrings of nice people everywhere.

"We sing Advance Australia Fair," he said, "but there's nothing more unfair than saddling our children and our grandchildren with mountains of debt that we have created because our generation could not live within its means.

"If we aren't prepared to make the tough choices today – younger Australians, future generations, will be forced to pay back the debt through a combination of higher taxes and a lower quantity or diminished quality of government services. In short, through lower living standards than they would otherwise have enjoyed."

Sorry, but that's not true. It's roughly the opposite of the truth. And I don't believe someone as smart as Turnbull actually believes it.

But before we go on, how's this for one of the "tough choices" about fairness Turnbull wants our elected representatives to agree to in this year's budget: cutting the dole – which is a princely $38 a day – and other welfare payments by $4.40 a week, while agreeing to tax cuts of $6 a week for people earning more than $87,000 a year.

The justification for the cut in benefits is that it represents the belated removal of the "energy allowance" originally paid in compensation for the carbon tax. Since Tony Abbott abolished that tax, the allowance is no longer needed.

Now that is a tough choice. Is it fair to cut the benefits of low income-earners because we're "living beyond our means" while we cut the taxes of high income-earners?

But are we living beyond our means? What does that phrase mean, anyway?

Is any person or government that's borrowing money living beyond their means? That's what the politicians who keep repeating that line hope we'll assume.

A moment's reflection reveals its weakness. Say your offspring borrow a frighteningly large amount so they can live in a home of their own. Does that mean they're living beyond their means?

No, of course not. Not if they can afford the repayments. And not when you remember that the house they've bought will deliver them a flow of services for as long as they own it.

What service? It's providing them with somewhere to live – and thus relieving them of the expense of renting.

If I told you of a couple with a debt of $600,000, would you automatically assume they had nothing to show for that debt? No, you'd assume they must have bought a house and may well have made a sound investment.

But when politicians tell us the government owes many billions of dollars, many of us assume there's nothing to show for all that spending and borrowing. Which is just what game-playing politicians hope we'll assume.

But it's usually not true. What do governments have to show for all their borrowing? Public infrastructure – roads and motorways, bridges, railways and bus fleets, hospitals and schools, prisons and police stations and all manner of other facilities.

All those things contribute to our standard of living and to the efficiency of our economy. Do you think we'd be better off had the money not been borrowed and those things not been built?

Since we worry about our children and grandchildren, what kind of physical Australia do we want them to inherit? One with rundown and inadequate public facilities – one where it's really hard to get around, where roads and trains and hospitals and schools are grossly overcrowded?

If we continue letting our politicians demonise public debt, that's the world we'll be leaving for our descendants.

It's true we'll be leaving debt to our children. But we'll also be leaving them a better equipped, better educated and healthier Australia. Does this add up to something to worry about or feel guilty over?

According to the federal budget papers, almost all of the expected underlying cash deficit of $37 billion this financial year will be spent on infrastructure.

Most infrastructure spending is done by the state governments. Much of what they spend each year building facilities that will serve the community for 30 or 40 years or more is covered by that year's tax revenue (including federal grants), the rest is borrowed – to be serviced and repaid by the people who'll still be using those facilities.

It's the self-same bargain that was made with our generation. Sounds a fair and sensible way to keep building a better future.

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Time for new thinking on reforms to encourage growth

Disheartening times are times for fresh thinking. The voters' effective rejection of conventional economic solutions at the election require our economists and policy makers to go back to the drawing board.

It's always tempting to blame the salesman for his failure to make a sale but, of late, that argument is wearing thin. It's more useful to ask whether sales would be more forthcoming if we improved the product.

Everyone accepts the importance of innovation and agile thinking but, as with most professions, it doesn't come easy to economic practitioners.

They need to go back over their thinking, looking for factors they may have missed or conclusions that aren't as solid as they've long assumed.

One simplifying assumption economists have long relied on is that "equity" and "efficiency" are in conflict. The things you could do make the economy fairer come at the cost of reducing incentives and causing the economy to grow more slowly.

Conversely, the things you could do to improve incentives and growth will, regrettably, make the economy less fair.

On this, however, the tide of international opinion is turning. Several studies by economists at the International Monetary Fund and the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development find that increased inequality of income leads to slower economic growth.

If this advance in understanding of ways to encourage growth has filtered through to "the government's chief economic advisers" in Treasury, we've yet to see any sign of it.

But the message hasn't been lost on the Labor Party's think tank, the Chifley Research Centre. In a paper prepared for the centre, Equity Economics, a consultancy, explains the two mechanisms by which inequality can dampen economic growth.

First, the more of the growth in income that's captured by high income earners, the less income that flows back into consumption.

This is because high-income households tend to save a much higher proportion of their income than do middle and particularly low-income households.

It's clear this is a big problem in the United States, where a quite amazing proportion of income growth is being captured by the top few percent of households.

It would be a significant factor in helping to explain America's low rate of growth in recent decades.

It's not such a big factor in Australia yet, but it will be if we let our top few percent continue increasing their share at the rate they have been.

The second mechanism by which inequality dampens economic growth is longer term. Lower growth in the incomes of families towards the bottom of the distribution limits their ability improve their knowledge and skills by investing in their own education.

The same applies when governments shifting more of the cost of healthcare on to out-of-pocket payments discourage workers from doing all they should to protect their health.

The Gini coefficient measures income inequality on a worsening scale from 0 to 1. Modelling by the OECD has found that a reduction of 1 percentage point in the coefficient will cause the level real gross domestic product in 25 years' time to be up to 5.7 per cent higher than otherwise.

To err on the conservative side, Equity Economics caps the increase at 3 per cent, before comparing it with modelling exercises showing that the national competition policy reforms of the 1990s raised the level of GDP by 2.5 per cent, and that the combined preferential trade agreements with Japan, South Korea and China will raise the level of GDP by just 0.1 per cent over the long term.

Now, I never take such modelling results too seriously. They rest on too many unstated and debatable assumptions. But the comparison does suggest there's a lot to be gained by taking steps to halt the continuing widening of the gap between high and low income-earners.

So what sort of reforms could be made to improve growth in this way?

Of the paper's five suggestions, the top two are, first, improve access to quality education to increase economic and social mobility, starting with early childhood education, right through to needs-based student funding and affordable higher education.

Second, improving labour outcomes for women, through flexibility in childcare options, paid parental leave and reducing the gender pay gap so that returning to work is financially viable.

Clearly, such reforms are very different from those that economists have been pursuing – with so little acceptance by voters.

Although their cost could be covered by equity-enhancing tax reforms – affecting negative gearing, the capital gains tax discount, superannuation and the taxation of multinational companies – they require policy makers to be more agile in their thinking than they've been to date.

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Big change ahead for China and our export challenge

You don't need me to tell you we lucked out when we sited our island continent not too far from China. But will our luck hold?

Or, more pointedly, what do we have to do to ensure we stay lucky?

A major report, released this week, Partnership for Change, seeks to answer that question. It was prepared jointly by Professor Peter Drysdale, of the East Asian Bureau of Economic Research at the Australian National University, and Zhang Xiaoqiang, of the China Centre for International Economic Exchanges, with strong support from both governments.

Actually, our location on the edge of Asia is only half our good luck. The other half was discovering our island is rich in high quality, easily-won minerals and energy.

As a result, our economy has proved a fabulous fit with the re-emerging China. As the report explains, "Australia and China are deeply complementary trading partners".

Our "comparative advantage" is opposite to China's. A country has a comparative advantage in producing a particular item if it can do so at lower opportunity cost than other countries face.

"Australia has a large natural resource base relative to its population [so it] therefore specialises in the production of primary goods for export, and uses the proceeds to purchase labour-intensive and other manufactured goods," the report says.

"Conversely, China has a large labour supply, but relative to its population has smaller endowments of natural resources and accumulated capital. For this reason, China's industrial development was built on labour-intensive production, which it exchanges with Australia for imports of scarce resources."

And what a successful partnership it's been. In the space of not much more than a decade, China has become our biggest trading partner. It takes about 35 per cent of our exports of goods and services, and supplies almost 20 per cent of our imports of goods and services.

China is so big - its population is 56 times ours - and has been so successful in pursuing this growth strategy it's now the second biggest economy in the world (the biggest, if you allow for differences in purchasing power), the biggest trading nation and the world's biggest producer of manufactured goods.

But nothing stays the same. The resources boom that saw our trade with China grow so dramatically has reached its final stage. Prices for coal and iron ore have now fallen back.

The period of massive investment in new mines and natural gas facilities is ending, with construction spending falling sharply. The last stage is big growth in the quantity of our mining exports, with large increases in natural gas exports (mainly to China) still to come.

The boom was ended by big increases in the supply of commodities (from our competitors as well as us), but also by a slowing in China's demand as its need for more steel peaked.

So, after a period of huge expansion in our mining sector, our economy is making the adjustment back to normal, where most growth in production and employment comes from the ever-expanding services sector.

This is happening, with a few bumps. But, as part of its progress to full economic development, China is going through a much more dramatic "transition".

The report says China is "shifting its growth drivers from investment, exports and heavy industry to consumption, innovation and services".

"Chinese production is shifting from a model based on adaptation and imitation of goods, services and technologies developed elsewhere, to a model based on domestic innovation", it continues.

Part of this involves a shift from labour-intensive, low-tech, low-value manufacturing to more advanced, high-tech, high-value manufacturing.

This has already started.  Over the 20 years to 2015, low-tech manufacturing's share of China's total exports of goods has shrunk from almost half to less than 30 per cent.

So the big question is whether, now China is changing direction, it will still be the gold mine it's been for us so far.

China will still need to import a lot of our natural resources, even if its demand for those resources won't be growing as fast.

The report notes that, with prices so far down, our share of China's import market has increased markedly. Huh? It's because, compared with our competitors (including local Chinese mines), we're such an efficient, low-cost producer.

The report has modelled three scenarios for our trade with China over the next 10 years. Drysdale stresses the results aren't exact, but give us an idea.

The "baseline" scenario, where existing trends continue without much change, would see our exports to China grow by 72 per cent, while China's exports to us grew by 41 per cent. (All these figures are in real terms.)

The pessimistic scenario sees China's annual growth falling below 5 per cent during the decade. Even so, our exports to China would grow by 28 per cent, while their exports to us grew by 20 per cent.

The optimistic scenario, however, would see our exports to China grow by 120 per cent, while their exports to us grew by 44 per cent.

And the catch? Both countries would need to engage in supply-side (production) reforms to make it happen.

For China, this would involve reforming its banks and financial system, reforming its state-owned enterprises, and liberalising the capital account of its balance of payments by lifting restrictions on money flows and allowing a freer-floating exchange rate.

For us, it would involve increasing competition in sheltered industries, openness to foreign investment and skills, and facilitating investment in social and physical infrastructure.

These are what we'd have to do to make real our dream of getting our share of all the extra demand for fancy food and services coming from China's by-then massive middle class.

Here we'd be battling against a different and much bigger range of competitors than we face in the commodities market. You wonder if our spoilt business people are up to it.

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You have no idea how hard it is for big business

I have disturbing news. The big business people of Australia are feeling quite upset about the recent federal election, or so I am informed by The Australian Financial Review.

Quite frankly – and this is a shocking thing to say – the mood of the campaign was "anti-business". As young people say, big business was disrespected.

Those rotters in the Labor Party were shameless in their behaviour, seeking to win votes by portraying their Liberal opponents as apologists for big business.

Why did the Libs have cutting the rate of company tax as pretty much the only item in their plan for Jobs and Growth? Purely, so the voters were asked to believe, to please the Libs' cronies at "the big end of town".

Why were the Libs so vigorous in their opposition to Labor's idea of a royal commission? Because they were doing the bidding of their big four banking mates, Labor claimed.

Really, it was disgraceful. But perhaps even more depressing was the performance of the Libs.

Malcolm Turnbull, one of our own – and didn't those Labor people keep hinting at it – the man in whom we had such faith after Tony Abbott's failure as their longed-for messiah, has proved such a disappointment.

He may have championed a proposal to cut the company tax rate by a niggardly 5 per cent, but he wanted to string it out over a decade – a decade! With, mind you, big business not getting a penny until close to the end.

Talk about trickling down the trickle down. Surely if lower company tax is the big reform it needs to deliver jobs and growth, the sooner you do it the better. Be decisive. Take risks for the good of the nation.

But Turnbull lacked the leadership to increase the goods and services tax or to cut the top personal tax rate. Such a disappointment.

And he performed so poorly against Labor and the mushrooming populists – when could you ever accuse big business of trying to be popular? – he looks unlikely to be able to deliver on the company tax cut. Such a disappointment.

Then, to top it off, no sooner is the election over than Liberal loudmouths like Michael Kroger start blaming the Business Council of Australia for their poor performance.

The Libs went out to bat for big business, but we failed to back them with donations or ads. There's talk Turnbull had to pay for a lot of the campaign himself.

Well, really. It's not the business council's job to pass round the hat. The Liberals' job is to fight for the interests of big business purely in the national interest.

What part of "all care but no responsibility" do the Libs not understand?

And then there's the way the pollies suck-up to small business. All that bull about small business being "the engine room of the economy".

Yeah, sure. Say it enough times and the punters forget most of them work for big business, not small.

It couldn't be because small business has more votes than we do, could it? We could try telling our employees who to vote for, but I'm not sure we'd get far.

So politicians on both sides are a huge letdown. Why won't they show a bit of leadership? Why won't they put their jobs on the line in the national interest? Don't they think we would?

As for the voters themselves, big business is more in sorrow than in anger. How can you blame people for acting like sheep when they're so badly led?

There are so many crazy ideas abroad that the pollies have failed to scotch. Do you know there are people who think business should be paying more tax, not less?

There are people who can't see why business needs a tax cut when it's already doing such a good job of avoiding paying much. This is so unfair. Some of us do pay quite a lot of what we're supposed to.

The pollies' failure of leadership makes it hard to blame ordinary people for not understanding there's a budget repair job to do and we have to get on with it. There are "harsh realities" that must be faced.

Strong policy action must be taken and the public must be persuaded to take its medicine.

If the budget is to be balanced we all have to give up something. Businesses have already offered to give up some of the tax they pay, and now it's your turn to volunteer.

Government spending is growing unsustainably. Surely you could give up some of those free visits to the doctor. Surely you could pay more for your pharmaceuticals. Surely your pension doesn't need to be so generously indexed.

Someone needs to tell you this: all the talk of a royal commission is reducing confidence in the banking system. Stop it, or on your own head be it.

And lack of support for big business on both sides is sapping confidence in the economy.

I mean, really. With such hopeless politicians and foolish, self-seeking voters, how can big business to get on with its job?

The incompetence and unworthiness around us is so disheartening. It's all we can do to get out of bed each day and collect our pay.

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Why Treasury is wrong on deficits and debt

The last speech of the retiring Reserve Bank governor, Glenn the Baptist, was a touch biblical. Whatever your point of view, you could find a verse here or there that seemed to back you up.

If, for instance, you accept the conventional view that the budget deficit is way too high, that the government should be more daring in seeking to cut the deficit, and its opponents should be less opportunist and more responsible in agreeing to spending cuts, Glenn Stevens offered a verse for you to quote.

He observed that "when specific ideas are proposed that will actually make a difference [to the budget deficit] the conversation quickly shifts to rather narrow notions of 'fairness', people look to their own positions, the interest groups all come out and the specific proposals often run into the sand.

"If we think this rather other-worldly discussion will not have to give way to a more hard-nosed conversation, we are kidding ourselves.

"That will occur should there be a moment of crisis, but it would be better if it occurred before then," he said.

A treasury secretary couldn't have said it better. But look at the totality of Stevens' remarks and he's actually challenging the conventional wisdom.

"As would be clear from my utterances over the past couple of years, I have serious reservations about the extent of reliance on monetary policy around the world."

The problem is that what central banks do could never be enough to fully restore demand after a period of recession associated with a very substantial debt build-up.

"In the end, the most powerful domestic expansionary impetus that comes from low interest rates surely comes when someone has both the balance sheet capacity and the willingness to take on more debt and spend," he said.

"The problem now is that there is a limit to how much we can expect to achieve by relying on already indebted entities taking on more debt.

"In some countries there may be no safe way of [increasing] borrowing and spending because debt, both public and private, is just too high.

"In Australia, gross public debt, for all levels of government, adds up to about 40 per cent of gross domestic product. We are rightly concerned about the future trajectory of this ratio.

"But gross household debt is three time larger – about 125 per cent of GDP. That is not unmanageable – but nor is it a low number."

Get it? He's saying that monetary policy is out of puff. Lowering interest rates is no longer very effective in encouraging households to take on even more debt. (He noted later that he'd never believed cutting rates had much effect on businesses' decisions to increase investment spending.)

So which sector has the most capacity to increase its deficit spending "in the event that we were to need a big demand stimulus"?

The public sector. Sorry, but that's not what a treasury secretary would say.

Stevens was quick to add: "I am not advocating an increase in deficit financing of day-to-day government spending. The case for governments being prepared to borrow for the right investment assets – long-lived assets that yield an economic return – does not extend to borrowing to pay pensions, welfare and routine government expenses, other than under the most exceptional circumstances.

"It remains the case that, over time, the gap in the recurrent [my emphasis] budget has to be closed, because rising public debt that is not held against assets [my emphasis] will start to be a material problem."

Now that's something no secretary to the treasury would say. Unlike all its state counterparts, federal Treasury has long opposed the drawing of a distinction between government recurrent spending and government investment in "long-lived assets that yield an economic return" and add to national productivity.

Treasury wants little old ladies to feel as guilty about borrowing to improve the Pacific Highway as they do about borrowing for "routine government expenses".

So, let's worry about getting the recurrent budget back to surplus (as most state governments did long ago), but not about borrowing for infrastructure. Agreed?

Except that when you read the budget papers carefully enough to find the info Treasury has hidden on page 6-17, you discover that the expected underlying cash deficit for this financial year of $37 billion includes capital spending of $36 billion.

Get it? We're already back to a balanced recurrent budget. So why so much hand-wringing? And why aren't we getting on with planning the infrastructure pipeline we could expedite "in the event that we were to need a big demand stimulus"?

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