Canberra observed The election and the budget 2019 The election By the time this issue of Preview is published, the results of the 2019 Federal Election will be known. This election must rank as one of the most boring elections ever. The campaign for votes has been on-going since the last sitting day of Parliament in 2018, with the electorate being bombarded non-stop by crass slogans and vague promises. Instead of governing the country from the Parliament, all the energies have been focused on getting a seat or seats in the bubble. It’s ironic that ScoMo decries what he calls the Canberra bubble and yet desperately wants to be at its centre. As a Canberran, I have on occasion had to point out that only four (soon to be five) of the 226 elected politicians come from Canberra. The vast majority come from elsewhere. If there is a bubble, it must include all states and territories. The workload in the Parliament is noteworthy. From the start of December in 2018 until Parliament was prorogued on 11 April 2019, the Senate sat for only nine days and the House of Representatives eleven (https://www. aph.gov.au/News_and_Events/Events_ Calendar), not very impressive! Anyway, back to the Election. The campaigns mainly seemed to focus on “what’s in it for me”, particularly in the marginal seats where“pork barrelling” was rampant. If you want top-class infrastructure, then move to a marginal electorate. Both the major parties were promising huge spending programmes and claiming that they were the best economic managers. However, when you examine what has been achieved on tackling debt, the record is not good for either of them. For example, the External Debt has increased enormously over the last few years (see Figure 1). According to Trading Economics (https:// tradingeconomics.com/australia/ external-debt) the External Debt in Australia increased to a record A$2.1 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2018 from a record low of A$147 billion in the third quarter of 1988.” As the External Debit has increased the Gross Domestic Product has stagnated (see Figure 2). According to Trading Economics (https://tradingeconomics.com/ australia/gdp-constant-prices), the quarterly GDP in Australia increased to a record A$462 billion in the fourth quarter of 2018, marginally higher than the A$461 billion in the third quarter of 2018. Notice that the External Debt is now larger than the annual GDP. A$2.1 trillion v A$1.8 trillion. Not a pretty set of numbers. Meanwhile, the Federal Government debt increased to a record 41.90% of the country’s annual GDP in 2017, much higher than the low of 9.70 percent in 2007 (https://tradingeconomics.com/ australia/government-debt-to-gdp). In dollar terms this amounts to about A$770 billion or $31 000 for every Australian. The 2018 numbers were not available at the time of writing, but the rate of increase in government debt appears to be decreasing. Figure 1.  Australia’s External Debt from 2016 to 2019 in A$ million. The debt has steadily increased during the last two years.  Canberra observed 29 PREVIEW JUNE 2019 David Denham AM Associate Editor for Government denham1@iinet.net.au Figure 2.  Quarterly GDP for Australia in A$ million from January 2016 to January 2019.