The chief economist at HSBC Australia Paul Bloxham says it is important to get the budget back into surplus but the whole issue has to be kept in some perspective.

 

Australia's budget is not in crisis, we actually have fairly low levels of government debt relative to the rest of the world, I think government debt level is 12% of GDP, and that is at the low end amongst the OECD economies, and in fact, Australia actually has a fairly small government sector as a proportion of the overall economy, as well, we're at the bottom end,  there're only two other countries within the thirty OECD countries that have lower government spending than we do, so we need to keep it all in context, and that is, it is important that we put themselves back into a firmer footing for the budget in the medium term. But it's not an urgent task, and it's not something that's needs to be done really aggressively because we actually fare fairly well when you compare us to the rest of the world.

 

Paul Bloxham speaking there earlier on our program, let's take a quick look at the figures.

 

Now the Dows was, has finished the day's trade down slightly. The London's FTSE is almost up 0.5%. The Australian dollar is buying 92.7 US cents. Tapis Crude is at 114 US dollars a barrel. Gold, 1279 US dollars an ounce.