My 11-year-old son was in his jim jams reading Harry Potter.
“Get out of bed – I want you to watch the Budget with me”, I urged.
“What’s the Budget?” he said with a yawn.
“Hurry up, it’s starting now on Channel 2.”
“What’s Channel 2?” he asked innocently.
Kids these days.
Now, even though he’s still in primary school, I figured he’d be a good proxy for what the average Aussie thinks. (Then again, this week his school had ‘Maths Day’ and to celebrate he took it upon himself to cut his chicken sanga in the shape of pi, so maybe not.)
Anyway, with a few clicks he managed to find ABC streaming.
“Parliament House is like Hogwarts … just without the magic”, I joked.
To his credit he dutifully watched the young wizard (Jim Chalmers) try and cast his spell over voters. When it was finally over and all the politicians were celebrating and slapping each other on the back, I switched off the TV and asked him what he thought.
“Well, he didn’t talk much about climate change and sustainability. And there also wasn’t much about artificial intelligence or robotics. I mean, clearly that’s the future”, he said.
Yes it is.
AI and humanoid robots are going to reshape the world more than the iPhone did. Climate change is going to punch a hole through the economy and the planet. And my son is going to live through the upheaval. This will be his reality.
Yet you wouldn’t know it listening to Jim on Tuesday night.
He did the same old Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V trick that every Treasurer has been doing for decades:
Tax more.
Spend even more.
Cross your fingers and hope China keeps buying rocks.
Jim told us he’s thinking about the future – but what he really means is the next four weeks (leading to the election), not the next forty years.
Still, I was curious to find out if my little maths man had picked up on the numbers that Jimbo spat out.
“Did you catch how much the government debt is, mate?”
“Was it a billion?” he guessed.
“Ah, no. It’s set to hit $1 trillion dollars next year”, I said.
Silence.
“How many zeros are there in a trillion Dad?”
I actually wasn’t sure, so I got out my iPhone and asked ChatGPT.
“There are 12. Another way of thinking about it is that it’s one million million dollars”, I said.
“And do they have a plan on how they’re going to pay that money back?” he asked.
“Actually, no. In fact, they’re planning on adding to the debt over the next 10 years”, I said.
“Wow”, he said, in a way only an 11-year-old could.
And with that my little Harry Potter went off to bed.
Now it was a school night and I didn’t want to give him nightmares, so I avoided telling him the truth:
It’s highly likely he’ll spend the rest of his life paying off this debt.
Tread Your Own Path!