Treasurer Joe Hockey has responded to Australia's ballooning credit card bill by almost doubling the borrowing limit to half a trillion dollars.

In an extraordinary move at odds with repeated Coalition warnings of a debt crisis spiralling out of control under the previous Labor government, Mr Hockey has announced the debt ceiling of $300 billion would be increased in a single leap, to $500 billion.

Cabinet approved the new limit on Tuesday and it will be legislated when Parliament returns next month.

Cabinet also approved the terms of reference and personnel for its long-promised commission of audit of government spending, with Mr Hockey arguing it would do the work of winding back the debt.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/treasurer-joe-hockey-ramps-up-debt-limit-20131022-2vza5.html#ixzz2iUOMMcyY

A caterpillar emerging from its cocoon as a butterfly has nothing on the metamorphosis of Joe Hockey.

The Hockey of "budget crisis" fame, the government debt warrior, the dry who never met a deficit he didn't hate, has turned into the half-trillion dollar man, spent all the $7.1 billion in policy savings he was trumpeting just five days ago and blown out this year's deficit by some $7 billion beyond Labor's best efforts. And the financial year is young.

It‘s been just over one month since the Abbott government was sworn in, and already Australians have seen what they can expect over the coming three years.

Details about asylum seeker arrivals are being withheld – apparently the entire nation imagined the Coalition’s announced tow back the boats policy. Despite promising severe regulation of foreign investment, the government is now proposing to rush through free trade agreements. Now Joe Hockey has announced the details of their commission of audit, a well-used Liberal tactic to make drastic and punitive cuts to services, kept secret before the election.

Not only is this a government that isn’t doing what it said it would do; it doesn’t want to tell Australians what it’s really doing.

Over the last few years, Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey were unrelenting in their scaremongering over the state of the nation’s finances; Australians were told that “there is now a budget emergency”, and, worse, that Labor was “drowning the nation in debt”.

But, now in government, the Liberals tout some debt as “good” and the “budget emergency” appears to have disappeared. So much so, under the Coalition, the nation can now apparently afford a $500bn debt ceiling. So much for the “budget emergency”.

Just pause for a moment and imagine the extent of Hockey’s hyperventilation had a Labor treasurer proposed such an increase.

The new treasurer has flagged higher infrastructure spending funded by government borrowing – that is, by debt – and the assistant infrastructure minister, Jamie Briggs, blithely suggests thinking “more broadly” about using the Commonwealth balance sheet.

Of course, when Labor borrowed to invest, Abbott and Hockey declared a “debt crisis”, but now they are finally being honest that some borrowing can be smart.

The fact is, if the nation really was drowning in debt as many of the Liberals had been hysterically asserting, the last thing a conservative government would be doing is flagging more debt and more spending.

And, if there really were a budget emergency, they would be publishing their budget update well before the country goes on its summer holidays.

By their own words and actions post-election, the Coalition not only underline their pre-election dishonesty; they also confirm the true state of the budget and the economy.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/23/australias-missing-budget-emergency