Very well said Clive Milne. I come from the UK, where national debt is something like 85% of GDP - essentially British children and grandchildren will be paying for their parents' and grandparents' excesses. Hearing Australian politicians grouse about "getting back to surplus" (a pipe dream for most other Western economies), and worrying about the poor state of their economy, rings very hollow indeed. Be happy that in Australia we live in a very wealthy country with a tiny fraction of the economic troubles of the rest of the world!
I see a few mentions of the carbon tax - clearly it's going to be made a scapegoat of every single price hike and job loss over the next few months, whether guilty or not. Abbot & Co, with plenty help from Rineheart and Murdoch, will see to that. For an alternate view on the economic effect of CO2 reduction measures, a read of
this article is refreshing, where a carbon pricing initiative has been shown to strengthen, not weaken, economies. For energy bills, it should be remembered that while there will be a component of the carbon price in the energy bill rise, most consumers
should get that particular money back through other rebates/tax cuts. Equally I accept that whether that happens correctly is at the whims of politicians and bureaucrats, who are tricky beasts whether left or right. But it should be noted that the net cost rise to consumers will be dominantly from the first five ponts of Allan_L's list (and should be
entirely those five points), not the carbon tax.