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September 19, 2025
Top economists fear Australia's national debt is set to surpass the $1 trillion mark in 2026.
But the eye-watering figure is even more bleak when you consider the skyrocketing interest Aussie taxpayers are shelling out on the principal - $24.4 billion in interest payments over the last financial year alone.
That equates to around $67 million per day, $3 million per hour, $47,000 per minute and $774 per second.
It was the fastest-growing expense in the most-recent Budget and is set to swell beyond $38 billion by 2028-29.
In her first major economic speech on Wednesday, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley warned that 'our gross federal debt is already around $959 billion and climbing'.
'By the government’s own projections, it will hit $1.2 trillion by 2028-29,' she told the Committee for Economic Development of Australia.
'It means we are setting new records for indebtedness, yet the government’s answer is to keep spending more, despite having to spend $50,000 every minute on interest.
'The interest bill on that debt is becoming one of the fastest-growing items in the budget.
'Every dollar spent on interest is a dollar that can’t be used for hospitals, schools or tax relief. It means every two minutes that is one less nurse or every four minutes that’s one less doctor.'
But what could we be buying with the money we are shelling out on interest?
The Coalition’s finance spokesman James Paterson told the Daily Mail that the national debt is 'out of control'.
'(With that money) you could buy 5,581 Albanese Copacabana houses, or each Federal MP could get 117 of their own new secret Greens party rooms,' he said.
The former is a reference to Albanese's $4.3 million clifftop mansion on the NSW Central Coast and the latter refers to the new party room the PM gifted the Greens, which was refurbished at a cost of almost $900,000.
'You could buy 1.2 million Department of Parliamentary Services custom-made $20,000 missing desks, or create 40 new PNG NRL teams,' Paterson continued.
'If Labor got its spending addiction under control, then maybe we could spend money on much more interesting and useful things instead of out-of-control interest and debt.'
Indeed, $24billion would buy 28,760 homes at the median home value of $848,858 or Albo could shout everyone in Australia a schooner for 90 rounds.
The Australian government could buy 16,275 of Taylor Swift's engagement rings, which is understood to cost a cool $1.5million.
Or they could make 35 versions of Jurassic World Dominion, the most expensive movie ever made at around $696million.
Alternatively, they could buy around 36 Airbus A380s. In other words, Qantas could buy its entire double decker A380 fleet three times over.
Top economist Stephen Koukoulas, a former Chief Economist of Citibank, argued in a recent piece for Independent Australia that the 'vast bulk of the increase (in debt) occurred under the watch of Coalition governments'.
'When these figures are taken as a whole, over the past half-century, Coalition governments have added a total of $605 billion to the level of gross government debt while Labor governments have added just $406 billion,' he said.