The treasurer, Scott Morrison, is hitting the airwaves to sell the benefits of debt as a vital source of capital – marking a further departure from Abbott-Turnbull government rhetoric casting debt as a disaster, an emergency, a financial melanoma or a house on fire.

In an economic speech on Wednesday, Morrison distinguished “bad debt” – to pay for recurrent spending – from “good debt” – debt used for investment purposes that increases productive capacity and produces future income.

The nuanced view of the benefits of debt sticks out like a sore thumb after a long line of provocative statements from simpler times when all debt was bad debt:

‘We are getting to a point where we can’t repay it’

“We’re going into hock to our eyeballs to people overseas. And you’ve got to ask the question how far in debt do you want to go? We are getting to a point where we can’t repay it” – Barnaby Joyce, February 2010

‘Debt and deficit disaster’

“What we will see today is the sad truth that six years of Labor fiscal profligacy has given us cumulative deficits in order of a quarter of a trillion dollars.

“The repair job started from day one obviously, with the election of the new government, but it accelerates from today given that we will see the full extent of Labor’s debt and deficit disaster” – Tony Abbott, midyear economic and fiscal update, December 2013

Hockey compares deficits to a house on fire

“On the back of five budget deficits in a row, we have inherited a further $123bn of deficits.

“We were not prepared to stand idly by whilst a fire was starting in the house” – Joe Hockey, May 2014

Debt is ‘a financial melanoma, it will kill you’

“This is our first budget, I understand the concerns people have, I fully understand them, but what is our alternative? We either accept that we’ve got a debt problem and we’ve got to turn it around or we basically we say, ‘No, this is only a small melanoma on our arm and if we just wait long enough it’ll go away’.

“No, it’s a financial melanoma, it will kill you” – Barnaby Joyce, August 2014

‘We inherited a budget emergency’

“We inherited a budget emergency from the previous Labor government and we are working in an orderly and methodical fashion through usual processes of parliament to fix it” – Mathias Cormann, August 2014



‘Labor were the fire, we are the fire brigade’

“I know what it’s like to get to the scene of an emergency. If you get to the scene of the fire, immediately the situation starts to ease once the fire brigade’s there. Labor were the fire, we are the fire brigade” – Tony Abbott, 18 March 2015

Debt could top $1tn

“Whether the measures that are necessary to return to budget balance are supported is yet to be seen.

“Failure to do so, in the worst-case scenario, will see our gross debt rise to more than $1tn – one thousand billion dollars – in the next 10 years” – Scott Morrison, August 2016

Foreign debt is ‘vital’

“Attracting and keeping this foreign debt is vital for this country but there are understandably some concerns about the size and nature of this debt, particularly in the context of maintaining Australia’s AAA credit rating.

“Once borrowing for recurrent expenditure is under control, we will have more headroom to take on and deploy so-called good debt. This is debt used for investment purposes that increases productive capacity and produces future income” – Scott Morrison, 14 December 2016