Here are some alternative facts - not fake news, but quite bad

The net operating balance measure distinguishes between ­recurrent and capital spending and a deficit on this measure worsens the government’s balance sheet as it reduces net assets.

A string of deficits by this measure has cumulatively totalled $354bn since the financial crisis, worsening the government’s balance sheet accordingly, to the tune of negative 25 per cent of GDP — another unpleasant and much ­neglected alternative fact. Only ­future sizeable budget surpluses, not yet in prospect, can rectify this balance sheet problem as Julian Pearce and I show in “Fiscal Consolidation and Australia’s Public Debt”, published in the Australian Journal of Public Administration.

The published net operating deficits also confirm how delinquent successive ill-advised governments of both persuasions have been to borrow so heavily for unproductive purposes.

In addition, this year’s budget stressed that government spending was on track to fall to 25 per cent of GDP by decade’s end. ­Focusing on federal government spending in this way, however, ­ignores spending by other tiers of government in Australia and draws attention away from ­another alternative fact: that total government spending in Australia, at 37 per cent, is about 2 per cent higher as a proportion of GDP than it was before the crisis.

Though the share of government spending in Australia is close to the G20 advanced economy ­average — itself heavily weighted by debt-burdened European economies — it remains well above the average of about 20 per cent for the most competitive economies in the region: Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea.