Problems with cutting student debt

The irony here is that by adopting a loose budgetary position on the basis of "sympathy" or "empathy," the treasurer is actually making that harder for first home buyers, as inflation pushes prices higher.

In itself the measure is not very inflationary, because it is not large enough and the effect is deferred. But the signals it sends to other sectors wanting a softer deal for themselves undermines the whole project of getting inflation back under control.

But if it is not large to have an effect on its own, won't be noticed by the beneficiaries, and will encourage bad behaviour from other economic actors, why do it? That's a question Mr. Chalmers might put to former Prime Minister Paul Keating, the subject of his PhD. thesis.

I know what the Keating of the 1980s would have said. I suspect nothing would have changed, proving that going to university is often over-rated, unless it is the university of hard knocks, the one where Keating wasn't just a doctoral student but a full professor.