A good deal less too than the annual effective appropriation of money to cover the superannuation cost of each Commonwealth judge or magistrate, or politician, or than is spent by taxpayers each year, chiefly from Commonwealth sources, on each man, woman and child, white or black, in the Northern Territory.

If one considered such sums not as mere recurrent expenditure, and not as mere debt, but as an investment in the well being of every citizen in team Australia, it might indeed seem a somewhat trifling sum. The more so given the advantages that are being bequeathed on the next generations, assuming that they are not all incinerated in some jihadist conflagration brought on by our will for war on the other side of the planet.

Pointing this out is not by way of arguing, as many do, that the total level of government debt is not very high, either in absolute terms or as a proportion to national income or national assets, and that it is very low compared with the rate of debt in other nations. Nor does it involve any consideration, by itself, of the usefulness of comparing government budgeting with the disposition of a child's allowance, a family's income or the fortunes of a small business, or questions about the balance between equity and debt that prudent stewards of a major corporation might adopt.

It is, rather, to remark, that when debt is considered as investment, and government expenditure considered not only as outgoings but as a stake in a better future, $25,000 a head does not seem an enormous noose around either the national or the individual neck.

The average Australian owes considerably more, and on far worse terms, in personal debt to credit card and personal loans. Indeed, the average, if not the median, debt of the average man woman and child in Australia is well over $80,000 a head, substantially higher than the average per head debt of, say, Canada, France, Italy, Britain, Japan or the United States. It's also only a tiny fraction of the minimum sum to be invested in personal assets in Australia we demand of rich foreign citizens to whom we are selling membership of Team Australia.

To be sure about three-quarters of this debt (say $60,000 a head) is for housing, representing security of a sort, and housing interest rates, if not personal credit, is at the moment extremely low. But the "sustainability" of this personal and household debt is considerably more fragile than the debt owed owed by government, and is particularly susceptible not only to shifts in interest rates (at historic lows at the moment), in housing valuations (generally, in many places, at unsustainable highs), as well as a medium term trend of lower employment, stagnant real wage increases, and, probably declining or flat real wealth with no obvious self-generating medium term prospects of great change.

The average real wealth of Australians doubled over the past 25 years, but it is unlikely that it will improve greatly over the next 10. Better put, unlikely to increase greatly unless there is a massive reinvestment by the nation in some of the social and capital infrastructure capable of sustaining and further developing the national economy. That is not only investment in new and better roads, rail, air and communications infrastructure, in ports and terminals, bridges and public transport, but also in schools, vocational and trades education, higher education, science and research, in creating essentially healthy Australians and maintaining good general health, but also in re-equipping our hospitals and health facilities with the capacity to deal with new problems of ageing and challenges of disease. That's quite apart from the investment required to maintain a stable and generally good humoured community, easily integrating new folk, and to defend ourselves against foreign enemies and those who would disturb our peace.

It is easy enough to insist that the government debt that has accumulated, or which will accumulate, has not in fact been spent on investment in a future Australia but has been, in Harold MacMillan's words, selling the family silver to pay the grocery bills. There's too much of that happening, but that general allegation is often exaggerated by the way that politicians tend to hypothecate funds, or to pretend, unconstitutionally that sums gathered in one particular pot go, or most go, to some associated cause. Thus there are roads interests who cry if expenditure on highways falls short of petrol excise, or who emphasise the shortfall between money raised by the Medicare levy and health expenditure. Yet not every payment of a doctor's bill must be regarded as a recurrent expenditure rather than as an investment in good health; paying school teachers may help them meet their mortgages but is also an investment in future educated Australians, and reasonably cheap, by international standards at the price. The greatest difficulty might be in establishing that Australia has had good value for money in about $1 trillion in real terms, in defence expenditure over the past 50 years, but then again, one never knows and any number of potential enemies would snap up the place for that.

The Abbott government is desperately trying to restart its stalled political processes to have the senate adopt its various Budget measures. The past few weeks have seen ministers take almost every possible argument out for a walk. All are premised on the idea that Joe Hockey inherited a terrible mess and debt from the irresponsible former tenants, with urgent, and previously unexpected action now having to be taken. It does not appear to be having a great effect on the politicians, or, generally, on the electorate, and not only because the government failed to prepare and condition the electorate, failed to persuade them that its measures were fair, and failed to sell a "narrative" by which an array of disparate measures, some gratuitously ideological, fell into a coherent strategy. In the wheedling, ministers such as Cormann are threatening higher taxes, arbitrary spending cuts, or national ruin unless everyone comes back to its view of things.

But perhaps its biggest problem right now is that it ought to be spending a bit of money, from debt if needs be, to flesh out some narrative about investing in the future rather than, supposedly, paying off our past. While everyone is haggling about Budget details and various unpleasantnesses such as fees and co-payments, this government is sinking into the mud even more quickly than the Gillard government. Confected national security emergencies hardly operate as a distraction.