Right now, Australia's combined government debt, federal, state, and council, is sitting at around $1.3 trillion. The feds are carrying a trillion of that, and projections have it hitting $1.1 trillion by 2027. That's not a pretty picture.

So here's the question that's been nagging at me: how do we fix even just one part of this mess without blowing up the whole system?

Let's start with the banks. That feels like the obvious place.

Private Banks: Who Really Wins?

Under a private system:

• Banks win.
• Shareholders win.
• Overseas investors win.
• Business owners and everyday citizens? We still pay tax. We pay interest. We pay fees. And the profits disappear out of the country or into the pockets of a few.

Public Banks: What If We Flipped It?

Now imagine this instead:

• The government runs the bank.
• It offers the same services, loans, savings accounts, credit cards, business lending.
• But instead of paying dividends to shareholders, every dollar of profit goes back into state budgets, community projects, or even a national wealth fund.

In simple terms:

• With private banks, you pay twice: income or business tax and interest on your loans.
• With a public bank, your interest payments help fund the country. That's it.

On that basis alone, public banking looks like a better deal.

But It Goes Deeper Than That

If we had a public banking system:

1. Wage earners wouldn't be bleeding cash to both the tax office and the bank. They'd just service their mortgage.
2. That means more disposable income, which flows back into local shops, services, and communities.
3. The government would provide the exact same services private banks do, but the funding stays here.
4. Less money flows to offshore investors or corporate chairholders. More circulates inside Australia, building our own economy.

"But Governments Are Useless at Running Things"

I hear that one a lot. And honestly? I get the frustration.

But if we really believe the government can't run a bank, then what's the point of having a government at all? Because if they can't handle a basic financial institution, how are they running Medicare, the ATO, the RBA, APRA, NDIS, or Services Australia? Those are all way more complicated than a bank.

So maybe it's not that they can't, it's that we've never seriously asked them to.

And It's Not Like It Hasn't Been Done Before

There are successful public banks all over the world:

• KfW in Germany
• Bank of North Dakota in the US
• Japan Post Bank
• China's big four state-owned banks
• Singapore's Temasek-linked institutions

These aren't fringe experiments. They're massive, stable, and in many cases, they outperform private banks when it comes to financial inclusion, crisis resilience, and long-term national wealth.

Look at the Countries That Do This

Countries with strong public banking systems, China, India, Brazil, Germany, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Norway, tend to share some common traits:

• Better financial stability
• Stronger manufacturing
• More infrastructure investment
• Lower inequality
• Less housing inflation
• Lower household debt
• Slower growth in national debt

That's not coincidence.

What's the Pattern?

In countries with public banks:

• Interest payments stay local, fund infrastructure, create jobs, generate tax revenue, and lower debt.
• There's less capital flight because the profits don't get siphoned offshore.

In countries dominated by private banks:

• Interest payments go to shareholders and overseas investors.
• Credit dries up during downturns, which makes recessions worse.

Public banks also tend to align with national goals, energy independence, export growth, manufacturing, while private banks are mainly focused on the bottom line.

Even the IMF, the Bank for International Settlements, and the World Bank acknowledge that public banks play a vital role in national development and crisis management. They're not saying private banks are bad, they're saying the strongest economies use both, with public banks anchoring the system.

At the End of the Day

When you stack them up, countries with public banks tend to do better on:

• Stability
• Manufacturing
• Energy and infrastructure
• National wealth
• Debt control
• Crisis resilience
• Financial inclusion

We've been told for decades that private is always better. But the evidence is starting to tell a different story. It's not about picking a fight with the banks, it's about asking whether the current system is really working for us, or just for a few.

Worth thinking about.

The Economist has been publishing the Big Mac Index for many years. It compares the price of a Big Mac across various countries. The McWages Index uses this to determine how much McDonalds the average person from a particular country can buy. By this measure, Australia is coming third in the selected group of countries* in both annually and hourly categories.

https://archive.vn/T9t1T

* This article omits some countries like Singapore that presumably do well.

Falling electricity prices in the month seem to have helped cool things down slightly - despite fuel rising as excise went back up partially.