Decisions, decisions, decisions. To many it appears we have a lot of these to make over the next three weeks.

But is it really that complicated? I don’t think it is. To my way of thinking the country only has one decision to make; do they want three more years of the current lot and the direction they are taking us in, or do we want to get off that track and head down a road that offers us the chance to become a better nation.

Let’s just look at one aspect of the current Government’s performance.

The Natz keep hammering how great the economy is and how we are enjoying a surplus. One of the chief cheerleaders for this is the Minister of Everything including the Piggy Bank, Steven Joys of Spring who has said, “The rising surplus shows the benefit of a strong economic plan that is delivering consistent growth.”

Now Joys of Spring can’t claim that to be a misquote because the source for this quote is the Natz own website.

So why is this statement significant? The answer is because it is a downright lie. While I cannot rule out that a strong economic plan is likely to ‘deliver’ consistent growth, I can rule out the role of a surplus in this case because we don’t have one. We have nothing approaching a surplus unless the Minister of Finance decides to cook the books to make it look like we do.

Indulge me for a moment and I will explain how the current MOF (Joys) and his predecessors have in fact done exactly that.

Imagine if you will that you have a job that pays you a moderate amount and living expenses that eat up most of that amount. The outcome is that you are constantly running to catch up but never quite making it and as a result you do not have a surplus of cash.

Now imagine if you have a job that pays you a moderate amount and living expenses that eat up most of that amount but this time you stop paying your rent or energy and telecoms bills . Immediately you would have a large chunk of cash which could, if you spun it correctly, be called a surplus.

Now I can hear you all saying, “But that wouldn’t be a surplus for long because all your creditors would want to be paid sooner or later.”

Well, yes, they would. But imagine if instead of simply not paying those bills, you borrowed to pay them. That way you could bank your surplus and earn a small amount of money on it or buy goods and services with it. Of course, you would be charged interest on the money you had borrowed and that would certainly be more than the amount you earned on your savings, but with the right spin doctors and enough la-la-la-ing with your fingers in your ears you could convince yourself that you had worked an economic miracle and your finances were in surplus. Convincing others of this would be easy if they did not know how you had done this or made the time to ask to see the finer details on a spreadsheet.

We don’t have to imagine this scenario because this is exactly how the Government has managed to ‘deliver’ a surplus. Instead of not paying their rent or energy bills they have chosen to starve our essential; services such as health and education of funds and completely avoid paying anything into our super fund in 2009. This is no small thing because between 2009 and 2015 that fund was returning an average of 16.8% p.a. and even during that period that would have raised our pool by nearly $18 billion – and that is even without considering the last two years.

So, like the fictitious person in my example above, they have very literally robbed Peter (that’s you and me) to pay Paul (that’s the overseas banks).

Whatever you do, don’t sign for that ‘delivery’; it is damaged goods and if we accept any more such deliveries we will be damaged goods too.