Analysis
![Clearing the decks? Treasurer Joe Hockey.](http://web.archive.org./web/20131026003423im_/http://images.watoday.com.au/2013/10/23/4852074/joe-hockey-729-620x349.jpg)
Clearing the decks? Treasurer Joe Hockey. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
It's called ''clearing the decks'', and there isn't a chief executive who hasn't at least thought about doing it.
The government's debt ceiling is like a personal credit card limit, only sillier.
If you are appointed when things look dodgy, you act as if they are even more dodgy: you write off losses (in this case, lift the debt ceiling) by more than you need to, knowing you can blame it on your predecessor.
![Lifted the debt ceiling four times: Former Labor Treasurer Wayne Swan, pictured with former finance minister Penny Wong.](http://web.archive.org./web/20131026003423im_/http://images.watoday.com.au/2013/10/23/4852076/wayne-swan-729-620x349.jpg)
Lifted the debt ceiling four times: Former Labor Treasurer Wayne Swan, pictured with former finance minister Penny Wong. Photo: Andrew Meares
If things turn out to be not that bad, you end up looking good.
If things do turn out that bad, you won't look that bad.
The government's debt ceiling is like a personal credit card limit, only sillier.
Unlike a credit card limit, it need not take account of ability to repay.
It is a political limit imposed by the Parliament rather than an outside constraint imposed by the lender.
As such it is vulnerable to politics, as the US discovered to its cost this month in a stand-off which threatened to prevent the government borrowing the money that it needed to function.
When treasurer, Labor's Wayne Swan had to lift the ceiling four times - to $75 billion, then to $200 billion, then $250 billion, and finally to $300 billion.
On some of those occasions his opposite number, Joe Hockey, made things difficult for him. ''Enough is enough,'' he said in May.
Hockey is Treasurer himself now, and he doesn't want to go through the torture of having to go back to Parliament each time he needs a bigger limit.
So he has asked for a very big one - $500 billion, the need for which he can blame on his predecessor.
Hockey made the point that he is not proposing to lift the debt, merely the debt limit, to give himself headroom free of political sniping should he need it.
His Commission of Audit is looking like a subsidiary of the Business Council of Australia.
It will be chaired by council president Tony Shepherd and its secretariat will be run by council director of policy Peter Crone.
It will be examining what fields the Commonwealth should abandon, what it should contract out and what it should privatise. These are topics on which it already has views.
Twitter: @1petermartin
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