From afar it looks like madness, from the Wall Street journal;

Australia entered the global financial crisis with one of the soundest fiscal positions among developed nations. Now, thanks to the Labor government of Kevin Rudd, that's no longer the case.

Treasurer Wayne Swan announced Tuesday a 32.1 billion Australian dollar ($24.3 billion) fiscal deficit this year and forecast that it would rise to A$57.6 billion in 2009-10 -- the largest in the country's history. Canberra plans to borrow money to fund the shortfall. Outstanding debt will rise to A$300.8 billion over the next four years from around A$111.9 billion.

This is an extraordinary fiscal turnaround from only a year ago, when Australia turned in a budget surplus of A$19.7 billion. The country entered the global economic downturn with historically low unemployment, muted inflation and very little debt, thanks to an uplift from strong global growth -- especially from China -- and prudent fiscal management by the former Liberal government and its treasurer, Peter Costello

This Keynesian revival comes at a particularly bad time, given that tax revenues are falling as the economy slows, a normal feature of economic downturns. Tuesday's budget wrote down A$23 billion in projected tax revenues this year, the biggest downward revision since the 1930-31 fiscal year. Still, without all that spending, Canberra would have announced a small budget surplus Tuesday.

yet so many of our own Media still pick at the edges and fear to call the Rudd government on thier incompitence.