There's one phrase that's been getting a real work-out ever since Labor's election win in May.
The treasurer and finance minister have both made plenty of references to the "trillion dollar debt" weighing down the budget they inherited.
It has helped build a case for restrained spending and budget repair, offered as a key reason why the government cannot take up all sorts of ideas.
One trillion dollars is undoubtedly a very large amount of money.
But by global standards, it's not an unusually large debt — or even a particularly remarkable figure.
And it's not quite a trillion dollars, either.
So how big is the national debt?
At the end of June, the total size of Australia's national debt was $895 billion.
That's about $100 billion short a trillion dollars.
But many economists argue the total, or gross debt figure is not the best debt figure to look at.
They point to the net debt figure, which takes the total debt then subtracts many of the government's financial assets — like cash it holds, deposits and loans it is owed.
That figure is substantially lower, at $515 billion, or just over half a trillion dollars.
Which is still a huge amount of money. But economists also look to another key indicator.
They compare the size of the debt, to the size of Australia's economy.
Net debt is currently at 22.5 per cent of GDP, or just over a fifth of Australia's total national income.
Gross debt is obviously higher, at closer to 40 per cent.
It's a big debt, but it's not the biggest
Comparing debt to GDP allows Australia's debt to be put in a global context, too.
And the comparisons are actually pretty good.
Australia's gross debt-to-GDP is below average in the OECD, which is basically a collection of wealthy countries.
Countries like the UK and US are carrying debts larger than their economy.
Economist Sarah Hunter from KPMG said the numbers reflect pretty favourably on Australia.
"We're still at relatively low levels [of debt]," she said.
"When I look internationally, if you drill down and compare across developed economies who are similar to Australia, then that's very much the case.
"So it is a big number, but it's not as big as other countries and importantly, relative to GDP, we have a relatively low ratio."
A growing bill
Crises are expensive, and the past two decades have served up a few.
And a quick look at Australia's debt levels lays out just what the bill looks like.
Heading into the global financial crisis in 2008, Australia's net debt was in negative territory — the government was owed more than it had borrowed.
But the response to that economic crisis came with a significant price, as debt levels jumped to $200 billion by 2013-14.
The government changed hands in 2013, and net debt kept climbing.
Another crisis arrived in early 2020 as the pandemic hit, pushing net debt to a high point just shy of $600 billion, a touch under 30 per cent of GDP.
Economist Chris Richardson said those sorts of situations are when debt is perhaps most useful — allowing governments to intervene, and prevent more serious economic trouble down the track.
"Debt rose very fast with the cost of fighting the war against COVID," he said.
"Although Australia did throw a lot of dollars at COVID — more than some other nations did relative to the size of our economy — it also worked better here.
"Partly because we got a good public health result, our economy rebounded earlier than others did.
"The net combination means that net debt as a share of the economy did indeed go up in Australia, but a little less than in many other comparable nations around the world."
How big a problem is the debt?
There are plenty of opinions about how much debt is too much debt.
One of the bigger issues the government faces is the cost of the repayments.
Jim Chalmers has already outlined interest payments on debt as one of the five fastest-growing budget pressures facing the government, along with defence, the NDIS, aged care and health.
As households face rising interest costs on mortgages, so too does the government face rising interest bills on its borrowings.
Many economists agree Australia's debt is nowhere near crisis levels, and despite frequently pointing to the size of the debt, so does the government.
But Sarah Hunter suggested it was something the government needed to at least be conscious of.
"We do have to be mindful of the debt position, we do have to look at the trajectory for it over time and think about whether or not it's going to remain sustainable," she said.
"Particularly in the context of what expenditure we think we might have to pay out as the government's going forward and what the trajectory for revenue is.
"And obviously, the balance between those two."
Richard Dennis, from progressive think-tank the Australia Institute, argued the debt was higher than it perhaps needed to be — but it was far from problematic.
"We did spend a lot of money on a lot of bad ideas, we have promised to do a lot more bad ideas, including a quarter of a trillion dollars in tax cuts," he said
"But there's no debt crisis in Australia, far from it.
"Debt levels in Australia are low by international standards."
Will the debt keep growing?
The most recent budget, handed down by the Morrison Government prior to the election, forecast both gross debt and net debt to continue climbing for the next few years.
It forecast gross debt to hit the $1 trillion mark by next financial year, but those forecasts will likely be improved in Tuesday's budget.
Chris Richardson warned turning that around would require the government to make some genuinely difficult decisions.
The budget is in "structural deficit", meaning that costs are greater than revenue and, without change, will remain that way.
And areas like the NDIS, defence and aged care are only forecast to grow in cost.
Mr Richardson said something had to give — either less spending, more taxes, or a combination of the two.
"Australians are currently being promised more services, one way or another, than we've figured out how to pay for," he said.
That did not necessarily require a hasty rush back towards a budget surplus, he said, but a gradual trend back in that direction.
"We don't necessarily need big surpluses, hurting the economy, dragging on the services that we provide to the Australian public and the rest of it," he said.
"But we do need a healthier budget, one that that gets closer to surplus in the years ahead."
Mr Richardson also pointed out that inflation — while bad for household budgets and bad for the economy more broadly — was actually pretty good for the budget.
It boosts tax revenues, for example, and also improves debt ratios.
Tomorrow's budget will forecast inflation to stay higher for longer, but also add about $100 billion in forecast revenue over four years.
Richard Dennis argued that, as the government took on the challenges ahead, there was a pretty clear option lying in front of it.
He suggested breaking the commitment to stick with the controversial stage 3 tax cuts.
"They're committed to a quarter of a trillion dollars worth of tax cuts, while saying we can't afford to spend more," he said.
