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Methodology
Debt Taken On vs Growth Delivered — Methodology and Sources
What this measures
A single scatter that places each eastern mainland state by two decade-long changes:
- Horizontal — debt taken on: the change in net debt as a share of GSP, 2014-15 → 2023-24 (percentage points).
- Vertical — growth delivered: real Gross State Product per person growth over the same period (percent).
Victoria sits in the high-debt, low-growth corner; Queensland in the low-debt, high-growth corner.
How values are derived
This chart adds no new data. Both axes are computed at build time from two metrics that are already on the site and already verified end-to-end:
| Axis | Computed as | Source metric |
|---|---|---|
| Debt taken on | last value − first value | Net Debt as % of GSP |
| Growth delivered | (last ÷ first − 1) × 100, using real per-capita values | GSP per Capita |
The underlying sources are therefore the same: net debt from the Vic/NSW state Treasuries and QLD Reports on State Finances / Budget Paper 2; GSP from ABS 5220.0; population from ABS 3101.0; CPI (for the real per-capita series) from RBA G1.
| State | Debt added (pts of GSP) | Real growth / person |
|---|---|---|
| Victoria | +16.1 | +7.4% |
| NSW | +10.7 | +10.4% |
| Queensland | −0.8 | +16.0% |
Honesty guardrails
- Descriptive, not causal. The chart shows that Victoria took on the most debt and recorded the weakest per-person growth. It does not establish that the debt caused the slow growth, or that low debt caused fast growth elsewhere. There is no trend line for exactly this reason.
- Queensland's position is commodity-driven. Queensland's strong per-capita growth and its low debt both lean heavily on a record coal-and-gas royalty windfall, not necessarily superior management. The honest reading is "Victoria borrowed the most and has the least growth to show for it," not "Queensland is better run."
- General-government net debt. Queensland parks more debt in government-owned corporations, so its general-government net debt understates whole-of-state leverage. All three states use the consistent general-government measure here.
Sources
- Net Debt as % of GSP (input axis) and GSP per Capita (outcome axis) — see those pages for full per-series citations.