Is Jim Chalmers worried by rating’s agency S&P’s assessment that the election spends promised by the major parties this campaign puts the AAA credit rating at risk?

(spoiler – it doesn’t. A AAA credit rating just means Australia can borrow money at a better interest rate because it is more of a sure bet of paying it back. And the ratings agencies look at the 10-year bond yield rate, which as Grog’s points out:

The reality is the best way to gauge the risk of Australia’s debt is to look at the 10 year bond yield on Australian government bonds. In effect this is the interest rate the government pays when it borrows money. At the moment the rate is around 4.4%. Back when S&P gave Australia a AAA rating and back when Australia had budget surpluses due to the mining boom, the rate was around 5.5%.

So Australia is seen as a better investment now then the mining boom.

Jim Chalmers says:

One of the things we have done is put our costings out there. The other side have not. The other thing we have done is currently $78 billion deficit into a $22 billion surplus and followed it up with another so plus and followed up with halving the deficit and the we released yesterday, we made the budget bottom line better. We have improved the budget bottom line by 200 and $7 billion since we came to office. We have improved the bottom line, save some $60 billion in interest payments as well.