Australia's debt situation is the envy of the world, despite the economic crisis caused by COVID-19, Prime Minister Scott Morrison says.
In a virtual speech to the Liberal Party's NSW State Council on Saturday, Mr Morrison compared Australia's journey through virus-induced turmoil to other countries.
"Net debt as a share of the economy will peak at half of what it is in the United Kingdom, a third of what it is in the US and a quarter of what it is in Japan," he said.
"When you look at the debt situation that we currently face, where we are sitting in a position which is still the envy of the rest of the world."
He said that taking on huge debt as Liberals who are traditionally economically conservative was about "understanding the necessity of action".
"What was the alternative other than to see Australian lives and livelihoods crushed?" Mr Morrison said.
"None of us likes the fact that we have had to take on now such a heavy load. But it is necessarily so and I think Australians have heavily supported us in that."
The prime minister, speaking from isolation at The Lodge because of his recent trip to Japan, told the council the economic impact of global lockdowns had made an economic crisis "45 times worse" than the Global Financial Crisis between 2007 and 2009.
The more than 55,000 coronavirus deaths in the UK is more than were lost during the blitz in the Second World War, the prime minister said.
"Our relative success here in Australia sometimes shields us from the sheer scale of the devastation that has occurred elsewhere around the world," he said.
He commended state and territory governments for bipartisan efforts to meet the challenge, praising NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian in particular.
"But with all the other premiers, of course, there's been disagreements here and that's only natural. It's the Federation."
Mr Morrison said he felt optimistic that next year would be very different to 2020.
Australia has invested in four vaccines - Novavax, Pfizer, AstraZeneca and a University of Queensland vaccine - which he said should roll out in the first quarter of 2021.
Meanwhile on Saturday, there were two locally-acquired virus cases recorded, both attributed to the Parafield cluster in Adelaide, now at 33 cases.
There were 10 cases reported in quarantining travellers - eight in NSW and one each in Queensland and the ACT.
Victoria has effectively eradicated the virus with a 29th consecutive day of no new cases and zero active cases.
The state will start taking international travellers again from December 7 after months of being shut off.
The latest material handed over to the Hotel Quarantine Inquiry has provided no further clarity on who made the decision to hire private security guards.
The use of guards, untrained in health safety, has ultimately been blamed for the failure of the state's hotel quarantine program which led to a 110-day lockdown and the majority of Australia's coronavirus death toll of 907.
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