Australia has shown less control over spending than any advanced G20 nation since the global financial -crisis eight years ago and has squandered the opportunity offered by superior economic growth to gain control over its budget deficit.
A damning study by the former head of the IMF's budget division shows the deterioration in Australia's debt almost matched that of Italy, one of the most troubled European economies, suffering a deep recession and a blowout in interest costs.
Nations that fail to control the growth in their debt are at risk of a crisis when interest rates eventually rise, warns the study published by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington DC think tank. 
"A gradual but sustained fiscal adjustment through expenditure cuts and revenue increases is the most appropriate means of reducing the chances of debt crisis in the coming decade," it says.
The finding emerges as Scott Morrison returns from weekend G20 meetings in China, where fin-ance ministers promised to put their public debt burdens on a "sustainable path" as a share of GDP, while doing all they could to lift flagging economic growth.
The Peterson study looks at what has driven increasing debt among advanced G20 member nations. It measures the impact of interest costs, economic growth, spending and budget deficits.
Australia's debt-to-GDP ratio fell 9.8 percentage points in the eight years leading up to the financial crisis but surged 27.1 percentage points over the eight years since the end of 2007, which was only slightly less than the average increase across Japan, Britain, the US, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and South Korea.
In principle, a government that is trying to cut debt should be keeping spending growth to no more than the overall rate of inflation, while revenue should be rising in line with nominal economic growth (the GDP plus inflation). The faster the growth, the quicker debt gets paid off.
However, the study shows Australia had instead used the best growth rate among G20 advanced nations to finance additional spending.
It shows Canberra increased real spending more than any of eight other advanced G20 governments since the end of 2007 - and by almost by double the average increase.
"Australia's strong growth performance would have led the debt ratio to decline by 34.1 percentage points, absent other factors," said Paolo Mauro, a Peterson Institute senior fellow who is the report's author.
That would have been enough to pay off all debt and return the budget to the sort of net asset position the Howard government had maintained.
However, "expansionary policy measures increased (Australia's) debt ratio by the equivalent of 62.8 per cent of GDP, more than offsetting gains from faster growth, the report says.
Canada and the US showed the second largest increases, with policy measures contributing around 45 per cent of GDP each.
Australian government spending has risen from 23.1 per cent of GDP in 2007 to 25.8 per cent last year.
The new research jars with the Turnbull government's rhetoric of budget repair, which has consistently stressed the importance of - but repeatedly postponed - returning the budget to balance.
"If there's one issue that I know Liberals and National Party members feel strongly about and that is reducing the deficit so we can reduce the debt and that is my laser-like focus," the Treasurer said on Monday night, stressing the importance of the government's superannuation tax changes.
The Peterson analysis follows a warning from credit rating agency S&P Global earlier this month that it was considering removing Australia's AAA credit rating, following a close election result, which will make it difficult for the -Coalition government to narrow a budget deficit that has exceeded 2 per cent of GDP every year but one since 2009.
Dr Mauro's research contrasted Australia and Italy, whose debt to GDP ratio rose about the same as Australia's, despite running a tight fiscal policy in the wake of the European debt crisis of 2011.
"Differences in the two countries' policy choices may have been appropriate in light of Italy's large, and Australia's much smaller, initial debt. But the quantitative impact on debt ratios of differing economic growth performance is striking," the analysis says.
Dr Mauro, a former assistant director of the International Monetary Fund, said governments with high debt burdens were "living dangerously" by counting on interest rates to stay low or economic growth to pick up, urging them to gradually lift taxes and cut spending to defray debts.
"When government debt is large, an increase in interest rates causes a sizeable rise in the cost of debt service and therefore in the risk of financial crisis brought about by an interest rate-debt -spiral," he said, cautioning governments against relying on interest rates staying low.
He also said economists had understated the role of growth in reducing debts over time - which was overwhelmingly how governments defrayed their massive war debts in the 1950s and 60s.The prospect of weak growth as innovation and productivity growth slows and populations age will make it much harder for governments to rely on growth to -defray debt.