It means you need to not be a myopic absolute thinking simpleton. If you pour water out of a vessel while simultaneously pouring some water in the fact that at any given point in time, say a financial year, the vessel isn't empty doesn't mean that it's not starting to lose water and become empty. It means Howard and Costello decided the best way to use a rare commodity led rise in national income was to transmute it through banks and lever up through offshore borrowing the price of land creating a systemic risk for the country and create hyperinflation in a key input cost in job creation making Australia uncompetitive.
