Is Australia going to confront with Government shutdown ?

The Australian government would be shut down if the legislatures failed to raise the debt ceiling by the December 12. Actually, Australia is known as the world's 12 largest economy and its current public debt ceiling is AU$300 billion. In order to avoid government shutdown scenario, Australia need to exceed the debt ceiling up to AU$500 billion equal to $452 billion, but it's currently facing opposition from the Labor Party and Greens. In Australia, the upper house (Senate) has the power to block or approve the legislation, but unfortunately Australian Prime Minister Tony Abott's coalition has the majority in the lower house. Therefore, the government has to justify and explain to the senate about the exceeding of the debt ceiling in order to convince those lawmakers to accept its proposal. Inevitably, if the proposal still be rejected by the senators, this country will enter US-style government shutdown by closing some non essential public services temporarily as well as laying off the government staffs until the debt limit is agreed.

Generally, the debt ceiling has been used as a tool to either manage the debt and deficit of the public budget or protect from out of control spending. The matter of fact that it has been used wrongly and as the political tool which doesn't actually limit the government's expenditure. Historically, Australia has experienced the shut down once in 1975. Alike the US, Australia is the Bicameral system state which consists of two legislatures Senate and House of Representative, but during that time the chambers were controlled by many different parties and it made more difficult for the chambers to pass the bill to fund the government.