Accounting firm PwC warn that rising government debt and falling incomes will impact on Australia’s ability to implement current strategies. A choice will have to be made between overhauling the tax system or ‘radical’ cuts to government services including aged care.

PwC wants a national conversation before the upcoming election about tax reform and services the country wants to fund.

Chief executive Luke Sayers says that "in simple language, we need to make some choices.

"As a country at the moment we basically cannot afford to implement our strategy."

Although many of the commitments already made to ageing, education and health have strong bipartisan support, Tom Seymour, managing partner of tax and legal at PwC, said that “we are going to have to make a choice: it is either we don't do a lot of those things that are being currently proposed or we fundamentally review how we pay for those things.”

The likely response is cuts to services as an ageing population, aftershocks from the GFC, worsening budgets and the prospect of falling incomes places undue strain on the country’s economic position.