We’re in the middle of the most perverse economic debate in years.

Despite apparently universal agreement about the need for the Government’s economic stimulus, it’s copping a hammering from the media, the Opposition and even recipients. Never was a measure more welcomed and yet criticised.

The Government’s desire that, being a stimulus package, it is actually spent rather than saved, is apparently objectionable to many in the media. Only 15% of recipients would “do the Prime Minister’s bidding” and spend their money on Christmas presents, the Telegraph gleefully reported. The basis for the report was perhaps the twee-est online survey ever, in which participants could select spending options like “something nice for yourself” or saving options like “for a rainy day” and timing options like “before Christmas — I can’t wait to get to the shops!”. Then again, being the Telegraph, we were probably lucky the survey wasn’t about rating n-de celebrities.

The Age picked up on the theme of Kevin Rudd demanding people spend the money.

“He’s wrong,” an 82-year-old pensioner was quoted as saying. “It’s not his money. It’s our money, and we should decide what to do with it.”

Apparently there’s no pleasing whingeing pensioners even when you give them a huge handout. An academic from “Monash University’s Australian Centre for Retail Studies” was brought in to surprise with the observation that struggling pensioners will “spend money as they need to, despite what anyone tells them to do.”

Well, not according to Tony Abbott, making a rare comment actually within his own portfolio, who predicted some of the money would be spent on “booze and gambling“, to the annoyance of pensioner groups. Malcolm Turnbull — he of the “no quibbling” endorsement of the package — is complaining that the stimulus will be temporary. Given the Government has repeatedly said since announcing the package that it is intended to be “timely, targeted and temporary”, Turnbull is probably on pretty safe ground with the “temporary” call. He wants tax cuts, although Wayne Swan demolished this idea yesterday in about 20 seconds at a press conference, pointing out tax cuts were spread thinly and wouldn’t go to pensioners.

You can bet the Government will make sure pensioner groups don’t forget Turnbull’s tax cut suggestion.

The Australian had also gotten into the moral panic game last week too with lurid stories of payments being “wasted” on alcohol and gambling and a Rudd-fuelled wave of drunken violence. But today it’s all about how it won’t be spent at all. Commentator Michael Stutchbury is actually urging people to save and pay off debt, in terms traditionally reserved for class warfare screeds from the Left. Likewise, the astonishingly unfunny Peter Ruehl at the back of the AFR declares that saving is the “no-brainer” option.

There was more balance at the SMH, with Phil Coorey and Peter Hartcher reporting Treasury estimates about how much would be spent. Treasury estimates that on average about 70% of the total stimulus will be spent. And the Herald Sun actually used retail data to try to work out how much might be spent — although, really, in a choice between an online Tele poll and Treasury estimates or retail data, who could go past “Is Krystal Forscutt the most beautiful girl in Australia”?

And then there’s Terry McCrann, who wrestles manfully with himself for an entire column in trying to overcome his sense that attempts to stimulate the economy are a good thing. McCrann worries that the package was introduced too soon (contra Peter Martin at The Age, who complains that the package has taken too long). “Is this the best way to spend the $9 billion?” McCrann demands, presumably rhetorically. “In terms of immediacy, yes. In terms of direction, arguably not. Much of it can just bleed overseas.”

Hmmm. “Bleeding.” Can’t be good.

Much of this commentary seems to be a reflection of resentment toward the Government — a resentment made sullen and cranky not merely by Kevin Rudd’s persistent high polling figures but by the Government’s failure to provide any basis for criticism. In its bank guarantee and early stimulus, the Government has stuck close to not merely the advice of the Reserve Bank and Treasury but most economic commentators. Quite what the Government was supposed to have done to ensure the entire stimulus would be spent isn’t really clear — perhaps just dispatched a small brown envelope filled with unmarked $100 bills to every retailer in the country, although then they probably would have saved it rather than spent it.

And then there’s groups like ACOSS who object to the unemployed missing out, and the moral panic merchants who insist — as bourgeois hand-wringers have insisted for centuries — that the poor can’t be trusted with their own money. Even if it makes no difference whether $1000 is spent on grog or on something nice and middle-class like whitegoods.

Accordingly, Kevin Rudd is not merely damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t, he’s damned no matter how he does it.

Everyone is aware of the danger of talking ourselves into a recession. But we’re insisting on doing it anyway. There’s an economic stimulus package, massive interest rate cuts, more tax cuts next year and a fall in the Australian dollar to help exporters. The next seven months will see about the biggest jolt to the Australian economy ever delivered. Let’s try and keep a little optimism.