The current debt, of almost $10 billion in unfunded super, was supposed to be extinguished in 2025, but today's newborn babies will have turned 60 by the time it's fully funded.

In the mean time government agencies are up for more than $300 million a year just to meet the annual lump sum and pension costs.

The annual impact on agencies is estimated to peak at more than $450 million and then gradually decline, but who knows?

For the past 20 years governments have been promising that this debt would be fully paid for by 2021, then 2025, maybe 2033 and then by 2035, until they gave up making phoney projections.

The government now says it will finally be fully funded in 2082, but I don't believe them. It was closed off to new public servants in 1999 and public servants and politicians elected or hired after that date would have to find their own pension scheme, with the superannuation guarantee like everyone else.

Back then the government set up the Superannuation Provision Account, with funds set aside, like a mortgage redraw account, to meet the spiralling super cost.

At one stage the fund had $1.14 billion in the kitty with a projected $1.87 billion by 2012.

But it was all a mirage. A book entry, existing purely on paper with no hard cash set aside.

In 2012 the charade was axed, with all future benefits paid out, using our taxes, as public servants retired.

So, two years into the post-1999 arrangements the unfunded debt was $1.6 billion.

By 2014 it had grown to $5 billion and now it's almost $10 billion.

Treasury estimates that benefits paid out between now and 2082 will total more than $17 billion, on today's prices.

Other states say their schemes will be fully funded and under control much sooner.

NSW says its scheme will be fully funded by 2030, Victoria's scheme by 2035, Western Australia by 2025 and South Australia by 2034. Poor old Tassie, dead last - 2082.

The Tasmanian scheme is called a "defined benefit superannuation scheme".

This means that pensions are protected from global financial crises and other stock market movements which the rest of us have had to endure.

And, to pay for it the government takes money from agency budgets, which could have been used to finance more housing, new schools, national parks, police, nurses, teachers etc.

So, what's driving this monster?

Well, public servants.

Thousands of them.

In June the head count totalled 33,146 or 16.45 per capita, and up from a 28,000 head count in 2016.

This is despite governments over the years spending a small fortune on redundancy schemes to trim the numbers.

NSW, with a population of 8.2 million, has 16.8 state public servants per capita, Victoria 24.6 and Queensland 23.9 per capita.

Labor governments love hiring public servants because a good proportion of them vote Labor.

Liberal governments try not to meddle with the employment figures because of the likely backlash.

The only premier who made a serious attempt to reduce the workforce was Labor premier Michael Field in 1991, who wanted to axe 2000 jobs.

Field persuaded former Prime Minister Paul Keating to stump up $100 million for a grand redundancy scheme. Field lost office in a landslide a year later.

I'm not a public servant hater, because more than ever we need them in this new world that grows in complexity each year.

It gives me comfort to know we have plenty of police, firies, paramedics, nurses and teachers.

But governments seem powerless or unwilling to tackle this runaway pension scheme.

They tolerate it like a necessary evil.

Okay, so it will take another 60 years to extinguish, but like a home mortgage you can properly fund it in order to ultimately save in the long term.

It is surely a wonder of modern science, how a pension scheme can be closed to new entrants, but 20 years later the debt from this extinct mammoth has grown to around $10 billion and climbing.

Governments cutely refer to it as a "liability", but a few years ago Moodys Credit Rating Agency told me it was pure and simply a debt on the balance sheet, because agencies had to find the cash to feed it each year.

I'm not an accountant, but I do expect our government to better fund the liability over time, so that more money is freed up to spend on vital public services that matter.

Yes, the debt will decline as public servants who were hired prior to 1999, eventually retire, grow old and pass away.

But I still can't fathom how a government pension scheme in tiny Tasmania, closed off 20 years ago, will still be alive and kicking 82 years later.