Ross Fitzgerald’s song of praise to Wayne Swan in The Australian today is as rose tinted as anything George Gershwin ever wrote:

The birds are singin’, it is song time
The banjos strummin’ soft and low
I know that you
Yearn for me too
Swanee! You’re calling me!

Yeah, right, Ross. Ask a hard head what they think about when you say
“Wayne Swan.” Labor’s perverse insistence in the lead-up to the last
election that the government’s $600 annual family payment was “not
real”? The kamikaze Budget response?

The folks up north will see me no more
When I go to the Swanee Shore

Yeah, well, Fitzgerald and some other Queenslanders might love our
Swanee, but going by some of the briefings on the shadow treasurer in
the last session of Parliament, there are more than a few people in
caucus Canberra who’d be delighted if he turned his back on the banks
of Lake Burley Griffin.