Yesterday Treasurer Wayne Swan took election campaign shenanigans to new lows with his pre-emptive rebuttal to the Coalition’s costings announcement.
As shadow treasurer Joe Hockey and shadow finance minister Andrew Robb delayed their announcement, tipping past the fatal 4pm mark and sending the evening media news hounds howling, Swan decided not to wait any longer.
Instead, he slammed the Coalition for its “slapstick comedy” … and then proceeded to roll out a response to a set of numbers that had yet to be announced.
Then there was this edifying exchange:
Q: Did you have a costings release in the last campaign and was [leader Kevin Rudd] present?
A: We certainly had a costings release in the last campaign.Q: Was [Rudd] present?
A: I couldn’t tell you who was there . . .Q: Can’t remember?
A: I can’t tell you who was at the last one in the last campaign.Q: But you were there though?
A: I may have been there at the last campaign, yeah.
Meanwhile, none of the evening news outlets had any time to seriously examine the costings, and the Coalition’s much-touted cuts. Instead, they were handed a figure — a surplus of $6.2 billion by 2012/13, nearly double the current government projection.
No time to work out how they diddled the numbers, just the take home message: our surplus is bigger than their surplus. Sing it.
Yet another subtle example of how both main parties have continued to treat the public with contempt in this campaign.
WTF!!!!!!
What else could you expect from that idiot Swan. If he wasn’t a factional hack he wouldn’t even never get a job as a bookie’s penciler.
The man is a complete and utter disgrace as Treasuer. He would even make Artie Fadden look good for those with a long enough memory.
Wayne Swan obviously forgot Napoleon’s wonderful maxim.
“Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake”.
Hockey and Robb were magnificent at p*ssing off the press yesterday.
Swan should have left them to their own devices.
My surplus is bigger than yours!
What a ridiculous argument/slogan!
While everyone agrees that a small surplus is a good thing, a large surplus is an admission of failure — failure to build much needed infrastructure to build a stronger Australia.
For example it could be used to build a national broadband network. Hockey and Abbott are making the same mistake that Howard and Costello made.
How can you conclude that “Wayne Swan ….shenanigans to new lows” when the main story was about how Hockey & Robb have treated the public to this latest trick of publishing costings with no assumptions too late to be seriously analysed and reported prior to an election.
You might argue that labour did it last year but:
1. Liberals dreamed up this process
2. Labour didn’t do it this late
2. Labour did it through the agreed treasury process,
3. the Liberals are running hard that they would not overspend but how can we tell,
and most importantly:
4. they weren’t running so hard on the line that they would be far better/responsible fiscal managers than Labour