Wayne Swan moves in to the spotlight

Slightly tougher than most, finally chipping away (modestly) at the behemoth that middle class welfare has become and finally focusing on the mental health epidemic that has been swept under the carpet for too long (only after intense prodding from the Opposition), its nevertheless been a pretty muted response to the Budget, not quite tough enough for most of the financial media and not quite nasty enough to send the Greens and welfare groups totally off the charts.

Wayne Swan’s presentation remains dead ordinary, but his messaging has been reasonably good in the wake of the budget, while Abbott and Hockey have yet to nail a unifying theme as to why this is the worst budget since time began, other than the standard line about the general incompetence of all things Labor.

Could Abbott try giving some limited praise to stop the theme of him being all negative all the time? — ha ha, that’s a funny one!

Andrew Wilkie jumped eight spots as he kept the pressure on, releasing further details about the effects of problem gambling, while Greg Combet continued the “conversations” on a carbon price, this week with energy generators

Wayne Swan moves in to the spotlight to some degree on talkback, but probably the greater feature is the low numbers overall, with not all that much interest in the Budget in the lead-up.

Some strange people were going on about some Osama person and boring economic stuff, but beliebers knew the big issue was the teen singer kissing some evil heart stealer in Indonesia and then losing his lunch in the Philippines. We’re sure the two aren’t related…