Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your credit card. I come to bury Wayne Swan, not to praise him.

That’s what I would have said if I had lived in ancient Rome and that middle-class twat from the Queensland hinterland was named Brutus, not Wayne.

Australians will fondly recall that when I — the youngest and longest serving Treasurer in Australian history — tragically fell from office after the little rodent refused to scurry off into retirement, this country was rolling in budget surpluses.

We were awash with the hepatic face of Elizabeth Cowan and the red pustules of John Flynn. No decent Australian was without a stack of Bernie Fraser signed plastic notes bulging from their hip pockets.

Like one of those 1800 numbers I sometimes call in the wee small hours of the morning, the size of the package I delivered each May was the envy of every household.

Yonder folk will recall that I handed over a bankbook filled with almost $20 billion in riches and spoils. There was booty and bonanza’s for everyone. It was boom times. Good times. Howard and Costello times. We were prosperous and proud and the avenues of gold were available to all: except for blacks in the Northern Territory. That lot just cannot be trusted with the Commonwealth’s moolah.

I remind the good people of Australia that way back in the golden days — November 2007 to be precise — this great nation was agog with the King’s ransom. There were rebates and offsets, concessions and subsidies; returns and investments. There was WorkChoices to keep the proletariat in check and executive pay rises to keep the bank CEO’s free from stress tests.

When I was Treasurer, there were zloty’s from hillock to girt by sea.

And the people of this land will recall the name of the great god of surpluses who gave them those halcyon days: Peter Costello.

That’s right, it was I, the youngest and longest-serving Treasurer in Australia’s history, who delivered not one, not two, not three, but over 12 budget surpluses.*

I stimulated here, I stimulated there. I bestowed grants to marginal seats for asinine hare-brained projects dreamed up by Nationals’ on crack. I gave to petrified soul-less remote boondocks squillions of taxpayers’ funds to dredge model trains, to build silt-lined water streams, to made De-Anne Kelly look honest …

For 12 years, I gave this nation budget surpluses. I was in the black, baby, in the black.

And now, sadly, I say to my fellow countrymen and women, the days of milk and honey are over. Your children and grand children will be in economic bondage for the rest of their days.

This pillock Swan is a highwayman, a looter, a pilferer, a sneak, a retrograde. A f-cking economic bumpkin. Wayne Swan wouldn’t know how to balance his testicles if he tried.

Up to $70 billion in deficit. No surplus until at least 2014-15. Unemployment set to rise past 10 per cent. Slashing the Private Health Insurance Rebate. A miserly $30 increase in the age pension. “Means testing” my buttock scented clacker. They’re just floundering in the dark like Joel Fitzgibbon at a Chinese restaurant.

The Swan-Rudd budget makes the Melbourne Demons look like they have a game plan.

Paid maternity leave? Nothing more than middle-class welfare for greedy mothers. Women have their place — and certainly Janette and Tanya know where that place is (by their man’s side, not filling a vacuous space at DFAT or DEEWR or waitressing at Aussie’s Coffee shop).

This country cannot afford paid maternity leave. When I was Treasurer, I urged women to have one for themselves, one for their partner and one for the country. We could afford it then.

Mr Swan and Mr Rudd now want to have one for their right hand and one for the taxpayers to be lumbered with for eternity. If you cannot afford to have a child, learn the rhythm method or invest in some non-perforating plastic tubing. It works for Ms Gillard…

“A very Labor budget,” Wayne Swan calls it. A very lummox budget more like it. A lazy little surfy boy trying to blame Howard and my good self for not predicting the end of the mining boom! What cheek. Here’s a prediction Wayne — Lindsay Tanner will be Treasurer this time next year.

If only Joe Hockey knew how to trim the fat we’d have a creditable alternative budget to propose.

Kevin Rudd has taken a hairdryer to the billions in surplus I left him and made an Afro from the formally straightened fiscal product I’d so masterly crafted.

*This may or may not be true.

“Peter Costello” will be liveblogging about Budget 09 on the Crikey website along with First Dog on the Moon, Chris Berg, John Quiggin, Bernard Keane and Eva Cox from 7pm tonight. Check it out here.