I don’t recall The Australian ever being this critical when the Howard government (peace be upon it) was busy slashing funding to welfare programs and public services:

Labor razor gang slashes carers’ bonus

LABOR will scrap annual bonuses of $1600 paid to carers as its budget razor gang carves deep into welfare programs to cut spending and curb inflation.

It will replace the payments with a higher utilities allowance but will leave the sick and disabled and their carers hundreds of dollars a year worse off.

But I’ll let that slide for the moment and say I agree that this announcement is disgraceful. Full-time carers have it tough enough as it is, and were barely supported under the previous government.

Wayne Swan, get your fucking act together. Or join the Liberals.

Just compare the confident stance of Treasurer Wayne Swan (in blue) with the inward-toe defensiveness of PM Kevin Rudd and Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner (in red). Rudd looks like he’s got a pole up his arse and Tanner looks like he’s part of a soccer wall.

Class of ‘07

Just now on ABC’s Insiders, Treasurer Peter Costello claimed that being a union member is equivalent to being a union official. Pressed by host Barrie Cassidy to explain how Shadow Treasurer Wayne Swan was a union official as claimed by Liberal Party advertising, the best Costello could do was point towards his AWU membership.

In the interest of full disclosure I must declare that I am a union official due to my membership of the AEU. The Liberal Party says that 70% of the Labor front bench are union officials, so lets try and work out what percentage of GrodsReaders are union officials. Drop a quick ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in comments to indicate your union membership status.

UPDATE: Screw the comments thing; let’s GrodsPoll it.