Wayne Swan

In conventional Wayne Swan fashion, he was triumphant as he unveiled Treasury’s stern rebuttal of Frontier Economics research report into an alternative emissions trading scheme.

Given the Rudd Government’s deeply flawed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, the Coalition had commissioned the report in order to inform discussions about a better carbon trading scheme. But yesterday Mr Swan informed reporters that a $3.2 billion hole had been found in Frontier’s alternative by the Treasury Department.

So where is the modelling? Mr Swan has refused to release it and until he does, Treasury’s alleged rebuttal amounts to zip.

Continue reading "Hey Wayne, show me the money problem with our ETS" »

Wayne Swan went on the front foot this afternoon in response to the 0.25 per centage point interest rate rise the RBA has just announced.

Before Joe Hockey could race to the back of the NSW Parliament to accuse the Government of being responsible for the rise, Mr Swan predicted he and Malcolm Turnbull would try to pin it on him and the Prime Minister.

“Never forget that if the Liberal Party has their way Australia would be in recession right now,’’ Mr Swan said. ``For the Liberal Party to claim now that interest rates can stay at record lows is simply laughable and demonstrates their lack of any economic credibility whatsoever.”

Continue reading "Interest rates: who’s to blame?" »

What a lovely recession we’re having. Or not having.

This morning’s GDP numbers were supposed to reveal the recession was a close run thing, with only a handful of flat-screen TVs and school gyms keeping the economy going in the right direction.

But 0.6 per cent growth in one quarter would be pretty tidy in a normal year, let alone the year after the greatest global financial meltdown in generations.

Continue reading "What Recession?" »

One of the most exciting periods in politics for a long time began on Friday the 19th of June when little-known Treasury official Godwin Grech turned up for a Senate inquiry into the Ozcar affair. His sensational testimony led to him being chased through Parliament House. He was followed into a lift and to his car by a horde of media.

It was the start of a frenzied week in politics, when the news from Parliament House was interesting again, and Question Time became the best show in town. It swung wildly from Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull calling for Kevin Rudd to resign to the Liberal leader being under all the pressure.

The first photo is of Treasury official Godwin Grech under pressure and showing it in the Senate inquiry. When he was giving his evidence there was a crackling in the air – you knew it would be an all-in when he left the room.

I was one of the first into the lift and a bunch of others piled in. Others were much closer to his face, but by reaching up and shoot downwards I was able to capture the swarm of media around him.

Continue reading "Utegate photos: capturing a political crisis on camera" »

THE biggest casualty in the Utegate fiasco has not been Malcolm Turnbull or Kevin Rudd or Wayne Swan or the oddly-named Godwin Grech, whose unusual handle meant he was almost pre-ordained to wind up as a bit player in some low-rent antipodean rehash of a John Grisham thriller.

The biggest casualty has been the taxpaying, voting public, which has watched the nation’s political leadership descend into an orgy of ludicrous name-calling, one-upmanship and abuse.

[Note: There’s some proper ute-related action in this YouTube vid.]

The allegations at the centre of the Utegate affair were deeply serious. As such, it’s a bit rich to declare boldly that any discussion of the affair was, of itself, a waste of time. It wasn’t a waste of time at all.

Continue reading "Memo MPs: the public has had a gutful of Utegate" »

8.52pm: That’s a wrap. What a day. That was possibly one of the best episodes of the 7.30 Report ever tonight - Rudd’s line about a “garden variety making-things-up” was a classic.

Thanks to all of you who contributed during the day, particularly to the live coverage of a brutal couple of hours in Parliament. There were well over 1000 comments from readers - you can replay it below. A couple of closing comments:

• Confirmation the email was a fake casts last Friday’s Senate hearing in a different light. Liberal Senator Eric Abetz appeared to be quoting the email when he questioned Godwin Grech. It now seems possible one or both of them knew, or suspected, it was a forgery. And we should ask again why Grech’s superior, David Martine, interfered with the questioning of Senators on certain details.
• Wayne Swan shouldn’t be off the hook. There remains a straightforward question over whether he misled Parliament when answering questions about a mate of the Prime Minister. After the extraordinary theatre in Canberra today it’s easy to lose sight of this. I suppose the question is whether the crippling blow landed on the Opposition today will hobble it for the rest of the fight.

Looking forward to the papers in the morning.

7.08pm Evening news roundup, and Kochie in Canberra. On the Nine Network, Laurie Oakes says Malcolm Turnbull has egg on his face. Rudd joined Peter Overton outside Parliament House for a stand-up interview. He said he had “absolute confidence in the Treasurer”, adding that he had helped “many many many” car dealers. At the end he said Liberal Party elders should tell Turnbull to go.

I would call upon the senior people of the Liberal Party, the experienced hands of the Liberal Party - Mr Costello, Brendan Nelson, Senator Minchin - to tap Mr Turnbull on the shoulder and say it is time to go.

Seven’s news was headed “Turnbull in Turmoil” and had some of the great grabs from today, to wit:

Albanese: “Bring it on”.
Turnbull: “He has lied to this House.”
Hockey: “Have you got something to say Prime Minister? Have you got something to say?”
Rudd: “Be man enough to apologise and resign.”

Seven’s verdict: Swan has explaining to do, but Turnbull’s fighting hardest for his political life.

Something to look forward to tomorrow is Kochie with the utegate latest from Parliament House. As Anthony Albanese might say, bring it on.

5.11pm: Turnbull’s former adviser speaks to the Herald Sun. Excerpts:

A FORMER adviser to Malcolm Turnbull has denied involvement with the email at the centre of the Ute-gate affair…

... There is no suggestion that Mr Lindwall - a former staffer to both Peter Costello and Mr Turnbull -has engaged in any wrongdoing, but it is understood the Australian Federal Police want to speak with him to determine his involvement, if any, in the affair.

Late today Mr Lindwall told heraldsun.com.au he had nothing to do with the fake email.

“I don’t know anything about the email, I can tell you that,” he said.

Mr Lindwall admitted to knowing Mr Grech, adding: “I used to work in Treasury, anyone who worked in Treasury would know Godwin.”

Read the full story here.

5.02pm: Twittermania - Tweeters have been piling in all afternoon with comments on “utegate”. See the stream of utegate comments here.

Continue reading "Live blogging utegate: Showdown in Canberra" »

The OzCar scandal, or utegate if you prefer, involves Australia’s three most senior politicians - Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Treasurer Wayne Swan, and Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull. Below is a summary of what each is accused of and how it affects them.

Continue reading "Utegate explained: This is not just about an email or a ute" »

Highlights from this morning’s newspapers of the coverage of the utegate affair. See how the various titles around the country report and analyse the utegate crisis ahead of today’s showdown in Canberra.

Continue reading "Utegate reading round-up" »

Kevin Rudd might think that momentum has swung back his way in the Utegate scandal with the email implicating him and his office looking almost certainly like a fake.

For the PM to have referred himself and his office to the Auditor-General, and to have gone one further and called in the AFP, are the actions of a man who is confident that the continuing sweeps of his email system will not throw up any nasty surprises.

But the more the ALP goes on about the fake email, the more obvious it becomes that it’s the only email the Government wants to talk about - because the others are so damning of Treasurer Wayne Swan, whose conduct has conveniently not been included in the terms of reference for the Auditor-General’s investigation.

Continue reading "Rudd and Swan in quagmire of their own making" »

We knew something was up when the party pies ran out. There was a whiff of the end of times that the cheap percolated coffee couldn’t quite hide.

And so it came to pass. The state Budget lock up was no more.

South Australia – first state to give women the vote, to ban plastic bags and forbid groups of people who ride motorcycles from hanging out together, has now become the first state to lose the lock up.

Continue reading "Fun it may be, but locking up journos is pointless" »

LIKE darning socks, car-pooling and drinking instant coffee, bank bashing went out of favour when we were all getting rich during “the great neo-liberal experiment”. Now, from the top office in the land down, this wholesome pursuit is making a comeback.

It’s not that the banks ever lost their talent for bastardry. It’s just that for a decade or so it has been suppressed by competition – from the likes of Aussie and Wizard – and by the buoyant economy. That $140 annual account-keeping fee didn’t look so bad when your credit card was in the black and the value of your house had doubled in the past two years. But with competition to the Big Four now all but wiped out, leaving the Westpac, Commonwealth, NAB and ANZ as the last saviours of our financial system (just ask them), the bastards inside can once again be unleashed. 

The Commonwealth took one for the team this week when it raised variable home loan rates 0.1 percentage points to 5.74 per cent. It was the first mortgage rate increase by the banks since last year but won’t, unfortunately, be the last.

Continue reading "Bastard banks making a comeback after the boom" »

It’s a pretty incredible feat of backspin when a Government would rather say it cocked something up than admit its PR was poorly managed.

But Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan’s stonewalling on the deficit and debt in the week after the Budget backfired on them so badly its now being claimed it was the result of their own incompetence, not dodgy spin.

Spun out? You’re not the only one. In his column this weekend Laurie Oakes said, contrary to all appearances, Rudd and Swan were advised by their spin doctors to “embrace the numbers” but failed to do so because of “old-fashioned unadulterated incompetence”.

Continue reading "Rudd and Swan’s spin spinning out of control" »

Update: watch Rudd’s limp Lateline performance here

HERE’S a quick test. Read the following words out loud:

Three.
Hundred.
Billion.
Dollars.

Did you succeed? Congratulations! You could be in with a chance of doing a better job at levelling with the Australian people than the current Prime Minister.

Kevin Rudd was collared on Lateline when asked to name the peak level of debt that Australia would face according to the current plan as outlined in the federal Budget last week.

Continue reading "It might be a bad number, but surely the PM can say it" »

Because everyone hasn’t heard enough about Twitter, I’m going to start with a quote from it tonight:

kinkylinkn: Turnbull had some good ideas but when he unashamedly craps on about the Rudd gov that’s when I turn the tv off with a burst of “idiot”.

I have a habit of complaining about politicians, er, complaining all the time. The last whinge in this vein I had to anyone who would lists was about the Treasurer whingeing that Howard’s mob had let spending on some programs go too far, so he would have to wind it back.

Continue reading "Almost an Obama moment in Turnbull’s Budget reply" »

NO one loves a Budget. Like a hangover, you know it’s something you have to endure to pay for the excesses of the night before.

Wayne Swan’s Federal Budget on Tuesday night - after years of excesses under a booming economy - left many Australians punchdrunk and in search of a headache cure for a nation gripped for a pounding from the global financial crisis.

The morning after Budget night, the assessment of bloggers on opinion forums of major Australian news sites was mostly pessimistic.

Continue reading "Punch-drunk Swan gets smashed in cyberspace" »

From the Budget papers:

The Government is committed to retaining the [Extended Medicare Safety Net]. This demands that the safety net remain sustainable. There is evidence to suggest that excessive growth of fees for obstetrics and other services, such as Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART), hair transplants and varicose veins is putting this sustainability at risk.

(I need to be clear that this is not in any way making light of the fact that treatments like IVF are facing a cap. You can read about a child who probably would never have been born had the cap been in place here.)

Step forward, Shane Warne. You have clearly encouraged men of Australia to seek out hair replacement treatments in a way that provides an opportunity to publish this picture again. Warney videos for your viewing pleasure below, too.

Continue reading "Yeah, yeah: Warney’s role in $450m Medicare blowout" »

So, “clean energy” stands as one of the infrastructure centrepieces of the Federal Budget. It’s an investment intended, we’re told, to both pull the economy out of recession and get us on the pathway to a low carbon economy. A princely sum of $4.5 billion is directed to renewable energy, infrastructure for climate-observing systems, and funds for low emissions technology development.

It sure sounds impressive, but under scrutiny, it turns out to be mostly just smoke and mirrors.

Breaking down the numbers, we find that $1 billion is a rollover of existing funds, while $2.4 billion has been directed towards research, development and demonstration of low-emissions coal technology, or “carbon capture and storage” to us scientists. A little under half a billion will go towards establishing a body to support research into renewable energy.

Continue reading "Can’t see the environment measures for all the smoke" »

It wasn’t in the speech, it wasn’t even in the Budget At-a-glance or Highlights document, and it wasn’t anywhere in the 77 pages of press releases distributed last night – if you were looking for the size of the deficit you had to go to page 5 of the Budget Overview document.

Wayne Swan managed to get through 3876 words to the House of Representative last night without letting on the Australian Government was about to embark on a $57.5 billion deficit for 2009-10…

Continue reading "The D, D, Defi- no. Wayne can’t bring himself to say it" »

IF you are an Australian in your early fifties and starting to think, however fleetingly, about retirement, the future you thought you had just changed dramatically.

In an aside in Wayne Swan’s Budget speech he announced the retirement age would be lifted by two years, to 67. There can’t be much that the Treasurer has enjoyed about putting this frightful Budget together, but he might take some quiet consolation in remembering John Howard was that age when he was involuntarily retired as Prime Minister in November 2007.

Lifting the retirement age should come as a relief to younger workers. I love old people – I know some, and sometimes even talk to them. But having a general understanding that you stop paying taxes and start taking them instead at 65 years of age is both ageist and something the country cannot afford to continue.

Continue reading "In one breath, Swan changed your retirement plans" »

What Wayne Swan didn’t tell you tonight was that by 2012 your share of Government Debt will be $8308. Your wife, your husband, each of your kids, your Mum, your Dad, your siblings – each and every one of them $8308 in the red.

When Paul Keating handed back the keys to the Treasury in 1996, that figure was $5258. It took John Howard and Peter Costello nine years to bring us back into the black. All that talk of “temporary borrowings” scattered through the Budget papers sounds more than a little ambitious.

Mash up historical and projected Government Debt figures with population stats from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the true extent of Kevin Rudd and Wayne Swan’s descent into deficit is shown in what is, admittedly, a very ugly chart.

Continue reading "Til debt do us part: the credit bill of every Australian" »

September 2008: Malcolm Farr writes in The Daily Telegraph that Kevin Rudd is considering taking on net debt for the first time in 12 years. Government goes ballistic in its denials. Newspoll shows ALP 55% - Coalition 45%

October 2008: Rudd announces the first stimulus package and says the cash will be distributed by Christmas. Punters are comfortable with the $10 billion bottom line. Newspoll shows ALP 54% - Coalition 46%.

November 2009: Rudd spills the worst-kept secret in Government - that the Budget will go into “temporary deficit”. Newspoll two weeks later shows ALP 59% - Coalition 41%.

December 2008: Harvey Norman reports bumper Christmas sales, up 9 per cent on previous year. Kevin Rudd Santa Clause jokes start. Newspoll shows ALP 59% - Coalition 41%....

Continue reading "The deficit became funny but Rudd’s not laughing" »

Here’s how The Punch team summarised the Budget shortly after the lock-up ended. Enjoy - and follow us on Twitter to stay in touch. Links at the foot of the post.

BUDGET: Shane Warne implicated in $57.5 billion deficit #ausbudget09 #thepunch

DEFICIT: Wayne Swan won’t tell you this in his speech but for 2009-10 the deficit will be $57.5 billion #ausbudget09 #thepunch

DEFICIT: Swan unveils “deficit exit strategy”. It’s the war on terrifying levels of spending #ausbudget09 #thepunch

Continue reading "No sex until April 2010: The Punch tweets the Budget" »

WAYNE Swan and his mates at Treasury put a lot of effort into producing pretty graphs whose sole intention seems to be to make us feel OK about all the bad news in the Budget. There’s little that needs to be said here except that a lot of this is clearly spin, but under the very last chart below I’ve pointed out a few things worth thinking about.

Continue reading "Tired of reading about the Budget? Here are the pictures" »

As of yesterday about one-million hard-working Australians discovered that Kevin Rudd’s campaign promise to stand up for “working families” came with an invisible asterisk.

The asterisk denotes - “promise does not include all working families”.

Especially those families who work a little bit too hard, who pay a higher rate of tax because they hold more senior jobs, work longer hours, have taken risks starting businesses, employing other people, and have got themselves into a position where with their super, their private health care, their choice of hospitals and schools, they are constantly taking pressure off the public system.

Continue reading "Class war budget betrays hardest-working families" »

Here’s a confronting concept to grapple with first thing in the morning: opposition assistant treasury spokesman Tony Smith saying that Kevin Rudd’s deficit will last longer than the Second World War.

Or so long that, if your first child is born on budget night next Tuesday, they will have enrolled at primary school by the time the Budget is back in the black.

The Daily Telegraph’s Sue Dunlevy reports this morning that next week’s economic statement may contain a deficit figure as high as $70 billion, $10 billion higher than most other estimates in the pre-budget marketplace. Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd remain sanguine about the enormity of this figure.

But there’s one very big problem with their laid-back approach. 

Continue reading "Joyful crowd celebrates end of Rudd’s six-year deficit" »