Wayne Swan accuses Coalition of using its budget to wage class war

Daniel Hurst, political correspondent

theguardian.com, Monday 2 June 2014

Leaders’ world view moulded by representing electorates with some of highest incomes in Australia, former treasurer says

Wayne Swan: angered by the government's 'undeclared class and generational war, so central to both the budget and the Commission of Audit's report'. Photograph: AAP

Wayne Swan has accused the Abbott government of using its budget to wage a “class war”, an argument the Coalition previously mounted about the previous Labor administration.

In an opinion piece for Guardian Australia, the former treasurer labels the budget “an assault on social justice in the short and long term” and suggests Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey’s world view has been moulded by representing electorates with the third- and second-highest median incomes in Australia.

The prime minister and the treasurer’s budget “translates their world view into deeds”, Swan writes, describing a world in which people go to the doctor too often because it is free, where wages are too high and where regulation on business is out of control.

Swan – whose tenure as treasurer from 2007 to 2013 included the global financial crisis – was derided by the Coalition for failing to deliver on his repeated surplus pledge and for designing the under-performing mining tax. In recent months he has sought to fight back against the government's narrative about Labor's economic legacy being a “debt and deficit disaster”, arguing the criticism is designed to delegitimise the successful stimulus programs.

In his opinion piece, Swan recounts hearing Hockey’s first budget speech and being angered not by “the fake economic emergency, the fiddled forecasts or the alleged debt burden” but by the government's “undeclared class and generational war, so central to both the budget and the Commission of Audit’s report”.

Swan portrays the budget as “savage” for older people, low-income Australians and young people and says the government has failed to tackle “obscene” levels of top-end superannuation tax concessions.

He is particularly critical of the plan to strip people under 30 of benefits for up to six months at a time if they are not earning or learning. “The change to Newstart, in particular, is the most vicious, unjustified and utterly policy-idiotic measure I have ever seen a government take anywhere, anytime in my public policy career,” Swan writes.

“It denies support upfront to the most vulnerable labour market group at the very time they need it.”

Swan says Abbott's electorate of Warringah has Australia's third-highest median weekly household income, at $2,100 a week. He says Hockey's North Sydney is the second richest against this measure, Malcolm Turnbull's Wentworth is the fifth richest, and the seat formerly held by Brendan Nelson is the richest.

“I have nothing against the hardworking people of these electorates,” Swan writes. “I know plenty of them and they are some of the finest contributors to our society and our economy. My point is rather one of diversity.

“All the Liberal party's recent leaders have come from four of the five wealthiest electorates in the country. When your idea of representational diversity is to allow just one of your last four party leaders to come from outside Sydney’s north shore – and that guy comes from the eastern suburbs – you have a serious problem.”

Abbott has argued everyone must make a contribution to repairing the budget and has pointed to the three-year levy on income above $180,000 as evidence the top end of town was not spared pain.

When in opposition the Coalition regularly accused Labor of engaging in class warfare, including in April 2013 when the then government was looking to rein in superannuation tax concessions for the rich.

In March 2012 Hockey accused Swan of promoting “envy in a class war” by claiming prominent mining magnates were using their political power to promote their vested interests in a “profoundly anti-democratic way”.

In criticising the 2012 budget, Abbott said Labor's plan “deliberately, coldly, calculatedly plays the class war card” by abandoning company tax cuts and replacing them with means-tested payments “because a drowning government has decided to portray the political contest in this country as billionaires versus battlers”.

Wayne Swan accuses Coalition of using its budget to wage class war | World news | theguardian.com