Swan Budget: Unmentionable Unemployed Unpersons

Here's a list of missing words from Wayne Swan's budget speech

• welfare
• benefits
• unemployment
• newstart
• unworking families

At least "unemployment" was mentioned, if only in the context of the certainty that it would continue to fall. This is great news to the 600,000 Aussies who can't get work, no matter how often they rewrite their resumes. Unemployment will definitely fall, unless a butterfly's wing happens to flutter deep in a bank vault in Switzerland, in which case, it's anyone's guess which way the economy will flail.

Heigh ho and off to nonwork they'll go, another year on $235 a week, indexed to 3/5 of 5/8 of SFA.

Those pesky unmentionable words failed to appear in the SMH or Crikey. Is there any point in searching the Australian?

In short, the unemployed have become unpersons, unmentionable, and perhaps in the not too distant future, our very own caste of Untouchables.

Here's what ACOSS asked for on their behalf.

• paid work experience for the long term unemployed
• an increase of $45 per week

Sow's ears might fly with a raise like that which would still leave them about $80 short of the poverty line.

How is anyone to live on money like that?

The silence of and about the unemployed is truly deafening. But we're talking about the Labor Party, not the "Can't-even-sell-their-labor-for-$236-a-week Party". And it's no business of the Worker's Union, cos there's no Former Workers Union.