former treasurer Wayne Swan "head could roll if the poor ignored"

THE poor in Australia and other parts of the world could rise up against the rich, French Revolution-style, former treasurer Wayne Swan will warn today.

As the government continues to struggle to have its Budget passed, Mr Swan will warn “the French aristocracy never saw it coming either’’.

Ahead of this week’s launch of Mr Swan’s political memoir, The Good Fight, the former Treasurer will today tell The National Press Club the Government had worsened the class divide.

He will rip into the Abbott Government for trying to protect its high-flying powerbase, and argue the Australian middle-class was protected and advanced by the former Labor government. The current Government is intent on the “Americanisation” of the country, he will say.

“They have forgotten that they have a duty to help deliver a better life to every Australian, rich, poor and in-between,’’ Mr Swan will say.
“As the Budget and its aftermath have demonstrated, everything that the Abbott Government now does is a search for a political strategy to sell that divisive, unfair, un-Australian agenda to a disbelieving public at large.

“A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to walk the high line through New York and on the side of an old brick building was a large advertisement which read ‘the French aristocracy never saw it coming either’.

“What we do to stem the growing tide of inequality in the developed world, at home and abroad, is the central economic and political challenge of our age.’’

Ben_Reilly wrote:Amazing to hear this kind of talk out of Australia when there's so much more inequality in other countries ...