Wayne Swan is tops

The Treasurer is tops! At least his family thinks so and I’m sure many others — but if you squint a little bit, and listen to a budget that’s not terrible by any means, but avoids tackling many of the worst rorts, has the odd ideological bit and spends more than it should on cash handouts, you might see … oh yes, is that Peter Costello?

Joe Hockey up to fourth, and we all love the “casino economics” line, we just have no idea what it’s meant to mean. James Packer is taking over from Ken Henry? Well I’m sure they tested it and it went well in the focus group.

Perhaps the level of excitement over the Budget was most effectively shown by how quickly everyone moved on to the alcopops debate, which for the press gallery has de facto become the double dissolution trigger debate. Good to see no-one is pretending that it’s actually about the effect of the legislation anymore. Meanwhile Penny Wong dips straight back out of the Top 20 and with her any serious effort to tackle climate change.

The low general level of interest in Federal politics on talkback continues through Budget Week. Even the pension age decision doesn’t seem to have fired the lines up.

Just a couple of the many difficult questions to come from this, are some in the media attempting to recapture the right to be society’s moral watchdog? And are we trying to blame a general societal lack of empathy and maturity on one distasteful group in the public eye?

There’s more on the Media Monitors website.