video of gillard crying, she has no shame., page-135

For all her tears, shown on prime-time, Julia Gillard is using the disabled as her last, desperate weapon against Tony Abbott.

Mark Kenny suspects even this last grubby bid will fail:

Trap. Wedge. Trick. Ploy. All these words have been used to describe Wayne Swan’s latest federal budget…

It was only a couple of weeks ago that Julia Gillard and her Treasurer had unsuccessfully applied a pincer movement on Abbott over a proposed extension of the Medicare levy to pay for DisabilityCare… He had, of course, confounded the government ... when he backed the NDIS levy…

All was not lost, though. By definition, the 0.5-percentage-point increase to the Medicare levy would not pay for the whole scheme, a fact Abbott repeatedly pointed out…

That opened the opportunity for a second wedge in the form of painful cuts to existing spending to guarantee the remainder of NDIS funding… Many in Labor believe that for Abbott, cutting the baby bonus and family payments will prove to be a bridge too far. Indeed, they’re banking on it…

Abbott believes the government is again manouevring for a more damaging claim ... being the charge that he is not a ‘’fair dinkum’’ backer of the new disability program.

In other words, if Abbott blocks the budget measures to close off the baby-bonus and trim family tax benefits, he will be putting the very financial viability of the $14.5 billion DisabilityCare in jeopardy.

Abbott won’t be trapped:

TONY Abbott will tonight leave open the prospect of supporting the Labor spending cuts and tax increases that pay for DisabilityCare in a budget reply speech aimed at sidestepping Wayne Swan’s fiscal booby trap.
Gillard’s tears yesterday elevated disability care as an issue, with Labor hoping to contrast Gillard’s passion with Abbott’s alleged hard-heartedness.

Of course, it would be mean to even suggest those tears weren’t genuine. Strangely, though, even ABC host Jon Faine this morning estimated that a third of his (largely Left-leaning audience) were sceptical.

Surely Labor wouldn’t be that cynical, that craven.

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/