Savage scenes in Melbourne last week as thousands of pensioners refused to put their clothes back on until a clearly broken Wayne Swan gave them all the money, in the form of a pension increase.
One of the biggest issues to come out of the first Rudd Government budget was that there was no increase in the base pension. All they wanted was an extra $30 a fortnight. In Sydney, 2UE’s John Laws wannabe Steve Price and A Current Affair‘s Ben Fordham have brought up the issue again and again. Week after week of crying on-air about the evils the new Labor government had done to pensioners. Stories about poor pensioner-star Betty and her fight against the Man!
It’s been widely discussed on talkback radio with varying degrees of anger and possible plans of action. One talkback caller on 2GB remarked that they would prefer money spent on broadband infrastructure and education go to pensioners. That’s foresight for the future!
It all came to a head in the form of the protest in Melbourne. The savage scenes of scantily clad seniors have lead to increasing gerontophobia around Australia. Not to mention the Family First Senator Steve ‘Gimmick’ Fielding showing solidarity in revealing his rather unflattering black jocks. The tiny trolley worked better, Senator.
So we have a dilemma; Pensioners don’t have enough money to live but they’re not going to get any more from Scrooge McRudd. Far from introducing policies into Australia straight out of Logan’s Run, there’s probably a few simple solutions we can try.
Why don’t we start a pensioner sponsorship program? I can just imagine the advertisements now, Rebecca Gibney walking through a retirement village talking about the plights of Australian pensioners, showing footage of elderly pensioner Betty struggling to open that last can of PAL. She says ‘You can make a difference! For just a dollar a day you can sponsor an Australian pensioner like Betty’. Followed by footage of Betty enjoying an RSL dinner while playing a game of bingo or having a quiet drink while slotting coins into the pokies. Heartwarming.
Another recent story doing the rounds was the call from St Vincents’ Alex Wodak for the legalisation of drugs to be sold at the post office. Why the post office? We need pensioner pushers! Just think how much they could carry in their little trolley bags! They’re contributing to society and they wouldn’t have to travel far to find customers for their services. And they won’t be the only ones to benefit. The boring trip to Nanna’s will now become a trip of an entirely different variety.
The budget was also about cracking down on alcoholism. But this was mostly for the younguns of Kevin Rudd’s Working Families. So it was all the alcopops. But with goonbags safe for another day, will this lead to a shortage of the Fruity Lexia for Pensioners?
