Rudd and Swan are using the $57 billion budget deficit as an excuse to gouge pensioners and slash health care funding, so they can prop up Australia’s bankrupt banks, charged Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood today.

Mr Isherwood pointed out that the $57 billion deficit is the same size as the $58 billion Future Fund, comprised of past budget surpluses, which is being pumped into the banks.

“Propping up banks, but killing pensioners and patients, is fascism,” he said.

“Who worked out offsetting the measly $32 per week pension rise, against the two year rise in pension qualifying age—the accountants from Auschwitz?

“Why are we fiddling with health funding, to save costs, when our underfunded system is already killing tens of thousands on excruciatingly long waiting lists?”

Australia is being bankrupted, because the government is putting bankers ahead of people, Mr Isherwood insisted.

“$100 billion has been borrowed by Australia’s private banks since October 2008, using the government bank guarantee.

“That guarantee pledges the wealth of the Australian people, to bail the banks out of the disaster caused by their speculative insanity.

“The government isn’t just guaranteeing the new borrowings by the private banks—they are also the major lender to those same banks through the Future Fund, itself managed by a leading private banker, David Murray.

“That is on top of the $35 billion of Future Fund deposited among Australia’s banks, to shore up their capital bases.”

Mr Isherwood pointed out that without the enormous public support given to Australia’s banks, a number would have already collapsed from a combination of their exposure to the domestic property bubble, the international credit markets, and the global derivatives bubble.

“The CEC is leading the fight in Australia to properly fix the economic crisis, in a way that puts people first,” he said.

“Our Homeowners and Bank Protection Bill will put the banks through bankruptcy reorganisation, so that we can save the financial system while protecting the welfare of the people.

“I urge everyone to join our fight to make it happen.”

To view a 4-minute video which exposes the exact equivalence between the cuts to health care being pushed by the Obama administration and the policy of the Nazis, click here. For a 10-minute overview of the difference between national banking, which puts people first, and the monetarist system we now have, click here.