Looking at the constant flailing of Joe Hockey presents one of life’s big question: is he clueless or is he simply a total arsehole? Either he is inflicting his brutally cruel policies without realising the damage he’s doing or he truly despises the most disadvantaged people in Australia. Either he doesn’t realise how clueless and privileged his ridiculous comments make him seem or he actually hates the people they are directed at.
Let’s have a look at his efforts. First and foremost is his budget –brutal and needlessly cruel to those have least while giving bonuses to those who have most. He achieved the almost impossible – uniting disparate economists who all say the poor are hardest hit by this budget. Hockey starts by lying about there being a “budget emergency” in Australia then lies by saying his budget isn’t doing what it was obviously deliberately designed to do – hurt the poor and reward the rich.
The scary thing is he actually seems to believe his own lies. There’s an old propaganda trick that politicians and the media use – repeat a lie often enough and people start to think it’s the truth. It’s weird to see it work on the actual liar who has apparently forgotten that he’s lying. According to Hockey, the backlash against his budget isn’t because everyone sees how unfair it is, we simply don’t see what a good job he’s doing. Joe isn’t angry that we don’t see he’s doing what’s best for all of us, he’s just disappointed.
He’s followed up his budget brutality with a series of truly bizarre brain farts, each of which have made him seem more clueless and out of touch than the last. He’s really like a toddler who has had their toys taken away for misbehaving and can only respond with more tantrums. Out of the blue, one day he decides to take a swipe at renewable energy by saying the wind farm he drives past is ugly. Compared to what, Joe? An open cut mine? A coal-fired power plant? Your shrivelled and diseased soul? The combination of that comment being both stupid and unnecessary is truly mind boggling.
He then says rich people are hurt most by his budget because high earners pay half of their income in tax. This statement is wrong on so many levels it’s embarrassing. A full explanation of why he’s wrong is here but the short version is it simply isn’t true. It annoys me that pretty much everyone glossed over the fact that high earners don’t pay high tax because they use accountants to game the system. Trust me, I earn quite a lot as an IT contractor and through accounting jiggery-pokery I (legally) pay about the same rate of tax as someone who earns about $60K.
Also, unless he’s suffered a traumatic brain injury he knew he was lying when he said it because the wrongness of his statement is absolutely basic. Apparently he thought the deal was still like it was before the election when the media was repeating his lies verbatim without challenging him with anything inconvenient like the truth. Poor Joe. It isn’t his fault everyone’s stopped believing his lies – he still believes them.
Then this week he says his plan to increase taxes on petrol hurt the rich more because they have more cars and drive more. He actually said “the poorest people either don’t have cars or actually don’t drive very far in many cases”. The first mind-boggling thing is he’s so out of touch that he thinks it’s a reasonable thing to say. Even if it was true that poorer people weren’t disproportionately affected by his policies (it isn’t true) anyone who wasn’t completely insulated from reality would have known such and obnoxious comment would only make him look more like a cigar chomping elitist. It’s so bad even Murdoch owned media are going after him.
The actual truth is that while the rich spend more on petrol in pure dollar terms, as a percentage of income it’s poorer household who spend more of their limited income on petrol. So by any reasonable definition, those least well off to start with are being punished hardest by Hockey’s policies yet again. It’s worse when you add in that many poorer people have far less options available because they are forced to live in perimeter suburbs or rural areas where there are limited jobs and limited public transport options. This essentially means many people need a car if they want to work which highlights both the wrongness and the obnoxiousness of Hockey’s statement.
This is yet another example of why I am so opposed to this government. It isn’t simply a case of differing ideologies and values (although I do disagree with them), it’s this air of entitlement, arrogance and how completely out of touch they are. Plus their endless lies and needless cruelty. They talk about the unemployed having a sense of entitlement while they hand of billions of dollars in benefits to their rich mates who helped them into power. No matter how many people point out they are wrong and they are hurting the most vulnerable they refuse to listen. Plus they’re a pack of absolute idiots who seem to be trying to outdo each other in some sort of insane competition to say the worst thing possible.
This government will go down in history as an absolute disaster. The next election can’t come soon enough.
Angry 365 Days a Year 