Joe Hockey's wife is an investment banker, if the bush telegraph is to be believed. If so, she probably earns ten times his anaemic parliamentarian's salary. For a union official, a public servant or a teacher -- in other words, a typical Labor MP, it's not a bad wage, but if you are a top QC (think Tom Hughes) , a businessman, a medical specialist or even an architect in a successful practice -- in other words, the people who once filled the Liberal ranks -- it's pretty pathetic. Most Lib MPs these days are staffers, a person the average Liberal branch member not so long ago regarded with derision and scorn.
I must say Smokin' Joe was once very low on my list of top Libs. His incessant bank bashing might appeal to the hoipolloi, but any sensible person knows Australia is blessed to have four sound banks that earn good profits and have sound balance sheets. It is no secret that the real battlers -- in other words, small business owners -- are subsidising holders of residential mortgages. This is pure politics. With Treasurer Wayne Swan whining about the banks passing on each reduction in the RBA cash rate to mortgage holders, when he knows that it doesn't directly affect their cost of funds, the banks don't need enemies on the Right.
But Joe -- who until recently I habitually referred to as 'That Fat Prick Hockey' -- has reformed. He's been telling everyone -- including Tony Abbott -- that if there is someone promising to spend the taxpayers' money like a drunken sailor, it's Tony Abbott, not him.
Take the handicapped insurance scheme. In the Budget, some $1 billion was allocated for this scheme. This is despite Jenny Macklin telling me it would cost $6.5 to 8 billion dollars in the first year alone (see previous entry 'Be Hardhearted with the Handicapped). Who is going to fund it now? The States! After all, it is a Stater responsibility. And who else? Tony Abbott! And what does Joe say? We may not be able to afford it! This scheme, which will replace family carers with paid staff, and will wipe out a private sector which dates to colonial times and replace it with a government bureaucracy, will be funded by the Libs, if Tony Abbott has his way. According to him, it's bipartisan policy.
We'll forgive the reformed Joe his former bank bashing ways, now he's the nearest thing to an economic brain the Libs have.
As for Tony Abbott: He's on a mission from God -- and we don't know where he's going.
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