Joe Hockey

In the last week there has been a massive fuss about a menu for a fundraiser dinner. Julia Gillard was hot on attack over it, labelling the Liberal party and Tony Abbot as misogynists.

Well their sanctimony has backfired in a cloud of hypocrisy.

As beleaguered ALP Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s torrid, raving attack on Opposition Leader Tony Abbott for a mocking menu at a Liberal Party fundraiser from several months ago reached an appalling crescendo of vitriol and claims of misogyny, polliter.com was given exclusive access to an ALP menu demeaning Abbott from an ALP Cabinet Minister’s own fundraising effort.  Read more »

Alan Jones on Joe Hockey about his stomach stapling:

He embarrassed Hockey over his recent weight loss, due to stomach stapling surgery, and said he hoped the doctors hadn’t taken his spine out during the operation.

There were plenty more sledges of Joe Hockey, who is likely to be Australia’s next Treasurer.

It began happily enough. Jones announced Hockey as ”the next treasurer of Australia”.

Jones did annotate this introduction with “the one left with the mess”, but still, any anointment from Jones is not to be lightly dismissed.

This is the man Hockey once called “the greatest broadcaster of all time”. Furthermore, it was the day after Treasurer Wayne Swan had brought down his sixth budget, and his sixth deficit. Barring an apocalyptic science fiction-esque event that results in a giant lizard demolishing Parliament House in a single swipe of its reptilian tail, it will also be Swan’s final budget.  Read more »

Andrew Bolt looks at something that New Zealanders will be familiar with…a government that has won, and won handsomely wasting the win.

Tony Abbott’s biggest danger now is not losing the September election, but wasting the win.

The Opposition Leader has long worried his contest with Julia Gillard will get very tight. He’s a fretter.

So he’s been risk averse, making few promises to end what shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey called the “Age of Entitlement”, with an astonishing six million Australians living off benefits or state salaries.

He does not dare risk the fear campaign Labor would wage among public servants and pensioners.

Nor is he promising big changes to Labor’s controls over workplaces which are strangling productivity. He’s stuck mainly to promising a crackdown on rogue unions, fearing another union scare campaign if he went much further.  Read more »

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

If marriage is a stablising force for families and society, then why can’t gay people have stability too?

Surely those who say they don’t support the concept of gay marriage because they think children should have a mother and a father are missing the whole point? (No names, no pack drill, but I am talking about my dear friend Joe Hockey and his otherwise strong appearance on Q&A last Monday night.) For what has the one got to do with the other? Gay families are already everywhere, and good luck to them. That has happened – ”evolved” as both Barack Obama and Magda Szubanski might have it – completely without recognition of gay marriage, and Penny Wong and her partner, with their child, are a prime example. Marriage, as we all know, is a stabilising force on society, an institution that helps keep families together, even through tough times. So why should the kids of gay parents be denied that stabilising force? Supporting gay marriage is not hurting kids, it is helping them.

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

Joe Hockey got spanked on Q&A this week by one simple question from the audience regarding marriage equality. This shows the stupidity of holding a dogmatic and ill thought out position on issues such as this. Joe Hockey now just looks like a tool.

The exchange between Penny Wong and Joe Hockey on Q&A this week about gay parents is only about two and half minutes long.

Prompted by an audience question about why the shadow treasurer thinks he and his wife make better parents than the Finance Minister and her female partner, the segment ends with Wong quietly but firmly declaring: “I know what my family is worth”.

It may only be brief but activists are calling the exchange a ”watershed moment” in their campaign for same-sex marriage – both allowing people to understand the debate at a personal level and demonstrating its status as a mainstream political issue.

On Tuesday, Wong’s response trended on Twitter and the clip has had more than 71,000 views on YouTube (up from 53,000 this time yesterday). A company has even started selling “I know what my family is worth” t-shirts and stickers.

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

Shadow treasurer Joe Hockey said he hoped claims that Liberal operatives had been spreading rumours about Mr Shorten were wrong. ”Quite frankly, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of this stuff comes out of some of the union rivals,” he said, adding that in politics ”there is no place for rumour”.

What a load of bollocks. If rumour had no place in politics how would Trevor Mallard function? He has never come across a rumour he can’t embellish and hide behind parliamentary privilege to promote.

ᔥ Sydney Morning Herald

What chance of seeing an opposition spokesperson (or even a Government one) make a statement like this?

SHADOW treasurer Joe Hockey has condemned systems of ”universal entitlement” in Western democracies, contrasting this attitude with the concept of ”filial piety” thriving across Asia where people get what they work for and families look after their own.

Speaking in London, Mr Hockey said that by Western standards the highly constrained public safety net in Hong Kong and other Asian places might seem brutal ”but it works and it is financially sustainable”.

”Contrast this with what we find in Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States. All of them have enormous entitlement systems spanning education, health, income support, retirement benefits, unemployment benefits.”

Government revenues fell far short of meeting the cost and the difference had to be made up by borrowing.

While he was less critical of Australia, saying that over the years there had been some key decisions to reduce spending, Mr Hockey said it still had ”a lot of spending by government which many voters see as their entitlement”.

He said a lower level of entitlement meant countries were free to allow business and individuals to be successful. ”It reduces taxation, meaning individuals spend less of their time working for the state, and more of their time working for themselves and their family.”

Both sides of the Western political spectrum were to blame for the entitlement mentality. Socialist governments had created a huge array of entitlements, and conservative governments had promised to fix the problem but just trimmed round the edges.

”Perhaps the real problem is the exuberant excesses of politicians who do not seem to understand or care about the fact that, like a household, a nation needs to balance its budget over time,” he said.

But now ”the age of unlimited and unfunded entitlement to government services and income support is over”, he said. ”We are now in an era where leaders are much more wary about credit risk.”

Labour likes to think they are inclusive when it is far from the truth. they are one of the worst parties to practice the politics of division, especially when in power.

Remember Michael Cullen’s “rick pricks” comments?

So too in Australia where Labor practises the politics of division. They are being called out for it too. Joe Hockey highlights the issue and his comments are as valid in Australia as they are here:

Governments should ensure that the actions they take leave Australians better off in terms of opportunity. Australians must not be held hostage to class divides. The role of government must be to help people to the starting line, while accepting that some will then run faster than others.

As a Liberal, I believe our success as a society is determined by the way we create the conditions for all Australians to excel and prosper, by allowing them to achieve their own ambitions – whatever they may be.

Wayne Swan appears to think that it is the role of government to run the race for people, while at the same time accusing our gold-medal winners of cheating.