By ABC's Barrie Cassidy Friday 15 August 2014
Photo: Joe Hockey says he feels like one of the most hated men in Australia. (Getty Images: Stefan Postles)
The once popular Treasurer now trudges around the country alone and unloved. Not all of the criticisms are entirely fair, but then neither is the budget he's struggling to spruik, writes Barrie Cassidy.
A funny thing happened while I took a three months break from the daily grind of politics. The experience does concentrate the mind on what really has shifted since those pre-budget days in early May.
That the budget is still the dominant political topic is surprising enough. But more surprising is Joe Hockey's extraordinary fall from grace.
What happened to one of the most popular ministers in the Government? Jovial Joe. Affable Joe. The heir apparent by a long way; the minister best equipped to launch an attack on the age of entitlement, repair the budget, and persuade the country that it was in their best interests to do so.
There was obviously an incremental decline, one budget item at a time. Add to that the cigar smoking; the constant reminders of the pledge to fairly spread the pain; that annoying Treasury analysis demonstrating beyond question that the poor got hit the hardest; the unfortunate timing of the book beyond his control; the unfortunate holiday in Fiji well within his control; and now his assertion that poor people don't drive cars.
All easily understood if you were paying attention every day; a bit of a shock if you skipped a few weeks, as I did.
In his early months as Treasurer, Hockey had a net approval rating of +17 per cent, pretty good when you consider the country hasn't had a leader on either side in positive territory for years. Now he's at -9 per cent. That would take some getting used to, even for a politician. Clearly it doesn't sit well.
I last saw him being interviewed on television on The Project in May. As usual, he got a serious message across and effortlessly joined in the friendly wise-cracking banter. Not too many can do it that effectively.
My next image was just last week. There he was walking alone hunched over in an overcoat in a shabby backstreet in Ballarat headed for the office of DLP Senator, John Madigan. He was midway through a whistle-stop tour of all crossbenchers, some of them humiliating him along the way. That he was trying - and reaching out to them on their turf didn't seem to count for much.
To his surprise, the media had been tipped off, further souring his mood. Once inside, he told the senator he felt he was one of the most hated men in Australia.
Much of it is unfair. The country has a problem - an exaggerated one - but a structural problem nevertheless with debt and deficit. He is trying to do something about it.
Yet his former colleague Peter Costello says he should abandon the co-payment; that's the same person who saddled him with an overly generous welfare system in the first place. Likewise his leader, Tony Abbott, in repeated acts of political expediency from opposition, severely restricted his options by ruling out so many sensible initiatives. Then he left the PPL hanging around his neck like an albatross.
Now, while Hockey trudges around the country alone and unloved, his leader rebuilds his stature courtesy of a strong focus on foreign policy and national security.
It might not be fair, but then that's what is being said about his budget.
Now Hockey has exacerbated his difficulties with his ill-advised comments about poor people and cars. He compounded the mistake by producing figures to support his contention that the richest in the community spend three times as much on fuel as the poorest group. Maybe they do. But they earn at least ten times as much. Comparatively, in percentage terms, the poor are feeling the impact far more than the rich. A fair measure impacts equally in percentage terms, not dollar terms.
At some stage the government will have to modify some of the initiatives, both to make them fairer and to steer them through the Senate.
Then, longer term, it will have to give lower income earners some prospect that their standard of living will improve.
And it will need to take advice beyond that from the millionaires who now hold a monopoly, and begin to take a few more dollars from those who can afford it.
Australia, after all, has the highest median wealth in the world.
There is money out there. Lots of people have it.
To borrow and refine an idea from American author Bill Bryson, think of it this way.
If you were locked in a vault with unlimited $5 notes and were told you could keep all those you initialled - and you managed to initial one every second - then you would become a millionaire in three days and a billionaire in six years. After 40 years, you would be as wealthy as James Packer and after 110 years, as wealthy as Gina Rinehart.
Now that's fanning class warfare of course. In the minds of some, any plea for fairness across the board is dismissed in that way.
Australia, you see, doesn't have a Warren Buffett. The American investor, one of the wealthiest people in the world, once told CNBC, "There's been class warfare going on for the last 20 years ... and my class has won.
"We're the ones that have gotten our tax rates reduced dramatically."
In the book Not Your Average Joe, we are told of a phone call that Attorney General George Brandis made to Hockey on New Year's Eve. Brandis said, "At the end of next year, we will be an unpopular government. And we can be unpopular for all the right reasons, or the wrong reasons."
Apart from the irony of Brandis making that observation, it could usefully form the basis of a midterm evaluation.
Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of the ABC program Insiders. View his full profile here.
No more Mr Nice Joe - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
