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BFCSA: Joe Hockey enjoying the Age of Entitlement charges us for the babysitter

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 Age of entitlement isn’t over for Ho Ho Ho Joe Hockey who bills taxpayers for babysitters

Caroline Overington

26 October 2016

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/age-of-entitlement-isnt-over-for-joe-hockey-who-bills-taxpayers-for-babysitters/news-story/9f32ffeb6990fe8af5ba0ba0585735dc

You could not write a joke as good as Joe Hockey. He really takes the cake.

This is the guy who, as treasurer, exhorted Australians to be “lifters not leaners.” Who riffed on the poor not being

bothered by fuel taxes since they don’t own cars and can’t go anywhere, anyway.

Who lectured the rest of us about the “end of the age of entitlement’’ – as if it’s our fault that

the Federal budget is borked!!!

Well, ho, ho, ho, Joe

New documents sourced by Fairfax Media under Freedom of Information legislation, reveal that Mr Hockey, now US

ambassador, has been charging the taxpayer for his babysitter, so he can go out and entertain. That’s right.

Mr Hockey, who earns $370,000 a year in his new role — and who has also been entitled, from the age of 49, to a

lifetime pension of at least $90,000 a year —has been claiming back the cost of having somebody mind the nippers,

while he pops out to dinner, or lunch, or to swirl around various DC ballrooms, on official business.

Really Joe? You already live in one of Washington’s most opulent mansions, entirely for free.

It’s hopelessly lavish, a place where you can’t move for servants bearing silver trays and teapots.

You’ve got a whopping great expense account to cover your meals and your travel. You don’t even have to pay for

the housekeeper, who comes to launder the linen and wash the dishes to the tune of $48,000 a year.

Your household income is well over $1 million a year, and yet you need to charge us — the taxpayer — for the

babysitter?

The Australian Ambassador's residence in Washington where Joe Hockey and his family now live.

The Australian Ambassador's residence in Washington where Joe Hockey and his family now live.

Have you forgotten the lines you delivered, when you were Treasurer? Things like:-

“The age of entitlement is over, and the age of personal responsibility has begun”?

Or: “I say to you, emphatically, everyone in Australia must do the heavy lifting now”?

You think the average Australian worker wouldn’t mind claiming for the babysitter so they can go to out-of-hours

work functions? You think those women who work as police officers, surgeons, flight attendants,

anesthetists and others who can’t use normal child care centers wouldn’t mind getting a break on the babysitter?

How about a tax break, even? Or better still, how about you do a little of your own heavy lifting, Joe?

Hand in pocket.

The babysitting fees are included in a long list of expenses incurred by US ambassadors in recent years, and it’s

perhaps best not to read if you want to keep your lunch down, because the self-indulgent, profligate nature of the

spending is going to bring it back up.

The political class live like Orwell’s best-fed pigs.

Why, for example, can pollies not just have lunch, like the rest of us have lunch?

Why must it always be a $300 lunch at one of Washington’s finest establishments, with the heavy drapes and the

linen table cloths and the three courses, and wine, and coffee, all of it charged back to the poor b......d taxpayer?

And then of course it’s back to the sleek town car, for the journey back to the mansion, where the maid is waiting

with peppermint tea, or a chocolate milkshake, or a triple-Scotch whiskey.

Why can’t the guests come to the mansion? Isn’t that what it’s for? They could get the housekeeper on $48,000 a

year to make them a sandwich. Why does it have to be so wasteful? So disrespectful of the rest of us?

Age of entitlement, anyone?

No question, we’ll now have to listen to government telling us that it’s all above board, and within the guidelines,

and appropriate for the discharging of official duties, and yada yada.

Well, it may be legal, but it’s wrong. Worse, it’s unseemly.

This kind of caper is exactly why Barry Humphries invented Sir Les Patterson.

You thought that was old hat? If only, and apparently not.

 

 

 


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