When I hear Joe Hockey say, with trembling lip, that he refuses to saddle his children with the nation’s debt, my hypocrisy radar maxes out.
For starters, Joe Hockey’s children will never have to struggle. His wife is a very wealthy woman and they have substantial investments.
Secondly, this talk of our children being saddled with our debt is an obvious advertising strategy that the Coalition has adopted. Whenever children are mentioned we get protective so it is a deliberate attempt to play on the heartstrings of families.
The trouble is that this statement bears no scrutiny.
If we are really concerned about our children we would be taking urgent action on climate change. Putting that off for our kids to have to deal with sometime in the future is criminal neglect.
We would also be striving to make our society an even better one than the one we inherited. We grew up with free education and universal health care. We should not be going backwards in these most crucial areas. Will our contribution to our children’s future be to say sorry, you may not enjoy the benefits that we did?
We fought for workplace entitlements like minimum wages and penalty rates. Are we to say to our kids that your labour is worth less?
We have told our young people that they must “earn or learn”. I am sure that every kid, and every family, would prefer that situation, but all I see is another three word slogan. There is no plan for jobs. Rather than increasing apprenticeships, they are closing trade training centres and increasing 457 visas. They are making university education unaffordable – their justification being that no-one has to pay up front. So apparently it is alright to saddle our children with huge personal debt, just as long as Tony and Joe can say look, no deficit.