The fallout from Joe Hockey‘s comments yesterday about housing affordability is as gleeful to watch as it is painful to realise that our home owning chances are slim.
ICYMI, Hockey simplified the whole housing bubble / rising unemployment issue by saying that if you want to buy a house, you just need a better paying job. Simple as that! It’s shocking just how many people were ticked off by that statement, but hey, here you go:
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten thought that Joe Hockey shouldn’t even bother apologising, that “he is what is he, he’s out of touch.”
Greens senator Scott Ludlam joked that “you can always tell when Hockey is writing his own material.” He also issued a satirical press release welcoming Hockey’s “attempts to contribute to the debate on tax reform and housing affordability,” and mentioning that the only thing missing was a cigar.
Labor’s Treasury spokesman Chris Bowen said he should probably just stop talking.
So did Greens leader Richard Di Natale:
Prime Minister you’re making it worse. Just stop talking #adviceforjoe #auspol
— Richard Di Natale (@RichardDiNatale) June 10, 2015
On Twitter, the hashtag #adviceforjoe proved just as snarkily delicious as you’d expect:
Joe Hockey: “Stop being poor” #auspol #joehockey #adviceforjoe pic.twitter.com/sS20q6IqWd
— rafiiiii (@rafialarm) June 9, 2015
#adviceforjoe
if you want to be prime minister one day just be more popular and better at your job
— lehmo (@lehmo23) June 9, 2015
“Get a good job” to buy a home OR like Joe, claim $270-a-night in taxpayer money to stay in a home majority-owned by your wife #adviceforjoe
— Queensland Greens (@QldGreens) June 9, 2015
Just stop. #adviceforjoe
— Mikey Nicholson (@Mikey_Nicholson) June 9, 2015
#adviceforjoe Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. #auspol pic.twitter.com/T9EMGvxOkN
— The Reject PM (@geeksrulz) June 9, 2015
Confused. If the poor people don’t drive cars, how do they find the good jobs paying good money? #adviceforjoe
— Mr Denmore (@MrDenmore) June 9, 2015
Try to understand: being born on the finish line is not the same as winning the race. #adviceforJoe #getagoodjob
— Traveling Bag (@soniaahhh) June 9, 2015
But perhaps the greatest thing to come out of all of this was political journo Latika Bourke finding and posting the tale of how a young-ish Joe Hockey managed to buy his first house. It’s taken straight from the pages of biography ‘Not Your Average Joe‘ by Madonna King:
On the home front, it was earlier in 1997 that Joe and Melissa bought a house in Forrest, just up the road from Manuka, in Canberra. Joe was driving past and saw a handwritten sign out front, pointing anyone interested to a Sydney telephone number. The owners wanted nothing to do with real estate agents or lawyers. So Joe, the lawyer, called his father, the real estate agent, who took the owner out for a beer. At the end of the beer, a deal had been done. The Hockeys scored the home for land value. Joe’s father didn’t mention his was a real estate agent, buying the property on behalf of his lawyer son.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott, meanwhile, has stood by Hockey, although he has said that he himself understands the stress over housing costs. “Even as a cabinet minister, sometimes it’s hard to pay a Sydney mortgage.”
We get you Tones. We really do. It must be tough for cabinet ministers like Hockey to pay the mortgage on a $6 million Sydney mansion, a beachside home south of Sydney worth about $1.5 million, and Queensland cattle properties worth more than $2.5 million. To be fair, some of these properties are in Hockey’s wife’s name, Melissa Babbage.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Social Services Minister Scott Morrison have also come to his aid. Bishop said he “was making a self-evident point that if one has a job, you have a greater capacity to buy a home”, while Morrison said “all of what Joe Hockey has just said in terms of how you can gain access to housing finance is true.”
Forgive us if we’ve misinterpreted, but doesn’t that just amount to “Yes, a higher paying job DOES make it easier to buy a house”, without addressing crucial factors like the housing bubble and rising unemployment?
So basically:
Speaking this morning on ABC’s News Radio station, Hockey was quick to backtrack on his comments.
“For a lot of people, a lot of Australians in Sydney and Melbourne, some other parts of Australia, housing is very expensive and I understand that. I totally understand that. When you’re committing so much of your wage to your mortgage it’s a big ask, with all the other pressures in life.”
Hockey gets it, you guys.
Image: James Alcock via Getty Images
via Fairfax / ABC / The Australian
