The Deputy PM, Who Earns $400k, Just Told Victorians A Week Without Pay Is ‘Not A Long Time’

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack, who is Acting Prime Minister while Scott Morrison is off in New Zealand, threw Victorians under the bus today by claiming that a week is “not a long time” to go without pay.

Since Victorians have been thrust into yet another stage four lockdown, there have been calls for the government to give financial help to people who are out of work.

The State Government announced a $250 million package with calls for the Commonwealth to provide some extra cash, but acting PM Michael McCormack said no. Instead, he insisted that enough help is already being offered already, and that a week without pay isn’t really that long anyway.

“We have already provided $40 billion, 40,000 million dollars for Victoria to help their economy, to support their businesses. We have done it to make sure that we keep Victorian businesses going, to keep their employees engaged with those businesses,” he said earlier today. 

“A week, in the scheme of things, is not a long time.”

Sigh. Imagine being this out of touch with your people.

Michael McCormack defended the lack of Federal support for Vic workers by saying that “a week is not a long time” which just shows he’s never lived payday to payday

— Joshua Badge (@joshuabadge) May 31, 2021

Clearly, McCormack doesn’t know what it’s like to live paycheque to paycheque – a reality for a lot of us, given how precarious work is these days. Although McCormack wouldn’t know much about that either, since his Parliamentary salary runs to an estimated $433,070.

The comments are even more insensitive considering this is Victoria’s FOURTH lockdown in 12 months. People are exhausted, and claiming ‘it’s only a week’ totally invalidates and trivialises their very real trauma from surviving a global pandemic.

To top it all off, McCormack’s response regarding the billions of dollars in aid to Victoria is misleading at best, because he’s referring to support that was given out in the past – not to support that is available right now.

I mean, this is the man who said the 2019 bushfires were caused by exploding horse shit, among a bunch of other wacky things – so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that he’s completely missed the mark.

We all know Scott Morrison once spent $190,000 on empathy training for his MPs. Apparently that wasn’t enough.