Really! Treasurer Joe Hockey is becoming as adept as Tony Abbot at putting the proverbial foot in his mouth.
That Joe should be looking so far ahead, and be concerned for someone in the year 2165, is touching. Perhaps he is thinking of his own grandchildren, not yet born, who will have to work until they are 120 to enjoy the luxury of retirement.
My advice would be to ensure you include that prediction in your memoirs to show that at least you were thinking of them. But I wouldn’t spend any more time on it than that. You may rest assured that life in 2165 will be vastly different from ours today and such trivial matters as retirement will not be getting too much attention. Feeding them, yes. Retiring them, no.
While speaking with Neil Mitchell on 3AW this morning Joe explained how his son had broken his leg over Christmas and after several consultations and X-rays, he only had to pay $40 for a waterproof cast. Wow, that much?
“That’s wrong,” Joe said. “The fact we are living longer is great news. It’s kind of remarkable that somewhere in the world today, it’s highly probable that a child is being born that is going to live to 150. That’s a long time.” Yes, it is, Joe. It’s certainly longer than you or I will live.
However, I hope you also took note of the quality of the service your son received at what I presume was a public hospital. If you felt that as a high income earner you were paying too little, then why don’t you abolish the private health insurance rebate, and raise the Medicare levy for high income earners so that the quality of service you received can be better funded?
“The question is how we live with dignity and ensure we have a good quality of life the whole way through. This is the conversation we are going to have with Australia over the next few months,” he added. Well, if you continue trying to cut Medicare funding, you should be more concerned about the good quality of life we have today instead of worrying about the state of things in 2165.
Trying to make us feel guilty about what we pay today compared with the state our hospitals in 150 years tells me that you are not living in today’s world, that you are not in touch with today’s people, except of course, the high income earners for whom $40 is not even a drop in the ocean.
You should not have paid anything for your son’s accident. Your Medicare levy should have covered it. If you think paying $40 was wrong, then perhaps you should increase the levy to 3% for high income earners. That way, you might share the burden more equitably with those on lower incomes who pay the same rate you do.
If you are, as you suggest, planning to have a conversation in a few months about the health prospects for the nation in 150 years’ time, I don’t like your chances of cutting through. Most of us are struggling enough just getting through today.
My Kelpie Dog has more brains Joe Hockey
I am younger yet older than my years as I recover the gift of life before I become older than I am.
The Lord is my Sweaty Fat Man I do not want. (apologies to John)
Joe gives me the Blessing of years having run out of fish and loves.
Joe here is someone who would make a good role model.
Bit scary hey mate.
Humility, social justice and public welfare.
Oh forget it.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/truthdigger_of_the_week_jose_mujica_20150118#14216428448881&action=collapse_widget&id=5331605
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"It’s 2015 Joe, not 2165."
Classic.
The drongos couldn't get 2014 right and 2015 looks to be even worse …. at this rate it will be 150 years before they get power again.
Looking so far into the future and the Abbott gang can't even see global warming happening now.
Forget the Budget …. after 251 days of stinking up Canberra ……. Australia wants too.
The doctors Hockey and gang should be seeing are Psychologists and Psychiatrists.
Mr Hockey, why did you chose treatment for son, that did not make use of private health insurance. Why not go private. That is a choice you made. Each time I go near a public hospital, I am asked whether I have private insurance. Something your mob have encouraged pensioners to do, knowing it is something they cannot afford.
Mr Hockey, you choose to go down the path of public treatment,
Now, now, leave poor ol’ Joe alone. You know that he’s so congenitally stupid that his wife has to send him text messages reminding him to breathe.
The funniest part of his statement (and the most revealing of the mind set of these nematodes) is when he said; “That’s not right” Yes it is Joe, you see in Australia we have a health system that covers both rich and poor without discrimination and its part of a thing called “The Social Contract” – you know, when a government makes decisions for the entire population and not just a privileged few… Oh, you didn’t know that? Well, Joe I’d take the time to explain it to you but it looks like you’ve got another text message from the Mrs.
An inconvenient truth: A 2% medicare levy increase on people in Joe’s tax bracket would raise just as much ($3B+) as the shambolic GP co-payment; but to be honest we’d rather the $3B (and a whole lot more) came from multinational tax-evaders rorting our system – the same people that hold the purse strings of the Liberal Party. https://www.facebook.com/AbbottsAustralia/photos/a.660479470713215.1073741828.660188400742322/766222453472249/?type=1&theater
I can see how Joe and his cronies might be bantering about this topic (gutting Medicare and living longer) over cigars and $150.00 bottles of wine.
But to suggest on the air- on record, in a public interview, that the remote possibility that someone, somewhere, sometime might live to 150 provides any sort of rationale for gutting Medicare just boggles the mind.
Point is, universal bulkbilling does not lead to greater cost for Medicare or government. Payment s the same. It is the doctor or patient that makes up the difference..
Along with a non-existent surplus this year – of course it was made impossible by Labor! – Joe has not even managed to produce a budget that gets passed. Is there such a dearth of talent in the Coalition that they cannot even find a credible Treasurer??? That was, of course, a rhetorical question!
I see another Abbott chicken is coming home to roost. Manus Island and it’s problems is not going to disappear. They will be shaking in their boots, with Dutton waving his finger at them, telling them to behave,
No, they are not going to disappear into the dark bowls of PNG an other poor countries. Or sent back to where they came from.
Joe has got his projections all wrong (what’s new about that, I hear you say). If this government get their way, people will not be able to afford proper medical care, so they will not go to the doctor, and very likely die younger, not older.
Letter from lady re having to pay $150 extra for some service – has private health insurance $400 +per month. So many do not realise if they were public patient there would be no charge. Private Health insurance is just a business brought to life by Howard to make money for shareholders. Private Health Insurance subsidies cost us $$Billions annually – that should be spent improving public hospitals & health care. Labor needs to educate people on these things. Seems joe uses the public hospital system when it suits.
150? That’s eleventy more than 139
What a good start to the year for Joe… snort
Has anyone checked out what’s in his cigars ?
As usual a great, a great article John.
Now come on Joe,we know what your little plan is,you are grooming us for the big increases in Medicare cost you will be announcing in a few months time.
Most times i try very hard not to denigrate public officals,but Mr Hockey you really are a complete and utter over stuffed bloated ignorant know nothing born to rule ignoramus.”’
😆 @ joni
You beat me to it John. I would have loved to have written that but I live in the knowledge that there will be many more opportunities.
So “Cereal-Toyota-Killer” Hockey thinks the medicare levy is inadequate, is disinclined to raise it but wants a co-payment instead? Why doesn’t he and the other rabble on the front bench just come clean and admit they want to destroy medi-care!
Wow the co payment not going to Medicare at all, Not cutting the budget bottom line either, so where is it going…………..To BIG PHARMA so they get funded for making new medicines that they can then charge the PBS mega dollars for! …………………..Liberal Party………making profits for big companies off the backs of the poor! ………..Also remember it costs LESS now in 1990 dollars to fund Medicare and PBS than it did in 1990……..conveniently forgetting inflation making the dollar seem larger!
Not a problem. Business as usual will wipe us out before 2065.
The clathrate gun is being fired as we speak and this means death.
Google: arctic methane clathrate hydrate
Why do we have to continually put up with lawyers as treasurers?
Lawyer treasurers as typified by Joe Hockey, the very worst in a long, long time
They always seem to pick the lawyer with the least subject matter knowledge, what Joe knows about economics can be written in Helvetica 70 font on the head of a very small pin.
Maybe someone could send Mr Hockey John’s link to Steven Hail’s presentation on modern money and the “budget emergency” for a little economic enlightenment, not that I think it would make the slightest bit of difference.
This federal governments blinkered ideology means it most certainly cannot and will not govern for the benefit of all.
The bit of his inanity that I found most pathetic was his comment that people of years ago would not have imagined that we would now be living to eighty. Isaac Newton (1642-1727), would have thought him very stupid and even Queen Victoria (1819-1901) would not have been amused.
Does the dolt not understand that most of the increased life expectancy is due to reduced infant mortality, penicillin, better diets, and improved sanitation, and mostly in the more affluent countries, and the more affluent areas of those countries. Wealthy and healthy people have always lived for a long time.
However now diets are no longer improving and food will become more scarce, even for Australia. We have wrecked the oceans and degraded the land. Penicillin is becoming less effective as are all antibiotics. Infant mortality remains very high in large parts of the world, and in many communities in Australia (indigenous mostly). Many experts are now predicting that even for the affluent few the next generation will be the first to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.
Given the world that we are denuding and degrading it is likely that that those humans alive in the 22nd century will look back at this period with disgust and horror while trying to survive till the next day, let alone live for 150 years. Clueless, and horrible, that is the government we have today.
Have been wondering–WHY the absolute insistence on a co-payment rather than a much simpler increase in the medicare levy? Don’t believe the “price signal” rubbish.
Could it be that once the co-payment is in place it could simply be increased by, for example, a continued freeze of the rebate to GPs, forcing them to pass on the costs to patients? How convenient then that this is already in place!
Destruction of Medicare accomplished, as required by their masters, Murdoch and the IPA.
Philc, there are two things in this life that are a certainty,
1) Death will come at a time and place not of your choosing.
2) You will meet enough halfwits to wonder not if, but when mother nature will give the human gene pool a long and thorough dose of chlorine.
If ever this mob come up with a real policy that has any liklihood of working let me know otherwise I’ll continue to ignore the drivel they continuously spout
Isn’t it a wonderful thing that the poorest child would get the same excellent treatment as the child of the country’s Treasurer? What a great system! What sort of people would want to change it?
I imagine Fat Smoking Joe would have used his best pizza ‘don’t you know who I am?’ voice to make sure his son got the required attention in the required time, then had a good chuckle with friends about it afterwards
Good article!
I second that Bacchus. Thanks for the laugh Joni
King 1394… I think joe just demonstrated what sort of people would want to change Medicare …
overpaid bludgers of the LNP, murdoch and IPA variety …
That’s just my guess, mind you …
Thanks Joni. There is always someone on here somewhere who makes me laugh.
What sort of card or letter does one receive from Queenie for reaching (or is it attaining?) the age of 139+eleventy anyway.
I’ll bet Smokin Joe called the Ambo’s just to try to avoid the ques. There would have been nowhere to park the Rolls. Can you imagine the spoiled brat whining about having to spend time waiting around with all of these horrid poor people ? His kid with the broken leg wouldn’t have been any better. “Mumsy, Can’t you please tell daddy that I really don’t like being told to wait because other people are bleeding badly and there is only one doctor. Why cant I go to the man I usually see?” “Because he is trying to make you able to concentrate in class dear, he doesn’t do arms and legs, and besides, it’s golf day and daddy cant get him to come in, and you really must be patient. JOSEPH!.STOP CHEWING YOUR NAILS! Excuse me,doctor. Are we going to be here much longer?”…”I am being most terribly sorry lady but I am being with you as quickly as I most possibly can be……”
Poor bastard should have gone private after all.
I can’t believe that Hockey doesn’t have private health insurance. Why didn’t Mitchell ask him that very obvious question? And if he does have it, as he most assuredly does (I’ll bet a day’s wages on it), why did he use the public system? After all, he is getting a rebate from my taxes for his private health choice.
Frosty, you’re talking about a man who stays in a property owned by his wife when in Canberra and claims living away from home allowance (or whatever they call it).
Gangey, don’t tell me the silly old queen will still be around when Joe turns 150! God no.
And speaking of the queen, how is London Joni?
Well, this queen informs you that London is fine and dandy – just a bit cold. But at least the tories here are not as mad as the lot in power in Canberra.
Smoking Joe has been smoking something other than cigars I think.
Maybe his stomach surgery is shrinking more than his body fat,?
Roswell, and don’t forget Joe charges other politicians for using the spare rooms in his wife’s Canberra house!!!
Roswell. Thanks to Blackadder, “Queenie” has been and will always be my title for the monarch of england. And she is not silly. She is just 900. And a little bit “narrow but complicated” in her family tree. It’s not her fault, they made her do it.
Personally, I am sure that the old dear currently on the throne will still be alive, if for no other reason than to piss off her son.
Besides, by then we will all be a part of the chinese machine, and we don’t have queens in china, of either sort. Honest
I am sure that Joe H, having made what has got to be one of the most stupid comments made by anyone older than about 8, anywhere, ever, toddled back to the Roller and got out his big Christmas box of “Treasurer’s Choice” Clever Clogs crayons, the ones that come with the bonus paper pad with lines on one side of the page, a special sharpener that wont jam up with the crayon stuff, and a stencilly thingy for getting the number shapes right, just to work out on the trip back to Paradise City (where mining’s real cheap and the poor are shitty) that if we start living to 150 his budget is truly screwed.
What will happen when our Joe and TA next meet ? Something from “Animal House” methinks. “Thank you sir, and may I have another…”
I’ll bet Joe’s missus ripped his goolies off for not going private, and exposing her son to us icky people.
I’m with her. Think of the germs WE might have caught from him.
So Joe had to take his son to a public hospital? Can’t he afford private health insurance?
I wonder if his son had to wait four to six hours before receiving attention, I think not.
These clowns never cease to amaze me, medicare is unsustainable so they have to bring in a co- payment to help fund it, but hang on the co-payment wasn’t going to medicare, it was going to the Murdoch (name ring a bell) medical research centre.
I could write more about these clowns but I think it’s all been said, besides gotta go see a doctor, my blood pressures going through the roof.
@John Fraser
My thoughts exactly, John – Hockey has all the vision of a meat-ball.
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@diannaart
"See, you can be a sandgroper, you can be Julie's mate or you can have a uterus. But you can't be all three and expect to get ahead."
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/it-pro/abbott-v-bishop-gambit-20150112-12m3ci.html
A very large saucepan of meatballs.
“Life extension technology is for the Elites. And you wont be getting any because your not one of them..YOU GOT THAT! Joe six-pack?!..Your not on the winning team.”
-: Talk show host
“Will you still need me? Will you still feed me?” When Its 2064?
Interesting article in the Age from Peter Martin this morning on the government’s refusal to take advantage of generationally low interest rates to deficit finance… does it pair with Shorten’s comment yesterday that we should expect a low risk’, even hard-ass ALP government if they get back in, too?
No.
I DON’T want to live to a hundred and fifty… why add insult to injury?
If all the bludgers like joe used their private health insurance for what it was intended (or so I thought), there would be much less pressure on the public health system and it could operate as intended. And just possibly, we would not have to be talking constantly about co-payments , surcharges or fiddling with the system at all.
Lifter or leaner, joe?
What are you, as if we didn’t know !
Better still, take back or at least means test that Private Insurance rebate he gets.. Put the money into Medicare, to help with front line services. ot hard.
So we, the taxpayers, give him a 30% rebate on his health insurance premiums and a discount on his Medicare Levy but he still chooses to use the valuable and finite resources of our already overstretched public hospital system!
A Leaner of the grandest order!
Joe is neither. He and his ilk are the dangerous wall teetering on collapse onto an un-suspecting public that enough leaners can keep stable while real experts figure out how to make the wall safe to stand again on its own.