Twitter Is Having A Whole Lot Of Fun With Joe Hockey Today

It started yesterday, when Australia’s celebrated poor people expert, Treasurer Joe Hockey, appeared on morning radio to defend his government’s proposed rise in the fuel excise.

The Opposition had argued that the budget measure would hit low-income families the hardest, but Hockey disagreed: “the poorest people either don’t have cars or actually don’t drive very far in many cases”.

Unfortunately for Hockey, saying poor people don’t have cars or drive cars is a bit like saying women don’t study law or dentistry — in that it’s a self-serving generalisation about a vulnerable group, which is also demonstrably wrong.

As Fairfax points out, a 2001 research paper from the Parliamentary Library showed that “petrol and diesel excises are regressive in that people on low incomes pay a higher proportion of their incomes in the form of excise than people on high incomes, given the same level of fuel use”.  More recently, a June 2014 submission to the Senate Economics Committee from the Australian Automobile Association cited research which indicated that “people who use their cars most frequently are in the outer metropolitan areas and rural and regional areas where there are lower incomes, less jobs, and little or no access to public transport”.

Joe Hockey — a multi-millionaire with $10 million worth of property, and a millionaire for a wife — defended his comments on 2UE this morning, using the word ‘fact’ three times in one sentence like some kind of wizard of truth. “The fact of the matter is that I can only get the facts out there and explain the facts, how people interpret them is up to them.”

Naturally, Twitter is having fun with all this.

The first hashtag to spring up was #OtherThingsThePoorDontDo. The idea with this one is to cast your mind back to all the things the Abbott Government has done, which a poor person couldn’t get away with.

Forget receiving a $3000 bottle of grange from my birth year. #OtherThingsThePoorDontDo

— me and my two cents (@mytwocentsandme) August 14, 2014

#OtherThingsThePoorDontDo Imprison innocent children in offshore detention camps?

— Annelise Ball (@AnneliseBall) August 14, 2014

Build $15,000 bookcases; decide they don’t like them, rip out and rebuild for another $15,000 #OtherThingsThePoorDontDo #auspol @vanbadham

— A Liberal Wit (@ALiberalWit) August 14, 2014

#OtherThingsThePoorDontDo go to St Aloysius High School, marry an investment banker and live in Hunters Hill where median price is $1.8m

— Kirsten Craze (@_KirstenCraze) August 14, 2014

Get to have their views listened to and fully participate in modern Australian politics #OtherThingsThePoorDontDo

— LeeDaPeeDaBigFatWee (@leedabigfatwee) August 14, 2014

Buy $800 door knobs for rooms they don’t use. #OtherThingsThePoorDontDo

— Andrew Reid (@surrenderdotty) August 14, 2014

This one is my favourite:

Vote Liberal at the next election. #OtherThingsThePoorDontDo

— Andrew Reid (@surrenderdotty) August 14, 2014

#JoeHockeyFacts is fairly self-explanatory: incorrect facts about an entire group of people who don’t have a voice in politics.

Only eleventy percent of people are poor #JoeHockeyFacts

— Sir Finzensen Esq. (@Finzensen) August 14, 2014

#JoeHockeyFacts Medicare copayment wont hit the poor because we’re sending them to Iraq #auspol

— Tony B (@rustedon1962) August 14, 2014

Poor people don’t pay as much GST because they can’t afford to buy non-essential items. #JoeHockeyFacts

— Christopher Sellwood (@CJSellwood) August 14, 2014

Poor people just love the bus too much #joehockeyfacts

— laura (@lauraellen12) August 13, 2014

The Carbon Tax was an unfair burden on the rich because statistically poor people will have to breathe less. #JoeHockeyFacts

— Fake Chris Pyne (@FakeChrisPyne) August 14, 2014

Yep, that’s all in order. Thanks again, internet!