Former deputy PM and current backbencher-slash-punchline Barnaby Joyce has been taking to the media to explain how he thinks the Newstart rate should be raised – good! – because as a humble MP he too understands the stultifying effects of poverty since he can’t survive on the hundreds of thousands he’s raking in.
“It’s not that I’m not getting money it’s just that it’s spread so thin,” he explained to the Courier Mail. “I’m just saying these circumstances have made me more vastly attuned.”
“It’s just a great exercise in humility going from deputy prime minister to watching every dollar you get. A politician [renting a duplex without a dishwasher] for 415 bucks a week, he’s not living high on the hog, is he? “There is a reason for that and that’s basically what I can afford. You do become a lot more mindful.”
And look, it’s great that Barn’s realised that money is a thing and discovered the simple joys of taking his partner out for coffee as an affordable treat but… mate, are you kidding?
It doesn’t say much for the economic credentials of the man that occasionally ran the nation that he can’t budget as well as a student.
And much has been made of Barnaby Joyce’s $211k parliamentary salary upon which he can’t survive, but that’s unfair.
It’s actually closer to $250k, thanks to the bonus he gets as Chair of the Standing Committee on Industry, Innovation, Science and Resources. Oh, and the $46k he gets for having a large electorate to cover, where he can pocket whatever’s unspent at the end of the year.
And it could be pointed out that having two families to support after his affair with a staffer is very much his choice, as was cashing in on his first son’s birth with a $150k interview fee.
And it’s worth remembering that Joyce has previously been pretty unambiguous regarding how poor people should stop complaining about how tough they were doing it, from telling young people struggling to afford houses that they should just move to Tamworth and that unemployed people were job snobs who needed to “get off their arses”.
And sure, we could point out that it’s a bit weak for someone to only care about something when it affects them personally, but if that’s what it takes to make a federal politician take an interest in the struggles of his constituents, then so be it.
So: who wants to arrange to start pumping his rented duplex full of mining runoff? It’s probably the best way to get action on the Great Barrier Reef.