It’s hard for Hockey to do anything now.
He has to argue that though Sinodinos was worth twenty million dollars for a few days’ work no disabled person should get any new help for six years and no special needs kid should get a chance in life. He has to argue that though Photios was worth a million dollars for a few hours’ work a fifty-two year old Qantas engineer should be sacked soon, and retrain as a packer of shelves at Woolworths. He has to argue that though Thomson, for misspending twenty-five thousand dollars in seven years (that’s, wow, ten dollars a day), will rightly get a year in gaol, Sinodinos, for cosily — corruptly? — agreeing to fix things with a Liberal government and making nine thousand times that amount in a couple of weeks, should get no time at all.
Because, well, because ‘the age of entitlement’ has to mean something. It has to mean people making more money than Photios or Sinodinos, and there aren’t any.
In the end, these numbers count, and they matter; they really, truly matter. In the end, these numbers must be argued in a moral way. And Joe can’t do that any more. Because another fat man, Palmer, has some moral sense, and he’s got the numbers, or he will have soon, to make Joe do the right thing now and then — about the dead soldiers’ kids, and the Aboriginal scholarships, and the refugees O’Neill won’t take, and should be settled here. And the Qantas engineers, those sky-conquering heroes who deserve better.
And it’s going to be a big, ugly battle now, after Sinodinos, and we will see what we shall see.
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