Treasurer Joe Hockey has attracted yet more criticism over the budget’s backflip on paid parental leave after he suggested that federal ministers’ wives were double dipping in secret.
The comment came after two ministers, Josh Frydenberg and Mathias Cormann admitted their wives may have been among the“double dippers” described by the treasurer. The two MPs announced this shortly after the budget was released, embarrassing the government and undermining its rhetoric about mothers attempting to rort the system.
Hockey was asked by broadcaster Ray Hadley this morning if he knew the two ministers’ families had “double dipped” prior to their announcement. Hadley suggested that Cormann and Frydenberg had an obligation to inform the government prior to announcing publicly they had accessed both employer and government parental leave schemes, because they made the government “look like dills”.
“You were made to look silly; Scott Morrison was made to look sillier,” Hadley said.
This is when Hockey came out with his most recent gaffe: “Their wives might have done it and they didn’t know.”
His comments immediately attracted criticism on social media, with tweeters saying it amounts to casting yet more blame on new mums for trying to rort the system.
“Really, blaming the wives now?” one Twitter user wrote.
Many have also said the comment says a lot about Hockey’s attitude to finances:
“Maybe in their worlds $11k (the government’s PPL allowance) is beer money, not worth mentioning,” one Twitter user wrote, referring to a comment Hockey made last year about the GP co-payment being “the equivalent payment of a couple of beers”.
Also this morning – in yet another another backflip – Hockey was forced to retreat from an earlier comment about accessing both government and employer parental leave being equivalent to fraud.
Last week press gallery journalist Laurie Oakes asked Hockey, “This is basically fraud, isn’t it, taking an allowance twice?” to which Hockey replied: “It is”.
On Channel Nine’s Today program this morning, host Karl Stefanovic repeatedly asked Hockey if he still believed legally accessing two sources of paid leave constitutes fraud.
Hockey avoided the question three times, and when asked a fourth time, he said: “No, it’s not fraud”.
“If you comply with the law it is not fraud,” he said.
He did, however, dismiss the questions as irrelevant as they engage in “Canberra word games” and “semantics”.
Just yesterday, Hockey said he had never agreed with Oakes’ premise in the first place.
As the paid parental leave saga has unfolded over the last week, Australian mothers have been accused by this government of double dipping, rorting the system, committing fraud, and now they are being accused of lying about it, too.
This would be insulting even if it weren’t happening in the context of a government that promised 26 weeks of paid parental leave and then turned around and took away 18 weeks instead. And it’s us women who are being dishonest? Please.