It gets tedious for bushies and those of us who live in regional areas to have to remind the Big Smoke and some of those who inhabit such rarified atmospheres of just where we live and who we are.
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Geographically, many city slickers don’t know their heads from their toes. It happens often. Media embarrassingly plonk Moree on the north coast or public relations boffins tell us Tamworth is near the Illawarra.
So, when politicians persist with some outlandish argument that misses the target, we make them our mark.
That undignified and desperately silly quip from Joe Hockey this week might be the result of a rash throwaway line brought on by exasperation over his failure to sell his budget, but how else can you explain the extraordinarily ignorant and elitist comments he has made about the poor not having cars or at least if they do, not driving them very far.
It smacks of elitism or just plain ignorance of the real world.
Joe might need to get out and breathe in some of the oxygen the rest of us live on.
Welfare agencies and social services will tell you the poorer in our society – in the bush especially – spend a greater percentage of their income on fuel.
The debate over the divide between rich and poor in country areas is accentuated by the need to get places where no buses go. And trains are for getting from the city to the bush, not across our suburbs.
Joe should know that you don’t have trains and bus routes that take you all over the countryside. You’re flat out getting a bus from one side of Tamworth to the other at times that suit you or go where you need to go.
People in the bush rely on cars – rich and poor.
The less affluent of us also tend to drive cars that are older and less fuel efficient. Guzzlers. And that costs more.
The rich in the big cities might have more cars and might drive further – to get to their planes for overseas travel more often perhaps – so they might be spending more on fuel – which is what Joe has seemed to argue. Pity he missed the other finer points.
Nationals senator John Williams was quick to remind him – and us – that while the fuel excise and indexation will ultimately see expenditure on country roads, Joe’s data might have been city-skewed.
Senator Williams might not have agreed Joe was out of touch with the real world, although Mr Hockey’s initial line and his rebuff to the howls of outrage and witty responses do nothing to reassure us he’s got two feet on the ground rather than his head up in the clouds.
