‘Cancer in our community’: Former treasurer Joe Hockey attacks ‘entitlement’ of politicians who refuse to cut spending

Former treasurer Joe Hockey has hit out at politicians who refuse to cut government spending, describing their need for popularity as “a cancer in our community”.

Speaking in London on Monday evening (local time) the former Coalition treasurer revisited the landmark “age of entitlement” speech he had delivered while in opposition during the Gillard government.

In that speech, Mr Hockey prematurely declared “the age of entitlement is over”, warning that countries must put an end to “unlimited and unfunded” government services and begin to “live within their means” or risk facing a “fiscal nightmare”.

In the decade since, government debt and deficits has only grown worse, and Australia’s former treasurer didn’t hold back in declaring who was to blame.

“Today I am warning our legislators and leaders that it is their entitlement that is the problem,” Mr Hockey said during a speech at the Institute of Economic Affairs on Monday.

“The entitlement to hold on to power. The entitlement to be popular no matter what the cost.”

The former treasurer accused political leaders of being “afraid of hard decisions” and addicted to funding their promises with borrowed money.  

“That sense of entitlement, that you can give people everything they want, is a cancer in our community,” he said, adding “we will all pay a price.”

Mr Hockey entered parliament as the member for North Sydney in 1996, serving in a range of portfolio’s during the Howard government and eventually becoming treasurer under then-prime minister Tony Abbott.

Following the election of Malcolm Turnbull, Mr Hockey was appointed Australia’s ambassador to the United States, where he successfully convinced President Donald Trump to exempt Australia from steel and aluminium tariffs imposed.

Speaking about his former profession, the long-time Liberal MP said there wasn’t much philosophical basis to most modern politicians, declaring western democracies had “fallen into the deep abyss of populism”.

“(This) makes hard decisions between regular elections almost impossible,” the former treasurer said, using the US Republican Party’s hypocrisy on debt and deficits as an example of the failure to make tough decisions.

“The Republican Party has been screaming about rising debt levels of the US government. When they were in control the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate, the US deficits grew larger and the US government debt grew bigger,” he said.

“They all run the political charades of implementing a debt ceiling or closing down the government because it has run out of money.

“That’s base political opportunism.”

However the former treasurer insisted  by “strangling itself with debt” the US would eventually be at risk of defaulting.

Mr Hockey also defended a number of controversial decisions made during the controversial first budget of the Abbott government, including the removal of subsidies for the Australian car industry and reducing the size of the public sector.

“That was bloody hard, you read the letters from them and their families, it was really hard, but at the end of the day, it had no material impact on the delivery of services,” he said.

“And where it did, we just went and employed more people.”

The former treasurer also stood by his failed attempt to introduce a $7 GP co-payment.

“An entirely publicly funded system, with no means testing, does not meet the community’s needs and expectations,” he said.

“And yet it is politically toxic to suggest that there should be an affordable means-tested co-payment to sustain and improve the service.

“Apparently feeling good about a ‘free’ entitlement is more important than the health outcomes.”