Misses the cut: Joe Hockey.
Misses the cut: Joe Hockey.


Joe Hockey was born in August, 1965.




This, it turns out, means he escapes the full impact of his new policy by a whisker.



He ought almost burst into song, a pastime he confides lifts his spirits no end.




Something along the lines of It was a Very Good Year would seem appropriate.



Should Joe find himself out of a job and down on his luck
along the track a bit, he’ll be eligible to apply for an old-age pension
at 69 - a privilege that will be denied all those born after Joe's
lucky birth year.



If his parents had - how do we say this delicately? - held
off for just a few months back there in the swinging '60s and little Joe
had arrived in 1966, he’d have to hold off himself on applying for a
pension until he was 70.



Jolly Joe, you understand, announced on Friday that means
Australians born after 1965 would have to rethink their working life,
because they wouldn’t be able to get the pension until that newly
magical age of 70.



While the announcement plunged some of the post-1965 set into
a state approaching despair, Joe was blithely diverting himself with
the soothing sounds of a crooner of the '60s.



No Jimi Hendrix or Janis Joplin or any of those cool '60s
dudes for Jolly Joe, however. He lulled himself with the tight-pants
strains of Engelbert Humperdinck.



Chatting on Sydney radio with the Liberal Party’s favoured
jock, Alan Jones, Joe offered that he’d grown up listening to Engelbert
on the family record player every Sunday, and one of his songs still
left him a bit misty eyed.



"It just brought back a flood of memories as we were driving
in and I started singing it and the guy who drives me around in the hire
car, he said, 'you should be a singer'." Joe told Alan.



"I said, 'well, it’s looking like a pretty good option at the moment actually'."



It was supposed to be a joke. But somehow, it seemed possible
all the would-be late-life pensioners had likely missed the joke about
the time the 1965-born treasurer mentioned he had a driver.



He seems likely to have a chauffeur - and no need of an old-age pension - for some time.



Apart from his comfortable salary and a guaranteed fat
lifetime pollie-pension post politics, Joe’s merchant banker wife
Melissa Babbage commands a string of corporate directorships.



Still, even if hard times struck, he would not have to wait
until he was 70 for the pension ... even if he misses out by a fraction.