You ingrate bastards. Why won't you help poor Joe Hockey out? You sit there in your miserable hovels, darning your threadbare socks, and you simply refuse to do your duty and spend, spend, spend to get Joe out of the hole.

Jeez, it's almost as though you don't have any spare money to supercharge the economy and make him look good. Anybody would think you're so poor you can't even afford to drive a car, and you have to catch an Uber to the yacht club or something.

What, are you so stupid you're paying tax? Is that it? Is that why you're crying poor now? That's hardly Joe's fault, is it? I mean if all those big companies can go to the trouble of setting up their diabolically complex corporate structures to offshore 99 per cent of their profits while putting their hands out for a tax refund on hundreds of millions of dollars in totally legitimate expenses, well, it makes you look a bit shoddy doesn't it, cobber? Why haven't you done that? Don't you love Australia or something? What are you, some sort of leaner are you?

Those private school fees you insist on paying because so many billions of dollars have been ripped away from the public school system that it's a form of child abuse to consign your little darlings there, don't you think Team Australia would be better off if you just blew them on a new TV? If you don't have the folding stuff in your pocket, maybe you should think about getting another credit card. And no, no, no. Don't start bleating about the evils of borrowing to fund consumption. This is an investment. Think of it as underwriting Joe Hockey's next cigar purchase.

Maybe you could even emulate him. Lash out. Get a really fat Cuban, something to give you the head spins so that you can go on dizzily, mindlessly spending money you don't have just to make Joe look good – ironically, after Joe raked at the heart of the Australian social contract because he and his ilk insisted the country couldn't afford to live beyond its means. (Unless, you know, most of your assessable means are stashed away in a post box in the Cayman Islands.)