Two Birds One Stone: One Nation Says Making Smokes Cheaper Means People Won't Actually Need Super Anymore

ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact

Opposition leader Barnaby Joyce has made two controversial policies dovetail neatly this week after suggesting the party's cornerstone policy of making smokes cheaper means Australians will be less likely to enjoy their superannuation savings.

Smoking typically causes lung cancer, emphysema or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in workers around retirement age, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). They are all largely terminal and the five-year survival rate of each of those conditions is not very good.

One Nation has crunched the numbers.

"We have harnessed the power of AI to see whether making smokes cheaper is better for the nation, and it is," Joyce told reporters at his top ramp in Danglemah this morning.

"The AI has told us that our idea is very sound. Yes, smoking-related illnesses are costing Medicare billions and billions of dollars. However, guess what young healthy people do when they inherit a bunch of money? Ah, they stimulate the economy, which, according to the AI, will help us get inflation under control."

"And who are we to tell you that you can't be smoking? It's one of life's simple pleasures. As a cattle farmer, I very much enjoy running my 40 Belted Galloways through the yards of a daytime. I buy them weaned and rotate them through my paddocks over six months and flog them off. It's a simple moneymaker. But after a long morning on the head bale, I want nothing more than an ice-cold Tooheys New in the shade, complete with a Peter Stuyvesant Filter. Literally nothing is better. If you know, you know. Ice-cold Tooheys New and a 16mg cigarette, with your feet up in a shed. With brothers and cousins, mates from town. Shooting the shit. You batty boys in the city don't know how bad you've got it."

More to come.