“Fake tradie” unable to afford own home?

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From The Australian election blog:

The Liberals’ now infamous fake but real but maybe really fake tradie has been tracked down and revealed as a genuine tradie after all. Andrew MacRae, who starred in the Liberal campaign ad that set off a social media storm, is ute-driving a metal worker who lives in a modest red brick home in Sydney’s Lane Cove, according to The Daily Mail.

Mr MacRae has signed a contract not to talk to the media, which is a shame because now we won’t be told if that really is a $7000 watch he was wearing in the campaign ad, as has been claimed. Or how much his arm band cost. Or what was with the blue ceramic mug.

All Mr MacRae would say was that all his friends were laughing at the furore which saw #faketradie go viral and even get its own twitter feed.

In the ad, which ran on Sunday, Mr MacRae is seen in an orange high visibility vest, clutching the mug and urging viewers to vote for “the current mob.”

“Bill Shorten even wants to go to war with me. Someone who just wants to get ahead through an investment property. I reckon we should just stick it through, and stick with the current mob for a while,”he says in the widely mocked ad.

A friend, Domenico Coviello, confirmed Mr MacRae was a true tradie and a Liberal supporter, as you’d expect. but he agreed his friend looked like a fake.

“He does something in the voice and they’ve dressed him up – he doesn’t normally dress like that,” he said.

He didn’t know if Mr MacRae owned an investment property, but a neighbour said he believed the metal worker didn’t own the home he was living in but rented it.

Meanwhile, the #faketradie tweets keep coming. Most helpful is one that shows you how to get the fake tradie look.

View image on Twitter
If “fake tradie” is renting while negatively gearing an investment property then the implication is he’d be unable to buy otherwise. If so, what a sad irony that he’s busy pricing himself out of the property market thanks to the rorted taxes he’s busy defending
About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.