Another week and another embarrassing blunder for the Federal Government. This time from Treasurer Joe Hockey who put his foot firmly in his mouth when trying to justify an increase in the fuel levy with “the poorest people either don’t have cars or actually don’t drive very far in many cases”. As expected, the outrage in the public and the media was huge and he was forced to backflip on his comments.

Was the media justified in their attacks on Mr Hockey? Absolutely. The Treasurer is in the public eye and if he can dish it out, he should be able to take it being thrown back at him. Fairfax in particular were scathing of how he handled the debacle, possibly because Mr Hockey is suing them for defamation over an article they published about him in May. Other media organisations, such as the ABC did a “Fact Check” on his comment, contradicting his remarks and embarrassing him even further.

Twitter exploded with the hashtag #OtherThingsThePoorDontDo with many unhappy voters composing amusing tweets and photos ridiculing the Treasurer’s poor choice of words. Many also found his words hard to swallow given he has a taxpayer-funded government car.

Other politicians also tore into the Treasurer and when you have the Prime Minister refusing to support your comments, it’s time to sack your media advisers. And when Peter Reith (a former Howard government minister who was entangled in the ‘children overboard’ scandal) is critical of how he has handled the backlash, it’s time to issue an apology.

However taking 48 hours to publicly apologise was not looked upon favourably, with the media taking a “too little, too late” approach and questioning how genuine his apology was. Fairfax in particular ran a poll asking readers if they accepted his apology, with 86% voting “No”.

Either way, Mr Hockey is in desperate need of overhauling his image as he is regularly portrayed in the media as being “smug”, “arrogant” and his public persona has been likened to Ebenezer Scrooge. In a time when his approval rating is low, maybe he should speak to his colleague Julie Bishop about how to successfully reinvent yourself in the eyes of the media. The best place to start would be to spend some time with these so-called “poor” people, or otherwise face life in the political wilderness after the next federal election.