De-Anne Kelly (Dawson, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary Trade) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2006-2007 and related bills. Firstly, I would like to share with the chamber some of the points that I make to constituents when I talk about the 10 years of the coalition government. You can get used to a good thing and not realise that there are alternatives; that prosperity is not a generic inheritance. I ask them to cast their minds back 10 years. I ask them to assume, wild as it may seem, that it may be a Labor government now. I remind them that the net government debt when we came into government was $95.8 billion—Beazley’s black hole. What would that be now? What would it be with the interest charges payable on that greatly expanded government debt? With good management, however, we have brought it down to a surplus in terms of government owings.

Remember that there are some 1.3 million Australians who now have invested in property—in their own homes and in investment property. Back in 1996, the average mortgage rate was 12.75 per cent. Very few of those Australians would have been able to invest in property or in their own home had those mortgage rates continued. Of course they would not have been able to. With Labor’s burgeoning debt, we know that their average mortgage rates would have increased. I am pleased to say now, though, that—thank goodness for families in Dawson—the average mortgage rate is 7.15 per cent. Those who remember blue suede shoes and such other things from the sixties—and I must confess that I have only seen photos of them—that was about the last time—

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