John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I do not regard household debt as ‘irrelevant’; I have never said that at all. What I have said is that what is highly relevant in the current debate is a comparison of the interest rate burdens of two periods. If you take the average mortgage now, the truth is that, whereas the average mortgage now attracts an interest payment of $1,430 a month, if you applied the average of the Hawke-Keating years, that figure would climb to $2,300 a month. If you climbed the dizzy heights of 17 per cent, which people in this country still bitterly remember, it would be $3,100 a month. I think those figures are highly relevant.

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