Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When they were 16.8 per cent under Treasurer Howard in 1982, they were 12.3 per cent in the United States and 13.1 per cent in the United Kingdom. The other side has gone very quiet at the reminder of Treasurer Howard’s record with interest rates in 1982. Perhaps that is why the respected economic commentator Saul Eslake described the member for Flinders’s contribution as ‘fatuous’. I would add to that the descriptor ‘juvenile’.

More credible is a paper by Raja Junankar of the School of Economics and Finance at the University of Western Sydney and the German based Institute for the Future of Work. This paper compares the economic records of Labor and coalition governments, taking into account international factors over the 1980s and nineties. This paper finds that Labor was more successful than the coalition at keeping interest rates in Australia lower than in countries overseas. Honourable members opposite would hate to hear it, but they are going to hear it—and they are going to hear it more and more between now and the next election. They will not be allowed again to get away with the sophistry and the disingenuous lies that they told at the last election, because Labor has a proud record of keeping interest rates lower than countries elsewhere in the world. Household debt levels under this government are so high that people are now paying more in interest than they were— (Time expired)

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