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

No; his plan is a very cunning plan. It is to put more downward pressure on housing prices. He is going to reduce the value of their land even further so they get driven further into negative equity and the size of their mortgages will be even bigger compared to the value of their homes. But the Prime Minister just does not get it.

Research commissioned by the Sydney Morning Herald found 90 per cent of the 77 suburbs in south-western Sydney experienced falling house prices in the last financial year, and 83 per cent of the 93 suburbs in greater Western Sydney had falling house prices. The Prime Minister does not get it, but there is one person in the House on the other side who does get it. I have to say it will come as no surprise to somebody on the other side of the House that house prices in Western Sydney and increasing mortgage repayments are a big problem. On Saturday, 26 August I was at home reading my Sydney Morning Herald, as many of us are wont to do, and I came across a very interesting article. It starts like this:

The battler-belt Liberal politician Pat Farmer was having so much trouble selling his mansion on Sydney’s southwestern fringe he slashed the price by $300,000.

And it goes on:

But that’s not Farmer’s only property headache. He wanted to sell a three-bedroom investment property at Campbelltown he paid $315,000 for 18 months ago, but his agent warned him it might fetch only $285,000.

And it goes on to quote the honourable member for Macarthur. He said:

I said, ‘You must be joking’, but he said there was no way I’d even get $300,000 for it.

When the member for Macarthur heard the Prime Minister’s answer yesterday he must have been muttering to himself again. ‘You must be joking, Prime Minister,’ he must have said—because it is no joke.

And the member for Macarthur’s constituents know it is not a joke; they would be even more upset than he is. For, as the Sydney Morning Herald went on to say:

The options are more limited for many in the mortgagee killing fields of the west and south-west, where price falls of 40 per cent have become common at weekend auctions.

These are strong words. They are not my words; these are the words of that well-known, august, socialist journal of record the Sydney Morning Herald. And it gets worse. The Herald goes on to report:

Residents in crucial federal Coalition electorates, such as Farmer’s seat of Macarthur and the Liberal Jackie Kelly’s seat of Lindsay ... are experiencing falling property values, rising interest rates and soaring petrol prices all at once.

But, as I say, the Prime Minister has an answer. Well done, Prime Minister! His answer is to reduce housing prices even further. Western Sydney government members of parliament should be telling the Prime Minister he is out of touch and out of line. They should be telling him that it is unacceptable for interest rates in Australia to be the second highest in the OECD.

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