Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

You do not get it, Parliamentary Secretary. You simply do not get it because there is no such thing in John Howard’s Australia as a small mortgage, and there is no such thing as a small interest rate rise. We have had seven interest rate rises of one-quarter of a per cent—up on 8 May 2002 and 5 June 2002 and up in November 2003, December 2003, March 2005, May 2006 and August 2006. And the Prime Minister went to the last election and said: ‘Trust me with your interest rates. We will keep them at record lows.’ They have gone up three times and it is starting to cause real pain and distress in the Australian community. At the moment, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia—listen to this, Parliamentary Secretary; this is the new interest rate reality—almost 11 per cent of income is—

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