Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industry and Innovation) Share this | Hansard source

After nine interest rate hikes in a row and five since the last election, families in the electorate of Oxley are doing it very tough. Even though the Prime Minister says that working families have never been better off, I can assure you, from talking to them in my electorate, that is not the case. The Prime Minister still thinks that interest rates are low, but official data shows households are carrying three times the level of debt they did almost 20 years ago. With three times the debt, interest rate rises obviously have three times the impact. Just today we heard that the Reserve Bank of Australia is talking about another interest rate rise potentially before the end of this year, which really gives the lie to the statements that were made at the last election about keeping interest rates low.

The latest 2006 census data shows the number of households paying more than 30 per cent of their gross income in mortgage repayments has exploded in the Oxley electorate by 154 per cent. This is an alarming figure. Something can be done and we can start by acknowledging that there is a problem and that we want to fix that problem. That is what needs to happen. Labor has taken that approach. We have convened a national housing affordability summit because we think that something can be done. We have set aside $500 million for housing affordability in a fund to tackle the undersupply of new residential housing. We are also setting up a national housing supply research council to analyse the adequacy of land supply. There is also more that can be done through infrastructure in Australia and by appointing a cabinet level—(Time expired)

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