Mal Brough (Longman, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Sydney says ‘stupid argument’. What is stupid about running an economy into the ground, requiring interest rates to go up and having people thrown out on the streets? Fortunately, there are enough people out there who still remember what it was like. They say that to me all the time. They say: ‘Mal, I know what it was like on 17 per cent interest rates. And I tell you what: maybe some of those who sit on the front bench don’t, but I did; I had the pain of it.’ Or they say, ‘I had the pain of 26 and 27 per cent interest rates on my overdraft and I was trying to hold a job together.’ Is it any wonder there were a million people unemployed under the Labor government? Do you think they were people who were worried about house affordability? It was just a distant dream. It was something that the rich people thought about. The rich people, by the way, were those who had a job. Today these people have a job. Today they are actually building wealth for themselves, and they are doing it in an environment where the taxes that they are paying are lower than they have been in living memory.

Today, under a Howard government, the average Australian family—mum and dad and two kids—pays no net tax under $50,800. When the mob that sit opposite, the Labor Party, were last in office, if you were one single dollar over $50,000, you paid 48½c of tax and Medicare levy. It was a case of, ‘Half to the government, half to me.’ It is no wonder people did not want to add to the economy and take overtime. Today they do not have that problem. Today they put it in their hip pocket and make those decisions for themselves.

The member for Sydney said that we are always blaming the state governments for the affordability of housing. Let’s not blame anyone. Let’s state some facts. Let’s talk about the member for Sydney’s home town, Sydney, particularly the north-west. I refer to Boulevard of broken dreams, a report by the Residential Development Council, and the Property Council’s publication from January this year, Voice of Leadership. These are their figures, not the government’s. They are straight from the people that the member for Sydney was happy to quote. How do the people in Western Sydney cope with getting a house? What is driving up the costs in the electorates of the member for Lindsay or the member for Macarthur? This is what they have to deal with. When they turn up at the auction, they do not realise that what they are doing is pouring money into Mr Iemma’s Labor government at an unprecedented level. In the north-west of Sydney a house and land package is $570,240, with $50,000 in GST. Where does it go? Every last cent goes directly into Mr Iemma’s pocket under the Commonwealth-state GST regime. Is the Labor Party suggesting we change it?

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