Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

The member for North Sydney, the Manager of Opposition Business, has asked me a question about the Australian Business Investment Partnership. This investment partnership was put together with the cooperation of the major banks and the support of the property sector across the country for one very good reason. It is not just the employment intensity within that sector, some 150,000 people; it goes to what happens to the value of property assets across this nation if there is a retreat from this nation of foreign bank syndication of current Australian bank loans to that sector. The consequence for the whole economy of a collapse in asset values in this sector would be catastrophic. The quantum of the refinancing due in 2009 across the Australian economy—and there are varying estimates of this—is somewhere in the range of $50 billion to $75 billion. The question arises: what is the proportion of that represented by existing bank syndication from abroad which could be withdrawn, as you see evidence around the world of that happening? The answer to that flows into the category of some tens of billions of dollars. Therefore, you have two courses of action. The Liberal Party is saying let the free market rip—

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