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

At the beginning of 2002, official interest rates were 4.25 per cent and the proportion of all new fixed rate loans for dwellings was 7.8 per cent. Between May 2002 and November 2007 official interest rates rose 10 times to be 6.75 per cent. This drove the standard average variable mortgage rate from 6.05 per cent in 2002 to 8.5 per cent in November 2007. In the face of those ever-rising rates, what did people do? They fixed their mortgage rates in increasing numbers. This is a very important figure: by November 2007, 23.9 per cent of all new mortgages were fixed. That was a threefold increase. Think about that for a moment: a threefold increase as their interest rates went up and up and up.

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