Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

Of course it had something to do with the Reserve Bank. I will take that interjection. It was a result of many things. It was a result of the fact that Australia had variable rather than fixed interest on home loans, unlike the US, which had fixed rates, so drops in interest rates did not actually flow through. There were many, many things—the fact that we had the eighth lowest debt in the world and we had the first lowest debt after the global financial crisis. So we improved our debt position relative to the world. It was to do with the Hawke and Keating government, it was to do with financial regulation, it was to do with all sorts of things. It was because Australia was well-governed, but it was also because of the work that the Labor government did in stimulating the economy that supported small business through that time.

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