Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, of course it's easy—a maximum of 10 per cent, but all that would do is dry up the ability of many people to obtain credit at a time that they desperately need it.

Those opposite live, unfortunately, in an ideal, utopian world, not in the real world where people actually have to survive and make hard decisions. No-one in this parliament wants to see high rates of interest on credit. As I said, I respect absolutely the position of the member for Indi on that, but we need to be very careful and think through the unintended consequences of any legislation that we bring into this parliament. When we put price caps on anything, no matter what that good or service may be, we simply limit the supply of that good or that service. It is no different with credit and finance. If we put a limit on what interest rate can be charged we will deny certain people finance, especially at times when they desperately need it. I wish there was an easy solution. We need to help people in this situation. The best thing we can do is to try to get the cost of living down for vulnerable people in our community. The best thing that we can do is make sure that there are plenty of job opportunities for people in our community. That is what this government has been concentrating on. We've seen, since the election of the coalition government, over one million new jobs. One million new jobs have been created under this government—not created by government but created by entrepreneurs who are prepared to take a risk to employ people. That's what we need to encourage to make sure we can raise the living standards of people. We need to make sure we get the cost of living down, especially in the energy space.

But so many of my friends who sit on the other side of the parliament don't care about that. They would rather virtue-signal to the Greens than affect the cost of living. We see that the cost of the subsidies that continually pay for renewable energy are borne by the most vulnerable people in our community. They are the most regressive policies that we have. The costs of those go straight on the top of everyone's electricity bill—$3.6 billion gets added to everyone's electricity bill. If you are concerned about the cost of living, get rid of those subsidies. (Time expired)

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