Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'll move on. The reason the GFC did not extend over here—and the history books will say this, but the work by Kevin Rudd and by Wayne Swan has never ever been acknowledged—was the very expeditious and aggressive action taken by those people. There was a second reason, and that is that Australian banks have recourse lending. If you can't make the repayments on your house—and I'd say probably 30 per cent or 40 per cent of Australians can't make the repayments on their house—the banks take the house from you and sell it up, and, because it falls short of the amount that they're owed, they can pursue you for the rest of your life. If you have a half-million-dollar home and you've got a debt of $300,000, if they sell it up for $200,000, you carry that debt until the day that you die. You are a debt slave to the banks forever.

We are virtually the only country on earth that has recourse lending. Every other country has non-recourse lending. In America they call it jingle mail: 'I can't make the repayments. Here's the key to the house. See you later, alligator.' And the banks share the loss. Yes, this bloke has lost the house. He's lost the repayments he's made on the house, but the banks also take a loss. Surely a young tradesman, a first-year-out apprentice or whatever he might be, who borrows a million dollars for a house—which is actually happening, as we all know—can't possibly make those repayments. The bank knows that he can't; he's only a young kid. He doesn't know that he can't, but the bank knows that he can't. So who should take the blame: the bank or him? In every other country on Earth, they have said, 'At the least, we'll share the blame,' but not in Australia. The enormous power of financial institutions in Australia has been reflected here with a piece of wet-lettuce legislation. It needs to be bolstered up. Whilst I'm very sympathetic to the government, I am backing the opposition on these amendments.

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