James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a very tough day for the millions of Australians that have a mortgage. Those in my electorate of Sturt and those across the country will be becoming aware, through the course of this afternoon and this evening, that interest rates have again gone up by another 0.5 per cent. That's three 0.5 per cent interest rate rises in the last three months. Unfortunately there is no suggestion that this is the end of interest rates increasing. This is going to make things very difficult for families that have purchased homes and made assumptions about what the burden is going to be on their household budget to service that mortgage, now to find that whenever they're renegotiating or refinancing their mortgage that'll see a significant increase in the burden of that budget. For those that are saving to buy a home to get into the property market, that is also going to make things more difficult as they've been planning and saving, expecting a certain cost to service mortgage debt financing and then have that go up.

This, of course, is only one part of our economy that's putting cost-of-living pressures on the people of Australia. Electricity prices are again increasing significantly. We've just seen major decisions by the big three retailers commencing from 1 July for big increases, some in double-digits in different parts of the National Energy Market. Unfortunately, a cursory glance at the Australian Energy Market Operator's website, if you look at where wholesale spot price averages have been since then, they're only higher still. The burdens on the household budgets of the average Australians are only continuing to increase. We've seen recent inflation numbers from the June quarter, and we've seen prices go up further since then. At the end of September, of course, this government will be removing the fuel excise rebate, so fuel, whatever price it happens to be at by then, will be increasing by another 22c a litre.

Now, all of these things are putting enormous pressure on the household budget, and it's very easy for those opposite to say these are all linked to factors outside of their control. Let's think about what is in their control. What's in their control is what they said before the election in order to win votes from the people of Australia. All these factors were absolutely there and known to the then opposition when they made promises to the Australian people that they would lower electricity prices by $275 for an average household, a commitment they won't repeat in this House.

Certainly, the Prime Minister won't repeat it. Some have got the old talking points and are still using the plan that they took to the election, which is clearly redundant because their ministers and their Prime Minister won't defend it, won't honour it, won't now say in this place during question time that they will still keep that promise. It will be absolutely impossible for them to achieve a $275 reduction in household electricity prices. That's clear from AEMO's data already. The Prime Minister knows it; the ministers know it. Some on the backbench haven't been told about it yet, because they know what sort of impact it is going to have on their electability come the next election. But they said to the people of this nation, 'We've got a plan that is going to reduce your electricity prices.' And the absolute opposite is happening. We've got record increases in the wholesale electricity market in South Australia and almost all of the other jurisdictions within the National Electricity Market. And that unfortunately is going to flow on to consumers.

Petrol prices are going up in September, electricity prices are going up, and today we've seen, unfortunately, another announcement from the Reserve Bank that mortgages are going up. On every cost that has a significant impact on the household budget, prices are out of control. And the Treasurer has now admitted—after the election, quite a different turn of phrase than before the election—that real wages in the foreseeable future are going down. Every key cost-of-living commitment that Labor took to the election is now proving to be complete and utter junk. The reverse is happening. The pressure on household budgets is absolutely out of control, and unfortunately today's interest rate increase, which could be only one of many more to come in the future, is going to put more pressure on struggling families across the country. And the Labor Party are responsible for how they misled the people of this country during the election campaign, when all the factors that are influencing these things were well and truly known.

We're talking about last April and May, when they said: 'We're going to lower your cost of living. We're going to increase real wages.' Both those things are clearly not happening, and the Labor Party is utterly responsible for misleading the people of Australia. Let me tell you this: they do not like being lied to. They do not like being told, in exchange for their vote, that you are going to do something and then the opposite occurs. You just wait for what is going to happen to you when they get a chance to tell you what they think about your lies to them in the last election campaign.

See this speech in context