Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thought to myself when I was asked to speak on this MPI: 'Geez, I must have upset the whip this week.' I'm last to speak on the MPI on Thursday, and then I read the actual MPI, written by the member for Hume, and I thought, 'I've really upset the whip this week.' We all know that the member for Hume, the shadow Treasurer, has absolutely no credibility when it comes to actually representing what our government is doing. He has form for misrepresenting information all the time, as he has done in this very simple MPI.

The policy that Labor announced at the election and where they're trying to draw this broken promise from is our plan, the Help to Buy, which will assist Australians to buy homes with smaller deposits, smaller mortgages and smaller mortgage repayments. That was our policy. It's a complex policy. You actually have to read the detail of how we will achieve that. Clearly, the member for Hume did not read it when he was writing this MPI.

Mortgages are going up. Absolutely. And we knew that when we were in opposition. That's why we actually drafted policies like the Help to Buy that will assist Australians with purchasing a home, meaning that they will have smaller deposits and smaller mortgages and smaller mortgage repayments. That's why we came up with policies to help address that. For the first time in a long time, first home buyers are entering the market less and less. The generation known as the millennials are less likely to own a home than their grandparents. It's a problem that we've inherited but a problem that we're working to address, with programs like the Help to Buy program and the program to help people in my region, the regional homebuyers grant, which is helping people into their first home.

What happened under the previous government cannot be ignored when it comes to mortgages. I can remember, like most can remember, the Reserve Bank Governor pleading with the previous government to do something. The only lever that they had to try and help our economy was to cut interest rates. But back then they warned us and said, 'What we cut will eventually have to go up.' They pleaded with the government to do something about the economic situation that we're in, but all the previous government did was make things worse. They super-sized and boosted areas that didn't need to be boosted—for example, the homebuilding sector. They like to try and blame this side for the supply problem that we have in terms of materials, but it started under their government through their policy.

What we have today in this MPI is a desperate opposition trying to peg its failures on our government. We do feel for all Australians whose mortgages are going up—we really do understand the pressures—and that's why in our budget there are a number of other cost-alleviating measures that we introduced. Cheaper child care will help these families if they've got children in child care, making child care cheaper for 95 per cent of Australian families. We're making sure we're doing what we can to keep inflation down. We've introduced a bill that has passed the House around cheaper medicines. That is another way we're helping people with the cost of living. These are some of the measures that our government is implementing.

I'd really like to suggest to the opposition to take this process seriously. Enough with the games and enough with the rhetoric, particularly in relation to MPIs. Our time in this place is precious, and we should use it debating facts and not debating the rhetoric that they've put forward. When parliament comes back, I say to them to do better so that we can have a genuine debate about the economy, not one based upon a loose string of ideas. Take responsibility for what you did in your term of government.

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