Zoe McKenzie (Flinders, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) under the Government we have now seen interest rates rising for nine straight months; and

(b) we have not seen consistent rate hikes like this in more than 30 years;

(2) acknowledges that:

(a) the latest increase means that a family with a typical mortgage of $750,000 now needs to find an extra $20,000 a year to keep up with mortgage repayments; and

(b) at the same time energy bills have soared and grocery costs are rising; and

(3) calls on the Government to take real action to address cost of living pressures.

Listening to this government, you would think that Australians were living an easy life. Indeed, just last week we heard the Prime Minister boast that Australians have had a pretty good 10 months under his leadership. Well, I'm not quite so sure where the Prime Minister has been. To be fair, I do know he has been away a lot. He has been to Japan and Indonesia; to the United Arab Emirates, Spain, France, Ukraine, Fiji and the United Kingdom; back to Japan; to Cambodia; back to Indonesia; to Thailand; to Papua New Guinea; to India, the United States and back to Fiji again.

I, of course, don't hold this against him. As someone who spent the last decade working in global trade, I know how important it is for the Prime Minister to meet his counterparts, to reassure them of Australia's respected partnership, and to boost our trade and investment opportunities enshrined in deals sealed by the previous coalition government. I especially recognise the Prime Minister's travels in the Indo-Pacific to protect and defend our strategic interests, and I particularly commend him for his travelling further, around the coalition's AUKUS policy.

But I do wonder if that means he has lost touch somewhat with Australian families—particularly in my electorate, which he did actually visit in January, to my enormous delight, but only for lunch with mates at the beach at Portsea, before he choppered back over the ditch to Geelong. If he had stopped to talk to my constituents in Flinders, he may have heard a quite different story.

In January, he would have heard of their enormous struggles to get staff in our most critical industries: in tourism, hospitality, agriculture and health. He would have heard about soaring wages just to get people to turn up for shifts. He would have heard about businesses having to close their doors for parts of the busiest season of the year simply because they couldn't get the cleaners or the cooks or the chefs or the waiters that they needed.

By February, he would have heard about the impact of interest rate rises when the cash rate rose for the ninth time from 3.1 to 3.35. This year alone, 61 per cent of Victorian mortgages will convert from fixed rate mortgages to variable rate mortgages. Those who were lucky enough to fix their mortgages during the COVID-19 pandemic may have done so at a two per cent rate, or something around a two per cent rate—possibly, even below two per cent. When they come off fixed rates later this year, their variable rate will be in the order of 6.5 per cent a year—and that's assuming no further increases. So that will be, overnight, a tripling of their interest rate and a vast increase in what they have been paying. Those who are already confronting the impact of careering cash rate increases in their home mortgages are paying roughly $1,700 or $1,800 more each month, each and every month. That's 1,800 extra dollars, after tax, every month, and, if you do the maths, that's more than $20,000 a year.

What could a family do with $20,000 a year? They could buy a car. They could pay for school tuition in a local community school, or maybe take a family of five away somewhere nice—Hawaii, maybe—for Christmas. They could replace a kitchen that needed replacing. They could put money away for a kid's tertiary study or help them to get together money for a deposit for a home, maybe. They could pay out-of-pocket medical costs for an expensive, but unexpected, procedure. You could get married, but it would have to be a cheap wedding. You could just buy a ring for the girl you love. Twenty thousand dollars a year just in repayments over and above whatever you were paying before will come as a big shock and a big change to most families. Keep in mind, that's for someone who has a $750,000 mortgage.

It's been 'a good 10 months', the Prime Minister reckons. Inflation is at almost eight per cent, grocery bills are up by 20 per cent in some cases, there are job losses across the industrial spectrum and power prices are rising at a hallucinogenic speed—is it 60, is it 40 or is it 31? Whatever happened to that emergency legislation we were forced to pass last December to constrain price rises? It doesn't seem to have worked. Why? It's because this government has crushed investment and confidence in our energy market. Remember the promise that you would get a $275 a year reduction on your electricity bills year on year? Where has that promise gone in the last 'pretty good 10 months' that the Prime Minister talks about? What about his promise of cheaper mortgages, no changes to super, lower inflation and a promise not to touch franking credits, not to touch industry-wide bargaining, not to raise taxes and not to touch superannuation?

This government is not doing enough to alleviate the pressure on families, and it is doing too much— (Time expired)

See this speech in context