Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

Interest rates have continued to rise in ways that have put extra pressure on people. We understand that and we have acknowledged that throughout. When it comes to people coming off fixed rate mortgages onto variable rate mortgages, this is a substantial part of the pressure. If you think about it in quarterly terms, the biggest number of fixed rate mortgages becoming variable was last quarter. We think, on the latest numbers, it was about 19 per cent of fixed rate mortgages last quarter and about 17 per cent this quarter. There are still substantial numbers of people, but it peaked last quarter and it is coming off. For those people, obviously, higher rates put extra pressure on their household budgets, and that's a big part of the story.

More broadly, we all know that interest rates have been rising because, like most advanced major economies around the world, we've got an inflation challenge in our economy. If the shadow Treasurer really understood and cared about the inflation challenge in our economy, he would acknowledge that the highest quarterly inflation in this cycle—actually for some decades—was the March quarter of 2022, when they were in office. What matters here—

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