Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is again to the Prime Minister. I again refer the Prime Minister to his statement that his promise to keep interest rates at record lows was not real because that commitment disappeared after the first week of the last election campaign. Prime Minister, does that mean the Australian people can rely on nothing that you or the Liberal Party will say during the first week of the next election campaign, or will we only know that after the next election campaign has been conducted?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think the Australian people can rely on the performance of this government in relation to interest rates, and we can rely on any comparison between the performance of this government on interest rates and the performance of the Labor government in the past. But, worse still, we can rely on the likelihood that if there were a Labor government elected at the end of this year the implementation of its roll-back of industrial relations would put upward pressure on inflation and thereby upward pressure on interest rates.

As I was scanning through my newspaper this morning I did come across some expressions of public opinion, and the one expression of public opinion that really hit me in the face was the expression of public opinion that said only seven per cent of the Australian people thought that interest rates would be lower under a Labor government than under a coalition government. I think that particular survey is right on the money.