Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Banking and Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

I apologise for being late. I was trying to access the Liberal Party website, which contains an interesting message. I will get to the matter of the Liberal Party website shortly, because I think it is very embarrassing for the government. Today we are discussing a number of key aspects of the recent economic performance of the country, particularly the very poor contribution by the current Liberal government.

First and foremost is the issue of interest rates. Today the Reserve Bank announced the eighth interest rate increase since 2002—the fourth increase since the last election. That brings me to the matter of the Liberal Party website which I was attempting to access and was therefore held up in getting to the chamber. You cannot download the message, but the Liberal Party website still contains the Howard government plan: ‘keep inflation under control and keep interest rates at record lows.’ That is the message which is still on the Liberal Party website. Of course, it is patently wrong with regard to inflation and interest rates. I will talk a little more about interest rates before I get to inflation. The message on the website which states, ‘keep interest rates at record lows’ is patently untrue. It has to be false, because we have had four interest rate increases since the last election. Today we had the fourth increase.

Today’s increase will impact significantly on the community in a number of ways. It will impact not only on mortgage repayments—which is what is referred to mainly—but also on small business, small business loans and the farming community, particularly in a time of drought. The last eight interest rate increases have seen housing interest payments—that is, the actual monetary amount that individuals now have to pay as a percentage of their household income—running at 9.1 per cent. So, after the increase today, close to $1 in $10 of household income has to be contributed towards higher interest payments. The Liberal government is fond of looking at history. If we compare that to the proportion of household disposable income some 10 years ago, we see that it was then 5.6 per cent. So, 10 years ago, when the Liberal government was elected—at the end of the Labor Party government—interest rates as a proportion of the dollar income of Australians were considerably lower.

I have referred to history. Time and time again today we questioned Senator Minchin about the Liberal government’s broken promise of keeping interest rates at record lows—because clearly they are not at record lows—and time and time again the minister referred to the record under Labor in Labor’s 13 years. As I referred to, the valid comparison is actually the percentage of household disposable income—the actual amount of money from your pay packet—that you have to use to repay your mortgage. It has increased significant under the Liberal government. If we want to refer to history—and some people may not be able to remember back this far, but I certainly do—we should refer back to when John Howard, the current Prime Minister, was Treasurer.