Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Urban Development) Share this | Hansard source

They might not send them to you, Senator Watson, but I can tell you that I get two or three of these emails per day. I have seen the advertisements on television and in newspapers. They offer home loans with little or no deposit and virtually no documents to people who quite clearly have bad credit records. These are loan amounts in excess of 110 per cent of the value of the property. The email may well be headed up ‘Guaranteed loan’ or ‘We will loan to you’. Shonky operators are operating as if they are a virus. The list of their victims is growing.

We have seen increases in the rates of mortgage foreclosures of some 60 per cent according to court records in Victoria, New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. This is a growing and direct response to the Howard government’s economic policies. This government, which of course has revelled in the good times, cannot turn its back quickly enough in the bad times. It cannot get away fast enough from the victims of its economic policies. More and more hardworking Australians who listened to John Howard and his government when they said that they would keep interest rates at record low levels—