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

My question is to Senator Scullion, the Minister representing the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. I ask the minister whether he recalls stating yesterday:

... interest rates today are at the highest they have ever been under the Howard government ...

In case not everyone heard it, he repeated it when he said that interest rates were now:

... the highest they have ever been under us.

Didn’t the minister also say: ‘They are at record lows; they are indeed record lows’? Given this totally confused, repeated and contradictory answer by the minister yesterday, can he explain how it is possible for interest rates to be ‘the highest they have ever been under us’ and, at the same time, ‘at record lows’?