Ruth Webber (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

All I can say, with all due respect to you, Senator Cormann, is that I must live in a different part of Perth to you, because if you were aware of what is going on in Perth you would not be interested in the blame game, which is all that those opposite do; you would actually understand what is happening in the northern suburbs. You would understand that in the electorate of Stirling 34 per cent of people are suffering from mortgage stress. When I am in that community, people come and see me regularly and complain about the $300 a week they have to pay to rent a house in Balga or Nollamara. You would not be interested in playing the blame game; you would be interested in sitting down and talking about real solutions, if you really do care about those people.

Obviously, your colleague Peter Lindsay from Queensland understands, although he likes to blame young people themselves. Other members of your party are open about the fact that there really is a housing affordability crisis. They talk about young families under mortgage stress being forced to sit on milk crates. What we need to do is work together and address the problem. All of those people in Stirling, those 34 per cent of people who are suffering from mortgage stress, remember your Prime Minister and your Treasurer—L1 and L2, as they are colloquially known around here now—promising to keep interest rates at record lows. Five interest rate increases later, they do not believe it when all of a sudden you have a brainstorming session and decide that you care. The way that you demonstrate that you care is to blame-shift—blame someone else. The Treasurer, after the last interest rate rise, said:

House prices are higher than they have been and they are higher than they have been because more people are in work and more people are able to afford to borrow to purchase more expensive housing.

When asked whether there is no crisis, the Treasurer replied:

Well, no.

You cannot have it both ways. You cannot say, ‘Yes, there is a crisis and we are going to blame everyone else,’ even though you are the party that has been in government for 11 long years; you are the party that has been responsible for the five successive interest rate rises since the last election. You have the Treasurer—L2, as he is colloquially known now—saying, ‘Well, actually there is no crisis.’ He does not seem to accept that there is a crisis. You can go for the third option, which is the option that Senator Ludwig was referring to, which is to simply come up with another marketing plan: get your mates from Crosby Textor out there and work out what the spin needs to be.

In the real world—the real world that is the northern suburbs of Perth, where 34 per cent of people are suffering mortgage stress—working families are facing the prospect of not being able to afford to buy their own home. They are facing the prospect of not being able to afford to pay $300 a week to live in Balga or Nollamara. That is the real world; that is what is happening today. After 11 long years, your government has done nothing to help people face those challenges. Those families are obliged to pay nearly one-third of their incomes on home loan repayments—the highest ever percentage of their income. That is the Howard-Costello-Vaile legacy—whoever wants to claim responsibility for this government’s legacy—to the northern suburbs of Perth. And what is the answer? Blame someone else. There was a scattergun, brainstorming exercise yesterday, where we had, all of a sudden, lots of different issues and lots of different options. The government just play the blame game, rather than accepting responsibility and helping those families who are in mortgage stress or helping the young families who are looking to buy their first home—and rather than actually showing that you accept some responsibility for five interest rate rises in a row.

When you add to that those families spending over one-third of their income trying to meet their mortgage repayments and the uncertainties they face in the labour market, thanks to Work Choices—that labour market system whose name the government dare not speak anymore—it is little wonder that families are feeling very nervous and very stressed about the future. This government’s typical solution is to take a scattergun approach, blame everyone else and then get Crosby Textor to test a few of the lines that were tried— (Time expired)

Question agreed to.