Michael Forshaw (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you. Because I know that what I have to say is worth listening to and I would like to be able to hear it. When the opposition were in government, interest rates went up every couple of months. The Reserve Bank put them up. They needed to put them up because of the threat of inflation. But the Howard government sat back and said, ‘No, no, no.’ They wallowed in the surpluses that they were gaining through the resources boom, threw more money out into the community and hoped that they could buy another election win, just as they did back in 2004. Of course, the chickens have come home to roost.

For the first time ever I think that anyone can remember—certainly that I can remember—the Reserve Bank put up interest rates in the middle of an election campaign. The Reserve Bank, being the independent body they are, felt that even during the election period they had to put up interest rates again, because of the inflationary pressure, which of course destroyed any semblance of credibility that the Prime Minister may have had, or believed he had, about his great economic record.

The other important thing about rising interest rates is the amount that people have to pay to pay off their mortgage. Even when interest rates were comparatively low—and I acknowledge they were low—the proportion of income that families had to pay on their monthly mortgage, has continued to go up. I will stand corrected, but I think the figure is somewhere over 40 per cent. It grew during all of the years of the Howard government. They kept telling us about how they kept interest rates low, but of course what was happening was that the actual dollars that had to be paid each month kept going up.

That is why we have a housing affordability crisis in this country. The huge increase in housing prices combined with the growing financial difficulties of families that have to meet mortgage payments means that many struggling families live on the edge day to day to meet those commitments. It also means that many people are having greater difficulty today entering the housing market than they did during the years of the Hawke government or previous governments. You do not have to read the economic statistics to know that; you just have to talk to people. I know how much more difficult it is for my kids today—they are at an age when they would be thinking about endeavouring to purchase a home or take out a loan—than it was when I purchased a home back in the seventies. It has got to the point where it is pretty much out of reach for most young people. That is the real legacy of this government.

Let us also look at credit card debt. Not much is ever said about credit card debt—or at least it is not publicised as much as I think it should be. You can talk about interest rates in terms of the rates that are set based on the Reserve Bank’s decisions, which essentially relate to home mortgage rates, but the rates for credit cards are 17 per cent, 18 per cent or 19 per cent. What has happened to credit card debt in this country? It has gone out of control. The figures I have obtained indicate—and I am indebted to the library for being able to produce this for me rather quickly this afternoon so that I could give an update—that in March of 1996 the total debt owed was $6.649 billion. Do you know what it was in November 2007? It was $41.919 billion. That is a massive increase.

We know that today families are using their credit cards for everyday living, and they are running up major debts of $10,000, $20,000 or $30,000 on their credit cards. There was a time when people paid off their Bankcard, their Visa card, their MasterCard or their Amex card each month so that they did not accrue interest. That is no longer the case and these debts are just getting greater and greater. Each time the Reserve Bank makes a decision on interest rates we focus on that, as we should, but there is another area of debt which is crippling families because it just gets rolled over and rolled over—that is, credit card debt.

This motion today suggests that we have no idea how to run a trillion-dollar economy—but get real; get serious! The opposition should treat general business debates with a bit more respect and a bit more seriousness. They have come into this chamber with this bland statement that really says nothing. The Labor government now have the responsibility for managing this economy. The electorate said overwhelmingly last November: ‘We’ve had enough of Mr Howard, Mr Costello and all the others. We want the Labor Party, under Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan, to run this country and run this economy.’ The electorate had had so much of Mr Howard that they kicked him out of his seat. It is only the second time in the history of the country that that has happened to a Prime Minister. Why? For all the reasons I have given and, of course, because of Work Choices.

Where was the Christian value in Work Choices? There was none. Work Choices was about saying to the mother who was working in the supermarket to earn some extra money for the family: ‘Sorry, you’ve got to work weekends without penalties; you’ve got to come in when we say you have to. We don’t care about your son or daughter’s sport, or your school commitments or whatever; you work the rostered hours now that we tell you or that’s it. You’ll sign this AWA or you don’t get the job—or you don’t keep it.’

Work Choices was about saying to those families on low incomes that relied upon the overtime payments for the extra hours: ‘No longer are you going to get that overtime. You work the extra hours for nothing or we’ll find someone else who’s more desperate than you, or who’s prepared to do it.’ Work Choices was about saying: ‘No, there’s no longer four weeks annual leave or sick leave. We want you to cash that out.’ It was about taking away. There was nothing ever in Work Choices about how we might enhance awards in this country; it was about getting rid of them, about taking them away.

So, when the opposition says that we have to ensure that no Australian will be worse off, I can say this with great confidence: Australians will always be better off under a Labor government than they ever will be under a conservative government, whether it is a merged Liberal-National Party or whatever else they want to call themselves in the future. Just as they have done in every state and territory in this country, the people have now put their faith in a Labor government federally. We will return that faith.