John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

You betcha we voted against the wasteful programs. If you had not borrowed so much money and not spent so much money, interest rates would have fallen further and stayed lower. You would have grown the economy through the private sector and not had a clayton’s growth, where the government borrows money and spends it and you call it economic growth. That is clayton’s economics. That is what it is.

Now we have had six interest rate rises in the last eight months and more to come. My home loan has gone from a start of 4.99 per cent to now almost seven per cent and I know there are a lot more to come because you are simply releasing the fiscal handbrake and the Reserve Bank will have to pull harder on the other handbrake for interest rates. Those who will suffer will be the battlers, the ordinary families paying for their homes, the people in small business, the farmers who have suffered drought—in many areas since 2002. They are the ones who will suffer most. The waste of these programs has just been humungous. (Time expired)