Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Brown for her warm and generous remarks. I'm sure that many senators in this place will support her. The matter we are debating at this part of the schedule though is question time. It was quite revealing. Senator Farrell gave us an insight into the Prime Minister's morning routine. Senator Farrell said that the Prime Minister wakes up every morning and thinks about what more he could be doing to help Australian families. That will come as very cold comfort to those Australian families who wake up every morning and ask themselves: 'Why is the Prime Minister, Mr Albanese, and the Treasurer, Mr Chalmers, making my family poorer?'

The cost-of-living crisis in this country is real and it is immediate, and the scale is serious. The best way to demonstrate that, of course, is with the data. Just think for a moment about a family which took out a loan at a fixed rate of 2½ per cent on a residential property worth about $450,000—remembering that the average loan in our country is $600,000. They were paying $2,060 a month but now they're paying at least $2,900 per month on a variable rate of about 5.8 per cent. That's an extra $840 a month, or $10,000 a year, that an Australian family has to find.

I know that Senator Green is sort of smirking and unsettled in her chair over there. Let's think about the scale—