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

Thank you, Deputy President. This fact will make senators uncomfortable and this fact will make Labor senators squirm: how many people—how many mortgages themselves—do those opposite think have shifted from fixed to variable? I know they'll be thinking, 'I've heard that number before; I think that's about 880,000 mortgages.' I can see Senator Ayres there nodding. That is correct. That is the 2023 figure—this year's figure. What was the 2022 figure? It was 590,000. And what is next year's figure? It's 450,000. What does that mean? It means that 1.9 million mortgages are shifting from fixed to variable in the term of this government. And what is their plan for a remedy? The scale of the problem is 1.9 million.

That's not my figure. That figure was released yesterday by Senator Gallagher in answer to a question on notice by me, which was late in being responded to. It wasn't one day late and it wasn't two days late, it was weeks upon weeks late. Why was it that the government thought it necessary to delay the return of its answer to my question on notice which revealed that 1.9 million mortgages were shifting from fixed to variable rates over the life of this government? I know that Labor senators find it tiresome to listen to coalition senators talking about these issues, but the issues are real and they're serious. They're on a scale that I think would surprise many, many people.

So don't listen to Senator Smith. Let's listen to the ACTU secretary, Sally McManus. What did she have to say? She conceded that real wages are going backwards—her words—by a shocking 4½ per cent, and that the wage rises of 2022 and early 2023 have now been, in Sally McManus's words, 'eaten up by price rises and interest rate rises'. The head of the labour movement is saying that the government's lack of action on price and interest rate rises is eating away those very, very modest gains that people might have had in their wages.

When the Prime Minister wakes up tomorrow, I hope that he will wake up with a renewed sense of urgency about the scale of the cost-of-living crisis that is impacting on Australian families across the country. It's serious, it's real and it's on a scale that is unprecedented, and Australian families deserve better.