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

I move:

That the Senate take note of answers given by ministers to all questions asked by coalition senators this afternoon.

Australians are getting increasingly cranky. They're getting cranky with the Labor government, getting cranky with Prime Minister Albanese and getting cranky with the Treasurer, Jim Chalmers. Australian families are about to reel under the pressure—the cumulative pressure—of 11 interest rate rises. Often, we think about an interest rate rise in isolation, but increasingly households around the country are having to think about interest rate rise, on interest rate rise, on interest rate rise, on interest rate rise—the cumulative effect of 11 interest rate rises. Over the last few months many of our papers have been filled with news about the mortgage cliff. It is my unfortunate duty to say to Australian families, if they have not realised it already, and certainly to the government, who by their very own actions and statements clearly have not recognised it, that the mortgage cliff is upon us now.

Many of us might have read just recently in papers that 150,000 households on cheaper fixed rates will move to variable rates in September alone. That, we are told, is a $95 billion refinancing cliff of Australian mortgages. We call it a cliff because it is going to be a very, very hard fall for many Australian families. To put that in context, we are talking about 150,000 fixed rates moving to variable rates in September alone—that is, 150,000 of the estimated 880,000 which are said to shift from fixed rates to variable rates this year alone. I think it is time that the Senate chamber and the government in particular try to think about that. What does that mean on the average streets in the average suburbs of Australia's cities and regional towns? For some families that is going to mean an extra $22,000 a year in mortgage costs, which means they are going to have to find an extra $22,000 from their household budgets. Where is that money going to come from? It might have to come from school fees. In might have to come from sporting club fees. It might come from the vacations that families would have wanted to take or would have planned for during the school holidays.

The pain that Australian families are experiencing or are about to experience as this mortgage cliff continues to wash over the Australian economy is real, it's immediate and it's going to hurt. The National Australia Bank released data just recently suggesting that 67 per cent—almost 70 per cent, almost 7 in 10—of Australians under the age of 50 said that the rising cost of living is now their biggest cause of stress. The ABS has reported that working households experienced a 9.6 per cent increase in their annual cost-of-living expenses, the highest annual rise on record.

Who is Labor punishing as a result of their lack of effort in combating inflation, their lack of regard for 11 interest rate rises? They're punishing the very people that elect them. They're punishing younger Australians. Why is it that Labor has chosen to hurt that one group of people who put them in this place in the election in May last year? Commonwealth Bank of Australia went on to say:

These trends come together to create a cost-of-living pressure perfect storm for millennials … The younger you are, the more you need to curtail your spending due to rising cost-of-living pressures.

Why does Labor want to hurt young Australians?