Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

When interest rates go up, as they are in Australia at the moment—and I remind people we have had a record number of consecutive interest rate rises from the Reserve Bank of Australia, something we've never seen in Australia's history—some things inevitably flow. What inevitably flows is pain for people who are carrying debt, and in Australia overwhelmingly that means pain for mortgage holders, particularly mortgage holders who believed the former governor of the RBA, Dr Philip Lowe, when he said that interest rates would not go up for years. We are still within the period in which Dr Lowe promised interest rates wouldn't go up and yet we're on the back of 13 consecutive interest rates rises.

Another thing that happens when interest rates go up is rents go up. Ultimately, property speculators who own rental stock end up paying higher repayments because the interest rates are going up on their mortgages, and, therefore, they pass that pain on to the people that are renting from them. That is one of the reasons we should make sure that houses are not considered, as the Australian Labor Party believes they should be, as an asset class but, in fact, are considered as a human right. We're a rich enough and wealthy enough country to ensure that every person in this country has a home, and it is a disgrace that neoliberalism has turned houses from homes into an investment and asset class.

Something else that happens when interest rates go up is they put people out of work. Australians need to understand that, when the Reserve Bank of Australia says that it wants to slow down the economy, what it's actually saying is it wants more Australians to be made unemployed. Interestingly, the Labor Party agrees with that strategy, and Labor's budget from May last year was predicated on more than 100,000 extra Australians being forced out of work. Those are the numbers in Labor's budget.

Something else that happens when interest rates go up is bank profits go up. Surprise, surprise, we have seen the banks over recent weeks announce massive multibillion dollar profits while they are gouging people who have mortgages. So what we need in Australia is a government that is prepared to step up and respond to these massive pressures facing millions of Australians and millions of Australian families. The first thing Labor should do—