Page 869 - Week 06 - Tuesday, 25 July 1989
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
falling as well. Really what started as a tactical interest rate depression manoeuvre has snowballed and got out of control. Mr Keating could well end up being the most lampooned and the most unpopular Treasurer this country has ever had. That depends, regrettably, on the extent of the recession into which we are obviously slowly moving.
Mr Speaker, there are some concrete measures that both the Liberal and Labor parties could take. The first one is: Would they not seek the clearest advice from their own legal advisers, in government and out of government, as to whether the percentage variations on mortgage rates being imposed, at times unilaterally by the banking quarter, are lawful?
We have heard in recent days of the foreign currency loans that were hawked all around this country, including to decent graziers here. We have heard particularly of the activities of several of the banks in the Harden-Murrumburrah area, where large numbers of longstanding family landowners have been forced off the land in the last two years because of disgraceful mismanagement of foreign currency loans and failure to give proper advice on a basis of fiduciary duty to those farmers.
Of course, neither of the major Federal parties has said a peep on those things, as the great landowners, the graziers of this country, the good landowners have been forced off their blocks because of inequitable, one-sided, non-fiduciary, non-disclosed foreign currency loans. That has extended to the offer of finance and the entreaties.
Despite the economic woes that we are in and the level of unemployment, we continue to see widespread advertising for people to take up high-interest personal loans. Those advertisements, done with all the great skills of the advertising world, are inducing people who would otherwise not probably approach the banks for loans to increase their personal loan indebtedness. I do not recall whether my friend Mr Stefaniak referred to that, but it is an important aspect of the overall mortgage crisis; that is, that many young couples have bankcarded and have taken out cocktail loans to get into and meet their Australian dream.
Mr Speaker, what is required is a very statesmanlike approach at the helm, and at the helm of the Federal Opposition parties, to ask the banks to look very carefully at their advertising on personal loan schemes and cocktail loans to those people who are seduced and under the sway of the great Australian dream - the house in the suburbs.
Mr Speaker, nowhere in this budget which has just been presented can I find - my colleague Mr Kaine might be able to find it but I cannot - the abolition of stamp duty for first home buyers. That is a fundamental plank in decreasing the in-costs to get into housing in the ACT, and we do not appear to have that in this budget. That really
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .