Page 3267 - Week 11 - Thursday, 13 September 1990
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ADJOURNMENT
MR SPEAKER: It being 4.30 pm, I propose the question:
That the Assembly do now adjourn.
Mr Collaery: Mr Speaker, I require the question to be put forthwith without debate.
Question resolved in the negative.
APPROPRIATION BILL 1990-91
Debate resumed.
MR STEVENSON (4.30): Mr Speaker, I think we would all agree that all Australians, including Canberrans, are under tremendous economic pressure. Put simply, the economy is a mess. It does not particularly matter which government it is - which government comes in or goes out - the problems remain. We sink deeper and deeper into the mire of debt.
In Australia businesses go bankrupt at the rate of one every two minutes and eleven seconds. Well, that was a little while ago; it might be more than that now. Nearly all our problems stem from a lack of money. We have money problems. There is only one way we are going to get out of the problems that we have and that is to look exactly at what is happening with money - with the control of money and with the subsequent control of people's businesses and every other aspect of our lives.
I want to look at where exactly does money come from. If somebody borrows $100,000 from a bank and you ask people where the bank gets the money to loan that $100,000, most people will say that it gets it from other depositors. That is not true. This idea that we have about how the economy works is equivalent to thinking that the earth is flat. It is interesting that banks cannot lend depositors' money because it is a bank liability and they cannot lend their liabilities.
It will be surprising to people here that banks create money out of thin air. You say, "How do they do that?". Well, it is very easy: they take a pen, or some similar instrument to inscribe something on to a sheet of paper or a computer and at that time extra money is created. At that time new money that did not previously exist comes into existence. The cost for the bankers of creating that money is approximately two-thirds of one per cent. For that two-thirds of one per cent cost they charge people somewhere between 10 and 40 per cent interest rates, depending on whether it is done through some of the finance companies or through other banks.
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