Page 1787 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 5 May 2010
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Whilst we are enjoying economic prosperity, our reliance on some inherently unsustainable industries and revenues must be addressed. We have a great opportunity to address the skills shortage and invest in green jobs so that our city can become more sustainable.
MR HANSON (Molonglo) (3.59): It is with great pleasure that I rise to support Mr Seselja’s amendment. I would like to focus briefly on the issue of interest rates. That is very topical, given the fact that yesterday there was an interest rate increase of 25 basis points. The impact of that on families should not be understated. We have now seen six interest rate rises under the Rudd Labor government.
Given the inflationary pressures and the spending that we have seen on stimulus—the reckless spending we have seen from the Rudd government on stimulus—we can only anticipate that for families who are already struggling to pay off their mortgages there will be more pain to come in the form of interest rates.
If we look at the increases that have occurred, there is an increase of about $300 a month on the cost of an average mortgage of about $300,000. If you think about a young family that has moved into their first home, it is difficult to find a house in Canberra where your mortgage is less than $300,000 if it is your first home. That is an annual increase in your payments of $3,600. If you put that into the context of many of the other charges that have gone up here in the ACT community—be it rates, parking or the massive increase that we know is coming in our water bills, particularly after 2013, after the building of the Cotter Dam—it is just another nail in the coffin for young people and it is why we see so many in the Canberra community saying that they simply cannot afford to buy a home.
I raise this although it is a federal issue. I do understand that, but the Chief Minister and the Labor Party more generally were very quick to criticise John Howard whenever an interest rate increase occurred. Here we have had deafening silence from the ACT Labor government every time there has been a Rudd Labor government increase. Obviously, it is by the Reserve Bank, but the responsibility, in many ways, is from the mismanagement of the federal economy. We have had deafening silence. Rather than Jon Stanhope standing up for the Canberra community and saying, “This is unacceptable; we have got to do everything in our power to look at whether we should be winding back some of the inflation pressures, particularly the stimulus spending,” we have seen him saying, “No; we want more of that.”
That is a real shame. He really should be standing up for Canberrans. He should be standing up for those young families with a mortgage. But he is not. He is just letting them spend that extra $3,600 a year on their mortgages, which they simply cannot afford, whilst, on the other hand, putting up rates—putting up fees and charges across the board.
When you see these fees and charges go up in the budget, it might look as though they are insignificant in themselves. Individually, they are probably not a huge amount. It might only be a dollar or two here for parking. The problem is the incremental effect. When you add that to the rates and the volume of the other fees and charges going up
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