Kerry Bartlett (Macquarie, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The solution is very simple: the Leader of the Opposition needs to get on the phone to Morris Iemma and the other premiers and push them into reducing the taxes and infrastructure costs on new housing and land packages. Why doesn’t the Leader of the Opposition do that? Because we would not have television cameras filming the Leader of the Opposition on the phone to the state premiers; we only have television cameras filming when there is the sort of stunt that we saw from the Leader of the Opposition yesterday. The answer is simple: put pressure on the state premiers to reduce the cost of those charges, taxes and levies.

Let me come back to the question of interest rates. If on top of all these charges, levies, stamp duties and infrastructure costs we had the sort of interest rate regime that we had when Labor was in office, then we would have something to worry about. If we had interest rates still at the 12.75 per cent they averaged when Labor was in office, we would seriously have something to worry about.

Let us not just think about the past; let us think about the future. Look at the warning from Econtech about the impact of reintroducing Labor’s industrial relations policy. Econtech warn that, within the next couple of years, we would have interest rates going up by 1.4 per cent if Labor’s policies were adopted, if Labor were elected. On a mortgage of only $200,000—which is less than average—that 1.4 per cent interest rate rise would cost homebuyers an extra $233 a month. So homebuyers would pay an extra $233 a month if Labor’s industrial relations policies were introduced and, according to Econtech, we got that 1.4 per cent rise in interest rates. The cause is the state government costs and charges, and the fear is that Labor’s policies would push up inflation and interest rates and create a massive extra burden on homeowners in this country.

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