Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to his assertion that the record proportion of household incomes consumed by interest repayments today is irrelevant because the value of their assets is greater. Is the Prime Minister aware that official RBA figures show that household debt has consistently outpaced growth in housing assets? Is the Prime Minister aware that housing debt-to-asset ratios have increased from 10 per cent in 1989 to more than 25 per cent today?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not regard household debt as ‘irrelevant’; I have never said that at all. What I have said is that what is highly relevant in the current debate is a comparison of the interest rate burdens of two periods. If you take the average mortgage now, the truth is that, whereas the average mortgage now attracts an interest payment of $1,430 a month, if you applied the average of the Hawke-Keating years, that figure would climb to $2,300 a month. If you climbed the dizzy heights of 17 per cent, which people in this country still bitterly remember, it would be $3,100 a month. I think those figures are highly relevant.