Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. How has yesterday’s rate cut been received by the Australian community?

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

I thank the member for her question because yesterday’s official rate cut will put almost $600 a year back into the wallet of a family with an average mortgage. For a family on an average new mortgage in New South Wales, the cut will be about $560 a year. In Queensland, it will be more than $520 a year; in Victoria, more than $500; in Western Australia, $510; in South Australia, $400; and in Tasmania, $340. Families have waited a long time for this relief; in fact, they have waited seven years. They have certainly been doing it tough and that is one of the reasons why consumption has taken a hit in the national accounts today, which I was talking about before. But this is modest relief for those families who are labouring under sky-high petrol prices and of course the legacy of 10 interest rate rises in a row courtesy of those opposite, which is why it is so stunning that, in this environment, when families are under so much financial pressure, those opposite could contemplate moving in the Senate to knock off the tax cut that we are effectively giving to workers on average wages when we lift the Medicare surcharge up.

As the Prime Minister was saying before, for two income earners, each on average incomes, earning a combined income of $120,000 a year, the increase in the Medicare levy surcharge will save them $1,200 in tax. That is what it will save and that is what the opposition want to take away in the Senate. That is what those opposite are going to take away from those families on average incomes via their vandalism in the Senate. They will take away twice the rate relief delivered to that family with this one act of vandalism in the Senate. They have no credibility when it comes to the financial pressures on working families and no economic program for the future.