Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Can the Prime Minister confirm that this year more than half of mortgage holders in every state will move from a fixed rate to a variable rate, with Victoria hit the hardest, at 61 per cent? Doesn't this mean families will be hit with significantly higher repayments as a result of nine consecutive rate rises on this government's watch?

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the shadow Treasurer for his erasure of history there and the fact that interest rates, of course, started increasing while they were in office.

Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You said you were going to take responsibility.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Hume has asked his question.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is what the shadow finance minister had to say not a long time ago—in fact, last week:

We know the pressures that the international situation and supply chains are putting on inflation and … subsequently interest rates.

So, in the other place, they've actually got an economic spokesperson who understands that supply chains apparently have an impact and understands the international situation. But of course that's consistent with what the Leader of the Opposition said in May:

… nobody wants to see interest rates go up, but it's a reality of a world where there's inflation.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Fisher will cease interjecting.

Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Then the shadow minister himself, the shadow Treasurer, said last September:

It is very clear that the world has changed dramatically even in the past few months …

We've seen a rapid shift to an inflationary environment.

Interest rates are bucking decades of downward trends.

That's what he had to say. He was right then. He's wrong now.