Nick Sherry (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Banking and Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. We can only assume from that extraordinarily complacent response that the minister does believe that ongoing negative household savings is actually a good thing for the Australian economy. Given that household savings have collapsed and the negative household savings rate is increasing year by year, doesn’t this mean that Australia becomes more and more dependent on importing greater and greater levels of foreign capital to underwrite its trading debt and its national debt, which now stands at a record high of $473 billion? In turn, doesn’t this leave Australia more vulnerable to economic shocks? When is the government going to end its complacent and lazy attitude in respect of the collapse of private household savings in this country?