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

My question is to Senator Minchin, representing the Treasurer. I again refer the minister to the Treasurer’s recent false assurances that Australian financial institutions would be unaffected by the US subprime mortgage meltdown. Is the minister aware that the Commonwealth Bank chief executive, Mr Ralph Norris, has said that the subprime crisis may cause the bank to put up its interest rates again, even if the Reserve Bank did not lift official rates, and that rates on credit cards and other products could move even higher?

What would be the impact of interest rates going up, yet again, on working families, who already pay $430 a month more on home loan repayments because of the nine hikes in a row? Doesn’t this illustrate, yet again, that the recent promise by the Howard government, that it would ‘keep interest rates at record lows’, was broken in respect of families?