Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Interest rates, as we all know, are up. I want to say to people, very clearly, don't blame the RBA for putting interest rates up. Blame Labor and the government for creating the circumstances that left the RBA with nowhere else to go other than to put interest rates up. We know that if you're a mortgage holder, more of your money is now going into the profits of the big banks. We know that if you're renting, you know exactly what comes next, because higher interest rates flow straight into higher rents. We've seen this story before. It shouldn't be ordinary Australians carrying the pain because Labor has refused to take on the corporate price gougers right across the economy and because Labor's policies have turbocharged the housing crisis.

The governor of the Reserve Bank singled out credit growth as one of the things that the RBA was extremely concerned about. We know that, since Labor put in place their five per cent deposit scheme, credit growth for housing speculators has gone through the roof—it's growing at record rates—whereas credit growth for owner-occupiers—people who want to borrow to fund the purchase of their own home—is absolutely flat. It is stagnant.

Labor has turbocharged housing demand and that demand is being driven by property speculators, who are flooding back into the market. They're supported by the mindbogglingly massive taxpayer subsidies that Labor offers them, in particular in the form of the capital gains tax discount—the most unfair tax break on the books in this country. Sums in the tens of billions of dollars a year are handed over by the Labor Party to help people who are buying their 50th, their 100th or their 500th investment property to outbid renters who are trying to buy their first home.

Massive property speculator tax breaks are turbocharging housing prices. Labor's culpability is clear. On corporate price gouging, Labor's culpability is just as clear. Right across the economy—whether it's the banks, whether it's airlines, whether it's insurance companies—we are seeing corporate price gouging making bank off ordinary Australians, because this Labor government is refusing to act.