Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor's economic hand grenade is set to explode all because the Prime Minister and Treasurer cannot stop spending your money. Since coming to government, these Labor vandals have increased spending by $150 billion, and the consequences are very simple. Inflation has gone up, and so, too, have interest rates, and who pays the price? Australian households do. I fear for the 3.3 million Australians who have home loans right now. I suspect it won't be long before interest rates go up to 10 per cent. As young Australians and families are already strained to borrow crippling amounts of money, life in Australia is only going to get harder under these new economic wreckers.

Today, the Commonwealth Bank is offering a standard variable home loan for borrowers with small deposits at 7.24 per cent. Repayments on a $700,000 home loan are $1,167 per week over a 25-year term, and interest rates are set to rise again. Add this to the still rising cost of groceries and fuel prices, which are rapidly approaching $3 a litre—if you can find fuel at all—and how is anyone meant to cope? Anyone would think this is a government that takes great delight in torturing Australian households all because Labor can't control their spending, which is driving inflation. If Australia's interest rate does rise to 10 per cent, it will bankrupt the joint.

While Australians are tightening their belts and choosing between food and fuel for the week, government spending is increasing. When Whitlam was dismissed by the Governor-General in 1973, government spending was at 24.3 per cent of GDP, yet this prime minister is at 28 per cent. So, if Whitlam was a vandal at 24.3 per cent—what does this make Albanese and Chalmers?