HANSARD EXTRACT
|
Private Members' Business: Housing |
| 11 September 2006 |
Mr
HAYES
(Werriwa) (3.46 p.m.)—This
is a timely motion to come before the House, as it is about time
that we made some attempt to, quite frankly, blow apart this notion
that the government is trying to put around about housing prices and
their connection to land releases. The notion that state and local
governments are the cause of the housing affordability problem is
nothing but a pathetic attempt by the Howard government to run away
from the interest rate promise that it made at the last election. It
is trying to prop up its failing state Liberal Party mates.
Housing affordability and its impact on
realising the great Australian dream of owning your own house are
not issues that should be trivialised by members opposite with the
pathetic partisan politics that are being played out here. It is not
an issue that should be dismissed as being the fault of another
level of government. The aspirations of hardworking Australians in
electorates like mine to homeownership should not be—in a bid to run
away from the interest rate promises made at the last
election—dismissed by the member for Mitchell, the Prime Minister,
the member for Canning and others opposite as being the problem of
state or local governments.
The Prime Minister’s claims that he did not
promise low interest rates at the last election are only being made
in the hope that people will not think that this is another broken
promise. That is wishful thinking. The Prime Minister knows that
those who went to the ballot box and voted for him did so in the
belief that they were voting for low interest rates. Even the
Reserve Bank governor knows that the government deliberately misled
people about interest rates at the last election. Now, in a
desperate bid to distance himself from the promise, the Prime
Minister starts saying that housing affordability is a product of
supply and demand and that more land should be released. With
respect, the Prime Minister’s plan for improving housing
affordability will lower housing prices by slashing the value of
everybody else’s property. What is worse, outer metropolitan areas
that already face declining values will carry a disproportionate
burden.
The reason house prices have fallen is rising
interest rates. The reason 2,189 repossessions have occurred in
New
South Wales since 2002 is rising interest rates. The reason why
property prices in my electorate of Werriwa have fallen—according to
the Sydney Morning Herald—by between one per cent and 18 per
cent over the last 12 months is rising interest rates. The member
for
Mitchell would have done well to speak to the member
for
Macarthur,
Pat
Farmer, about the impact of rising interest rates. Pat Farmer has
had some personal experience in this regard. He had plenty to say
last week before he was ejected from the chamber on that very point
but is silent today. Housing prices have fallen because of rising
interest rates and interest rates have risen because of the policies
of this government.
The government trots out the comparison of
current interest rate levels with those of the Keating government.
We all know that the headline mortgage rate is not the issue. Sure,
the number might have been higher back in the Keating days, but an
honest examination must also take into account the impact of
mortgage repayments on the family budget—that is the bottom line.
The real issue is how much of your take-home pay is needed to
service your mortgage, and under this government that has hit record
highs. Under this government, 9.1 per cent of the take-home pay of
Australian households is required to service the mortgage. At the
peak of interest rates under the Keating government, household
commitment to servicing mortgages was 6.1 per cent of their income.
That is the real situation and the government knows it and cannot
avoid it.
Everyone knows that we are experiencing
problems with housing affordability because of the incremental
impact of interest rate rises overseen by this government. The front
page of yesterday’s Sun Herald said, ‘Homes lost as interest
rates bite.’ Low interest rates mean nothing if you are using a
record proportion of your wage to pay off the mortgage.
Interjection
The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr
Hatton)—Order!
The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is
therefore adjourned and will be made an order of the day for the
next sitting.
Return
to Speeches Menu.
