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Q: Hundreds of thousands of Australians may go into mortgage stress if the Reserve Bank increases rates tomorrow. If that happens, will you take personal responsibility for the financial pain they may feel?
Scott Morrison:
Explain to me the numbers. You said hundreds of thousands of people will go into mortgage stress… What are these reports?
Q: There are reports in the paper today that if mortgage rates go up then it pressures on it because they have maxed out their mortgages. Will you take responsibility if rates go up?
Morrison:
When I became Prime Minister the cash rate was 1.5%. It is 0.5%. We are talking about the average discount of around 3.6 but many people will be on a lower mortgages than that.
We have got people that have moved from 20% fixed rates to 40% fixed rates, and you know what that tells me? Australians know what is going on.
They know there are pressures that are coming from outside of Australia on interest rates. I mean, 0.1 has been an historically unconventionally low rates and it has been there since November of 2020.
So, these rates are very low, and Australians know that there is pressure on at these rates and they know that over time, how we manage the economy, how we manage the Government’s finances will impact, potentially, and what happens to rates, and they could go higher than they might otherwise go.
That is why economic management and financial management as a government is going to play a key role in just how much more people are going to pay, and so the bank will decide.
The Reserve Bank – the independent Reserve Bank – should rightly decide where cash rates are set.
They are at historic lows at the moment at 0.1%, but what I do commend the Australian people for – they have in making the choices to move to fixed rates to ensure that they can get ahead of that mortgage and to be paying down and ensuring that they have been building up buffers.
I mean, you can also see on household balance sheets hundreds of billions of dollars on household balance sheets as Australians have been insulating themselves over the course of the pandemic to deal with these shocks that they knew would be coming, and so, my commendation to the Australian people is they have been following the same a prudent financial management that the Government has, and that has built up protections, and that is what we have been doing.
Could you imagine how much harder it would be to pay a mortgage if we had not have JobKeeper and 700,000 people were out of a job, or we did not do the cash flow boost which would have seen small businesses collapsing all around the country, all the support we are providing to first homeowners to get in and own their home in the first place?
I mean, we have been taking steps to strengthen the resilience of our and the resilience of household family balance sheets and a small business balance sheets so they can deal and whether with the challenges that we are going to face.
Q: If you are re-elected will you commit to an Indigenous Voice referendum in the next term of parliament?
Scott Morrison:
I have answered that. It is not a referendum on the voice in our policy so why would I be doing that?
Q: Five years ago you said the Victorian government doing a similar government scheme was a good idea, so what has changed?
Scott Morrison:
I think I have made it … There is a scheme like this in Western Australia. There is a scheme like this in South Australia and the take-up of the schemes are very limited and one of the reasons for that is people want to own their own home. They don’t want the government to own their home. If people want to go into a shared equity mortgage, those products have been around for a long time.
The private sector provides those products and what I was referring to in 2011, I think it was, was in the middle of a global financial crisis when there was a squeeze on credit so I was proffering sensible interventions that would enable the private sector to give people more choices.
If people want to take the choices up, that is up to them, but in terms of the federal government effectively becoming an owner of your home – and there are questions about this. So, what happens if you decide to renovate your home? I mean, what Labor have been very clear about is that they have a share in your home, and so, as your home value increases, they are making money off you.
So, as your home price goes up, your home value goes up, they are taking a cut, and so you have to pay the government back on their equity and with the capital appreciation. I mean, they are basically riding on your decision to buy your own home and it is for 10,000 people, and so you will be going along to an auction, and there will be someone who is bidding against you, and they will be bidding with the government and you will be bidding on your own, so, I don’t think Labor have thought these things through*.
We have seen these things. We have seen their health policies that were not costed and other policies in this campaign full apart after about 24 hours. The aged care policy fell apart after 24 hours of their budget in reply.
The problem with Labor – this is what happens when you have not done budgets and you have not held a financial portfolio like Mr Albanese – you don’t know how these pieces go together and you don’t think them through and that is too big of a risk for Australians to be facing with the many pressures that are on interest rates, and cost of living, and it really is a choice about who do you think will be able to better manage those very significant pressures in the years ahead? A government that has taken us through the worst crisis we have seen in a three generations or a Labor party that does not know how to manage money?
*The same could be said of the government’s first home owner loan guarantee.
Q: Just on that, you had a similar idea of a government or a private equity scheme in 2008. What has changed between now and then for you to be slamming Labor’s policy?
Scott Morrison:
I had no plan for the government to own people’s homes. Shared equity schemes have been around for a long time and some people choose to do them in the private sector. During the global – global financial crisis there was a squeeze and there was a focus on a Bendigo Bank because of the lack of liquidity in the debt market that was enabling them to provide the products they wanted to provide and the people by providing and seeking. So, that was a very different set of issues.
‘It’s always hard’ to buy a first home says Scott Morrison
Given house prices, is the “great Australian dream” of owning your own home dead?
Scott Morrison:
Absolutely not. Absolutely not. It is hard to own your first home but last year, 164,000 Australians did.
They bought their first home. Now, when Labor was last in office. In the last year, there were 91,300 Australians who bought their first home, and under our government, and to be home guarantee scheme, under the HomeBuilder scheme, under the First Home Super Saver Scheme, two of those schemes Labor opposed.
We have ensured that 200,000 Australians over the last three years have been able to get into their first home, or into their own home, at a time when it has been hard to do so. So, no.
About two-thirds or thereabouts, it moves around, about two-thirds of Australians either own their home outright or paying it off through their mortgage. It is always hard.
If you talk to the people I was talking to before, they were talking about when they bought their first home. It has always been hard and it is hard particularly today but what the figures show is that 164,000 Australians last year getting into their first home – that is up almost 70,000 on what Labor was achieving when they were in office, and it is – I’d say – even harder now than it was then, but because of the targeted support and be well-designed policies that we have put in place we have been able to help them do it, and we have done it in a way where they own their own home.
Labor has a plan where they want the government to own your home, it’s not only that, you are last in line when it comes to your home. The bank has the first call over it. The government has the second call over it, and you come last when it comes to your own home.
See, when you design these policies you need to understand the housing market and you need to understand the economy, and you need to understand the banking and financial system and that is how you can run a plan and programs as we have had that has seen over 300,000 Australians get into their own home – not one that the government owns.
Scott Morrison has previously supported schemes like this, including when Victoria floated it five years ago.
Scott Morrison is now doing that thing where he states things as if they are facts.
He says Labor “does not have an economic plan”. Labor announced its economic policy last week.
Scott Morrison:
There is not a lot we can do about things that are happening overseas that are impacting our economy, but these practical things we’re doing as a government makes those cost living pressures just a bit more able to be dealt with, whether it is in tax relief, whether it is direct support to those on fixed incomes and pensions or easing the burden of the cost of medications and the eligibility for the commonwealth seniors health card.
This is a permanent change.
It is indexed and it means that Australians, and more Australians, will continue to get access to the commonwealth seniors health card. It differs by state.
There are different additional concessions that are provided, and in some states – they provide travel discounts on public transport. Some, you can even get a cheaper fishing license. So, these are the additional things that many other states provide. So, I think it is a good change. It is a sensible change. It is an affordable change, but it recognises that self-funded retirees have worked hard.
They have saved for their retirement. They want that independence they have worked hard for and this will help 50,000 more Australians be able to have access to the certainty of the healthcare that they wish to have as they move into their senior [years] and they want that independence they have worked hard for and this will help 50,000 more Australians be able to have access to the certainty of the healthcare that they wish to.
Scott Morrison is now talking about what the government has done for cost of living:
Our economic plan is all about Australians realising their aspirations. And we do want to make life just that bit easier wherever we can.
We have already announced our cost of living support in the budget, whether it is the halving of the petrol tax, the support of $250 that has gone to pensioners and many who I spoke to today have received that $250 this week.
The $420 that many who are living in housing estates that are being built around here, that $420 that they will be able to keep on their own earnings through additional tax relief will help them.
In the budget we also announced a major change to the safety net. That particularly applied to those who are on the commonwealth seniors health card, that would see the number of scripts brought from 48 to 36, 12 less, for them to be able to get access to the safety net that we provide under the PBS. We want to make things that little bit easier for self-funded retirees as well and extend the access of the commonwealth seniors health card. This is not the first time we have done this. We did this as a government in 2014.
Scott Morrison press conference
The PM has finished his latest game of pool for the cameras and he is now holding his press conference and he is talking… “strong economy”.
A strong economy enables not only our national plans to be realised but it enables the local plans we have right across the country to be realised. Australians know that for their aspirations to be realised, and those aspirations are many, I talk about them on the weekend, those aspirations are to raise your kids, to buy a home, to say for your retirement.
This is a major achievement in life. All of these are supported, underwritten, by living in a country that has a strong economy and a government that knows how to manage money.
The services that you rely on to be guaranteed and they can give you that confidence and make people just that little bit less anxious, particularly as they are growing older in their years.
We are facing a lot of pressures on our economy, there are a lot of moving parts, the impact of the war in Europe, the lagging effects of the pandemic and how it has disrupted economy is all around the world.
The continuing impacts of Covid itself in countries like China, which is seeing supply lives disrupted which adds to costs. The difficulties of shipping all around the world, even the shortage of pallets for putting goods on that I moved around the country.
All of these things are impacting on prices and the cost of living. So as we go into this next decade, how a country manages its economy, how a government manages its finances is going to have a big impact on the citizens of our country.
National Covid summary
Here are the latest coronavirus numbers from around Australia today, as the country records at least 13 deaths from Covid-19:
ACT
- Deaths: 1
- Cases: 798
- In hospital: 66 (with 2 people in ICU)
NSW
- Deaths: 5
- Cases: 7,723
- In hospital: 1,656 (with 72 people in ICU)
Queensland
- Deaths: 0
- Cases: 4,647
- In hospital: 453 (with 11 people in ICU)
South Australia
- Deaths: 3
- Cases: 3,143
- In hospital: 257 (with 15 people in ICU)
Tasmania
- Deaths: 3
- Cases: 900
- In hospital: 46 (with 2 people in ICU)
Victoria
- Deaths: 1
- Cases: 8,109
- In hospital: 456 (with 4 people in ICU)
Western Australia
- Deaths: 0
- Cases: 5,847
- In hospital: 240 (with 6 people in ICU)
Scott Morrison is now playing pool in front of senior’s at the Geelong ‘lifestyle’ village he is holding his press conference at.
The ABC camera operator has zoomed in on the PM’s cup of tea. It’s still three-quarters full.
We also saw a close-up of his teeth. Seems the media pack is hoping there might be some movement soon…
Scott Morrison is having a cup of tea with a group of seniors in front of the cameras, so I imagine his press conference will be held very soon.
CWA looks to a new generation at 100
The Country Womens’ Association is turning 100.
AAP reports:
Surfer Layne Beachley knows the Country Women’s Association and the sporting world celebrate success a little differently.
“No one is going to put you on a podium in a bikini and spray you down with champagne,” Beachley joked at the CWA conference in Sydney on Monday.
“But celebration is what motivated me. May you find your ways to celebrate and may it involve a lot of champagne, preferably in your mouth and not on your face.”
In its 100th year, the NSW CWA has reason to revel.
The organisation, with the core value of improving the lives of women and children in rural areas, has spent recent years supporting communities through drought, fires, floods, a mouse plague and the pandemic.
Last week, it donated $500,000 to flood victims for household items, food hampers, and family outreach services, particularly for women experiencing domestic violence.
At its centenary conference this week, the association is looking to the future and how it can appeal to a new generation of rural women.
Members will vote on whether to advocate for climate change action, funding for women’s refuges, improved sex education in schools, better endometriosis treatment, and greater access to women’s healthcare in rural areas.
Beachley, a seven-time world champion surfer, opened the conference, describing how the highs and lows of a career in a male-dominated sport inspired her to elevate other women.
“Our actions today will echo beyond our time,” she said.
“Be willing to plant a seed, water that seed, and grow a tree that you may never have the opportunity to sit under.”
The march ahead of the march:
Labor commits to extra healthcare benefits for seniors
Labor has officially announced it will match the Coalition’s senior card health announcement:
Labor will widen eligibility for the commonwealth seniors health card, in line with the government’s announcement today.
We’re not interested in playing politics when we see a good idea.
Unlike the Morrison government, we can be trusted to deliver on our announcements for older Australians and pensioners.
The Liberals have a habit of making promises to pensioners at election time but cutting support at budget time.
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