2 December 2008

Mr BURKE—I thank the shadow minister for his question. The government continues to say, as we have always said, that just as we expect interest rate cuts to be passed on as soon as possible to residential customers, so too do we have that expectation for Australia’s farmers and Australia’s small businesses. The comments quoted were made by me at a summit held on a Friday when I had a high expectation that we would begin to see those cuts coming through. Most of the banks then went ahead with cuts on the Monday following that Friday, but the 75-basis points cut, which happened subsequently, has largely not been passed on at all to Australia’s farmers. When I addressed the Farm Writers Association, only last Friday, I again pressed the expectation and continue to make the expectation of the government clear to the banks that just as we expect residential customers to receive the benefits for cash based products—obviously if it is a market based product then it is not based on the Reserve Bank cash rate—so too do we expect the same for Australia’s farmers.