Page 2003 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 6 May 2009
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But the evidence did not back up what they were saying. The evidence said, “There are real concerns.” And they were struggling. The 29 August email which says there is political pressure really gets to the heart of it, does it not? It gets to the heart of it. We had the departments running around, saying, “We must find a lender.” The government knew that there were serious concerns. When they were asked about it, they denied it. We see it go on.
We can give the benefit of the doubt, perhaps, for this one. But we have seen the attitude, in fact, of Jon Stanhope to participants under the land rent scheme where he refers to them, I think quite offensively, as “these people”. He sees them as these victims. He portrays them as victims. He said, as reported in the Hansard of 24 February 2009:
The facts are that nowhere in Australia will lending institutions make loans for mortgages significant enough to allow a household with an income of less than $75,000—
for a mortgage of $300,000. That is not true. We have, in fact, got correspondence to that effect. In fact, the government has correspondence to that effect. We had an email from a land rent participant on 25 November 2008:
The Commonwealth Bank declined to lend $250,000 under the land rent scheme but would be prepared to lend me $400,000 for a traditional loan. The problem is not my capacity to repay the loan but the financial institutions are rejecting the entire scheme based on the perceived security of the loan.
So even his further defence that he is just helping out these poor defenceless people who could not otherwise get finance is wrong. It is wrong. It is the scheme that is the problem. The scheme is why these people are not getting it. It is not the global financial crisis; the concerns go back to 2004. From the moment it was passed into law, we had a queue of individuals who wanted to sign up for the scheme, who were looking for finance and were not able to get it. We had a queue of financial institutions saying they had serious concerns, even if some were prepared to look at it, even if some considered supporting it in principle.
We have a trail of documents. We see it here again. On the same day, 24 February 2009, Jon Stanhope said:
But in relation to the interest of banks and lending institutions, it has been strong.
On 21 October 2008, prior to that, there was an email from a mortgage broker regarding the land rent:
I can’t locate any lenders who would use the property as security.
Another one was:
I have visited a mortgage broker and he advised me no bank is participating in this scheme.
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