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Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release  30th of April 2008

Craig Isherwood, National Secretary
PO Box 376, COBURG, VIC, 3058
Phone: 03 9354 0544 Fax: 03 9354 0166
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://cec.cecaust.com.au
 

Homeowners and Bank Protection Bill urgent:

Debt-trapped families squeezed out

Average house prices in Melbourne have plunged 8.4 per cent, or $40,000 since January, a collapse that is echoed nationwide, and which is leaving thousands of families debt-trapped—owing more on their mortgages than their homes are now worth.

And the International Monetary Fund’s latest World Economic Outlook report warns that it is about to get worse, forecasting a 25 per cent or more housing price crash in Australia.

Most Australian households are being squeezed between this reality, and hyperinflating grocery, fuel and utility prices, together with yet another interest rate rise by most major banks.

The official response to this crisis has been callous disregard: Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s 2020 Summit effectively ignored it, while the Reserve Bank of Australia’s Deputy Governor Ric Battellino justified interest rate rises to a Senate inquiry last week, by saying that mortgage stress measures are exaggerated, because Australians can afford to pay more on their mortgages!

(The same week, the RBA infused $1.1 billion into the Australian banking system to prop up one or more banks, by paying full value for actually worthless residential mortgage backed securities—paper that the banks themselves have been unable to trade for months.)

Whilst Battellino tries to blame a previous “savings glut” (which obliged banks to lend more) for asset-price inflation, the reality is that the housing bubble was created as a means for banks to further expand an otherwise collapsing debt bubble.

And so it follows that increasing interest rates have nothing to do with combating inflation (which only arises when money is created for unproductive or speculative purposes), but rather to prop up bankrupt banks. According to the just-released JPMorgan/Fujitsu housing study, banks have lost at least half of their profit margin for mortgage lending.

To avert a national economic catastrophe, it is urgent that the Government takes charge of this crisis and stops home foreclosures, strips the RBA of its “independence”, and re-regulates the financial system.

These are the measures mandated by the world’s leading economic forecaster, American physical economist Lyndon LaRouche, in his Homeowners and Bank Protection Act and Three Steps to Survival. Join the CEC’s rapidly expanding campaign to pass the Homeowners and Bank Protection Bill (HBPB) to ban all mortgage foreclosures in Australia immediately!

Click here to receive a mailed hard copy of the March/April New Citizen which documents the HBPB campaign in Australia.


Click on a state to see an enlarged map showing which councils have supported the
Homeowners and Bank Protection Bill 2008

NSW     NT     QLD     SA     TAS     VIC     WA

What You Must Do
  • Contact your local councillor and demand that both he or she and the council as a whole endorse the HBPB resolution. The same with your State and Federal MP’s. And mobilise everyone you know to also contact these officials, in person wherever possible.
  • Order as many copies of this newspaper as you can, to get around your neighbourhood, and to local churches, welfare and community groups who would be particularly concerned. Call us on 1800-636-432 and we will send you bulk copies.
  • Get signatures on the HBPB petition. It is available from the CEC, or you can download it from our website: www.cecaust.com.au
  • Write letters to the editor about the HBPB and raise it on talkback radio.
  • Watch the special Firewall DVD with the full background behind the HBPB, and the ongoing global financial crash.
  • Contribute money and/or your time to help us organise.


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