Margaret Lomas

Thank you for having me.

It is a little bit of a mess at the moment.

First of all, I think the critical error that the Reserve Bank made was to almost issue a promise about 12 months ago that rates were going to remain very low and probably there would be no rate rises until at least 2024.

And as a result of that, people rushed in and got their mortgages thinking that they'd remain in the same position as they are.

And of course, that's now not happening.

And we're seeing that the Reserve Bank has had to necessarily begin to raise that cash rate.

So we have a situation now where we have a significant number of people who, for the first time, they've gotten a mortgage in an interest rate environment that they've known before.

No other kind of rate environment like that.

So there's an expectation that interest rates would remain low.

These people have never been in the situation where interest rates have been high.

Those people who got their mortgages when the rates were very low, who really only just qualified for that loan, they are now going to be the ones who feel the heat.

What's being lost in all of this is although mortgages are going up,

on a landscape where we actually have a lot of other inflationary pressures.

So we're seeing power go up.

We're seeing petrol go up.

As we all know, the legendary lettuce has gone up.

So we have all of these other pressures or price pressures around us.

And the last thing people needed then was to also have that interest rate rise.

When they were approved for their loan, the bank estimated they could afford that interest rate rise.

But the banks weren't fact