The RBA lifts the cash rate to a 15-year high of 4.6 per cent. Young families wear the extra repayments. Canberra wears the blame.

“RBA throws mortgage holders under the bus.” “Dark day for hardworking Australian families.” “Labor’s spending addiction forces 16th rate hike.” “The definition of madness is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.” Those were among the sharpest lines flying around this week after the Reserve Bank of Australia lifted the cash rate 25 basis points to 4.60 per cent — a 15-year high and the fourth increase this year.

The political fallout landed almost as fast as the extra repayments. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson did not wait. “Labor has failed to get inflation under control,” she said. “Jim Chalmers said rates were coming down. But today, Australians have been hit with another interest rate rise. Another Labor lie.” She called on the Treasurer to resign and offered her party’s Super Pay Boost as the alternative: let households take a quarter of future super contributions as cash for mortgage or rent.

The statement was short, brutal and perfectly timed for a public already convinced the system is rigged against them.

For the Albanese government the immediate consequences are grim and compounding. The cash-rate decision feeds a growing sense that Canberra is totally out of touch, with bureaucrats and politicians pulling in multiple times the average wage while the syndrome “failure to thrive” has now been inflicted on the entire population. All many households can do is endure as they sink ever further into debt.

Spending remains at historically high levels as a share of the economy; tax receipts are heavy; regulation continues to pile up. Voters in the mortgage belt and the outer suburbs feel under siege — over-taxed, over-regulated and now paying more simply to stay in the homes they bought in good faith. That sentiment is no longer confined to the usual suspects. It is spreading through the very seats Labor needs to hold.

The government cannot easily spend its way out of this one. The budget is already stretched, the RBA has signalled it will not look the other way, and another hike or two before Christmas remains possible. Every extra dollar on the mortgage is another reminder that promises of falling rates have not been kept.

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor and One Nation are both circling the same wound. For a government already sliding in the polls and watching Pauline Hanson convert cost-of-living anger into primary-vote support, the decision is not just an economic event. It is rapidly becoming the moment many Australians decide this is the most disliked — if not outright hated — government they can remember.

Gerard Rennick of People First listed high immigration, “excessive government spending, particularly in regard to excessive bureaucracy and renewable subsidies,” underinvestment in infrastructure and an overgrown managerial class as the real drivers.

Rowan Dean’s Sky News critique, widely shared, accused Labor of pumping money into the economy for four years while families get smashed. Debt has smashed through $1 trillion; the interest bill is one of the fastest-growing budget items.

The numbers landing on kitchen tables in the mortgage belt are unforgiving. On an average new owner-occupier loan of around $731,000, today’s move adds roughly $113–$121 a month. Across the four hikes since February that extra cost is already $424–$475 a month, or more than $5,000 a year.

Mortgage holders were already dedicating a near-record share of income to repayments. Another hike or two would push that burden toward levels last seen when rates were 17 per cent in the late 1980s — except this time the rate itself would still be under 7 per cent.

Outstanding mortgage debt has more than doubled since rates were last this high in 2011.

Young families and recent first-home buyers are in the firing line.

Those who used the government’s 5 per cent deposit scheme from October 2025 bought near the peak. Many have already absorbed three prior rises; further increases raise the real prospect of negative equity and being trapped in loans they can no longer service.

Borrowing power for first-home buyers has been slashed by around 9 per cent this year — tens of thousands of dollars off maximum loan size. A couple who could once stretch to $800,000 may now be limited to $720,000.

Thirty-six per cent of 18- to 39-year-olds now say they do not think they will ever own a home.

Mortgage stress already sits at an 18-year high; modelling suggested this week’s move would push more than 1.8 million households into the “at risk” category.

In the outer suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane — the classic mortgage belt — the squeeze is immediate: groceries, fuel and childcare already inflated, now another $100-plus disappearing from the fortnightly budget. Some will cut holidays and extras. Others will consider selling and renting, or moving further out.

Construction is already unprofitable in places; higher rates will not help supply.

Bullock acknowledged the pain but argued that failing to act would embed higher inflation and force even worse medicine later. “Hopefully in those couple of years when we get inflation back down, this will all have been worth it.”

For families living the decision today, that “hopefully” feels like bullshit, the depth of betrayal absolute.