1. 2023
  2. In focus: Australian interest rates over the last four and a half decades

How're the Nervous Nellies?

Geoff Pryor
The Canberra Times

Published in 1989.

Okay, Boomer, interest rates were much higher back in your day. Geoff Pryor shows then Treasurer Paul Keating in the racing driver’s seat and then Finance Minister Peter Walsh navigating, with Keating deriding nervous backbenchers. To slow things down, mortgage interest rates were raised as high as 17 per cent – briefly – and by the end of 1990 the economy had been tipped into a recession which, in a show of bravado, Keating claimed was ‘the recession we had to have’.

Paul Keating drives a racecar with 17% on the bonnet, and asks 'How're the nervous nellies?' referring to the 'back benchers' looking distressed on the back seat.