Standard & Poor’s has reaffirmed Australia’s AAA sovereign rating and maintained its negative outlook. However the agency says it could lower the rating within the next two years if it lost confidence that the budget will revert into surplus by the early 2020s. It adds that ratings could also come under pressure if the unsustainable credit expansion were to continue, and that a stabilization of the ratings would require a meaningful moderation of the credit and house price boom.
This tells you that now the Government is really under pressure to do something about housing.
And also part of the bank levy is
-Punish the banks for the fact that they placed Australia in a more precarious position
-The Government knows that the banks will pass on through the levy (calculated in +0.2%pa if applied to all loans) and it is happy about it as it cools the market.
investorpolitico 