Jim Chalmers cuts a lean figure in his Parliament House office, and, unusually for a man of such apparently limitless energy, a weary one.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s days out from the most consequential Labor budget in a generation, but I open with a remark about how he recently told a journalist that he had shed 17 kilograms \u2013 you can see it in his face.<\/p>\n
\u201cI basically just, I woke up after Christmas and just thought, this is the year I\u2019m going to get on top of it,\u201d Chalmers tells Guardian Australia, adding it was mostly about cutting out the late-night work take-away food.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people assume wrongly that it was the jab,\u201d he volunteers, sensing the unasked follow-up question. \u201cAnd no judgement at all about that,\u201d he shrugs; people talk, and they may as well have the facts.<\/p>\n
Our federal treasurer sets himself a punishing pace, and we are down to a final sprint to Tuesday at 7.30pm when he steps up to address the parliament and the Australian people.<\/p>\n
For all the bold talk, the approach to reform under Anthony Albanese\u2019s government has been incremental.<\/p>\n
Small but meaningful steps to tweak superannuation concessions for the very wealthiest. Or, famously, taking \u201cbite-sized chunks\u201d with tax reform that are easy for the public to digest.<\/p>\n
This budget will be different, Chalmers reckons.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is is the most ambitious budget of the five that I\u2019ve handed down, also the most responsible and [with] the highest degree of difficulty,\u201d he says \u2013 and not for the first time.<\/p>\n
The US-Israel war on Iran<\/a> has threatened to overshadow and derail Labor\u2019s second-term agenda, sending fuel prices through the roof in March.<\/p>\n The panicked buying that left petrol stations empty has passed, and the government\u2019s announcement this week of a $10bn plan to expand the nation\u2019s skinny fuel reserves passed with relatively little fan fare.<\/p>\n But that doesn\u2019t mean the news cycle isn\u2019t dominated by the swings between hope and despair about a peace deal that will open the strait of Hormuz. Donald Trump casts a long shadow over the world.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery day there\u2019s been substantial, substantial volatility in the global oil price. And so in lots of ways, we\u2019re hostage to decisions taken in [Washington] DC and Tehran,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n A reformist legacy at stake<\/p>\n The Albanese government is keen to sell its reformist agenda amid criticism that it risks wasting a thumping parliamentary majority<\/a> at a time when the public appears desperate for change, if unwilling to pay for it.<\/p>\n There is \u201ca real urgency for economic reform\u201d that has to be responded to, despite the \u201crollercoaster\u201d of news from the Middle East. After all, it seems like we have entered an era of almost perpetual crisis, he says.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd that has made it a much more difficult budget to put together. But the thing that I\u2019m really proud of is we haven\u2019t used those international developments as an excuse not to do some of the bigger, harder reforms in the budget.\u201d<\/p>\n