Anthony Albanese says the global energy crisis will not weaken Labor’s ambitions for urgent economic reforms, promising the May budget will fight inflation and deliver for Australians who feel the system no longer works for them.
In a major address as the war in Iran wreaks havoc with the Australian economy, the prime minister will tell the National Press Club in Canberra on Thursday that the country was vulnerable before the current crisis and must be better prepared for future international shocks.
“There is no security in maintaining a status quo that doesn’t work for people,” Albanese is expected to say, as laid out in a preview of the speech.
“For our government, international uncertainty is not an excuse to delay, or hold back reform. It is the reason we must press ahead.”
Announcing $1bn in new interest-free loans for businesses hit the hardest by fuel shortages and collapsing consumer confidence, Albanese will pledge to do everything possible to protect Australian businesses and households from the fallout.
The new loans will be targeted at the transport and freight sectors, as well as fuel and fertiliser producers.
Under the plan, loans financing will begin to flow by the middle of April.
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“These firms are not just being affected by this crisis, they are essential to Australia getting through this crisis,” Albanese will say.
“So our government will extend their credit to help them, and the farmers and producers who rely on these supply chains, to weather the storm.
“This is just another way we are acting to get ahead of issues.”
Australian PM says ‘next few months may not be easy’ in rare address to the nation – video
The speech will be made a day after his address to the nation on Wednesday night, in which the prime minister encouraged Australians to play their part in the crisis, including by saving fuel for the areas and industries that needed it most.
He said the government would work to bring the price of fuel down, to make more fuel onshore and shore up struggling international supply chains.
Before the Easter long weekend and with fuel shortages continuing around the country, Albanese will outline the government’s position on the US and Israel’s war and the disruption caused by Iran’s moves to block oil supplies moving through the strait of Hormuz.
He will promise careful planning but concedes no government could fully eliminate the pressures the crisis will impose.
“But we can be a buffer against the worst of it. A shock absorber, in a time of global shocks.”
Albanese has distanced himself from the US president, Donald Trump, in recent days, arguing the original objectives of the war had largely been met and lasting regime change would be impossible without American troops on the ground in Iran.
As Pauline Hanson’s One Nation surges in opinion polls, Albanese says nostalgia for bygone eras won’t protect families and businesses, and warns against importing solutions from overseas.
“Because we will not generate the same prosperity or create the same opportunities if we continue to rely on an economic model designed in a different time and built for a more predictable world,” he will say.
“Nor can we go back to those days.
“Any party or leader who promises otherwise, anyone who pretends that the solution to housing or jobs or wages or health is to somehow recreate the 1950s or 60s, or whatever time they imagine everything was hunky dory, is simply not being fair dinkum.”
Albanese is also expected to talk up Labor’s Future Made in Australia policy plans and the benefit of recent international deals on critical minerals and trade with the European Union.