Source: Prime Minister of Australia
begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and I pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging.
I acknowledge all my wonderful colleagues here with us today.
This is a testing time for our nation.
The war in the Middle East has caused the biggest increase in petrol and diesel prices, in history.
Australia is not an active participant in this war.
We did express support for the original objectives: preventing Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon.
And degrading its capacity to endanger its neighbours.
Despite its indiscriminate attacks across the region, Iran’s air force is degraded.
Its navy is degraded, its military-industrial base is degraded and so too is its capacity to launch missiles.
That is a good thing.
And now those objectives have been realised, it is not clear what more needs to be achieved – or what the endpoint looks like.
What is clear is that the longer this war goes on, the more significant the impact on the global economy will be.
Not just the price of fuel, but everything that relies upon fuel. Literally everything that moves.
We started seeing those price spikes the day that the Strait of Hormuz closed.
And we will still be dealing with these challenges even after it is open.
This war may be on the other side of the world but it’s causing real pain here, for farmers, truckies, small businesses and families.
Our Government understands this and we are acting on it.
While we cannot control when this conflict in the Middle East will end.
We can determine how we respond here in Australia.
And we can decide how we work together, to help each other through.
We can choose what we build together, so we come out of this stronger, more self-reliant and more resilient.
That is what I want to focus on today.
The immediate actions we are taking to secure our fuel supply and to shield our economy.
The preparations we are undertaking, as this situation evolves.
And, every bit as importantly, the changes we need to make to prepare our economy for the future.
We do not need to wait for this global crisis to be over, to learn its lessons.
We can and we must act now.
To keep jobs here and create new ones.
To strengthen our economic sovereignty, our energy security and our national resilience.
To make the most of our resources and make more things here.
So that Australia is not always the last link in the global supply chain.
That instead, we stand on our own two feet.
We navigate global uncertainty our way, the Australian way.
Looking after people.
Holding true to our values of fairness, aspiration and opportunity for all.
And holding on to everything that brings us together as Australians and sets us apart from the world.
Everything that makes this the best country on earth.
I understand that when people hear the economic impacts of this moment compared to the pandemic they flash back to the harsh restrictions of those times.
That is why I am taking every opportunity – in the Parliament, at press conferences, on social media, in last night’s address and here at the National Press Club, to make it clear to all Australians that while there are significant challenges ahead and commonsense changes required, this will not be like Covid.
Partly because the nature of this global crisis is very different.
But also because we have learned from that time – and we are deliberately taking a different approach.
You can see that with the National Fuel Security Plan, adopted by National Cabinet.
Making sure that leaders at all levels of government, and from both sides of politics, are on the same page.
Taking sensible steps now, so we are better prepared for what’s ahead.
And being clear about what we want life to look like here in Australia, even as the global situation becomes more challenging.
So we do not have a repeat of the social dislocation of Covid.
When people’s financial stress and anxiety about the world was compounded by being cut off from family and friends and community.
And trust in government and institutions was eroded by rules that seemed both completely inflexible and constantly changing.
Our focus is keeping Australia moving and keeping Australia open.
Keeping our schools open.
Keeping national and local sport going, major events and community festivals, vibrant and strong.
Keeping hospitality and all those industries that rely on people getting together, open for business.
Making sure we can still spend time with our loved ones and friends at Easter.
And that we come together as a nation to pay our respects on Anzac Day.
Keeping Australia moving means keeping our truckies on the road.
Our miners and tradies on site.
Making sure essential workers can be there for the people who count on them.
And making sure our farmers and growers and producers can keep getting their food and fibre into supermarkets and onto ships for export.
We’re encouraging a voluntary, common sense approach.
Take working from home for example.
For many families, this is already an essential part of the weekly routine.
And where it works for businesses and individuals, it makes sense.
We’re also encouraging people who can catch public transport, but currently choose to drive, to make the switch.
Because that builds our reserves and saves fuel for people who have no choice but to drive.
People in areas without reliable public transport, nurses and shift workers commuting at all hours, or tradies who need their ute to do their job.
To keep Australia moving, our Government has moved quickly.
We’ve cut the fuel excise in half, for 3 months.
Cutting the tax on petrol and diesel by 26 cents per litre.
And this morning, we have reached agreement with the States and Territories to deliver a further cut in the fuel tax by returning their GST windfall to Australians.
This will mean a combined saving of 32 cents on every litre.
The Treasurer, Jim Chalmers has already signed that change into law.
Because we want this added relief to start showing up at petrol stations, straightaway.
For our truckies, we’re cutting the Heavy Vehicle Road User Charge to zero.
We’ve taken unprecedented action to underwrite industry and bring shiploads more fuel and fertiliser to Australia.
We’ve changed the law, so that all the fuel made in Australian refineries, stays on shore.
We have given the ACCC new powers to crack down on petrol stations that do the wrong thing by their customers.
And we will pursue every option to ensure that increases that might be there in coal and gas prices do not flow into electricity prices.
Today I announce that under our Economic Resilience Program we will make available $1 billion in interest-free loans for manufacturing and fuel businesses dealing with the economic costs of this conflict.
Truckies, freight companies – and fuel and fertiliser producers.
These firms are not just being affected by this global crisis, they are essential to Australia getting through this crisis.
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.
No Government can promise to eliminate the pressures this global crisis will impose.
But we can be a buffer against the worst of it.
A shock absorber, in a time of global shocks.
And we will do everything we can to protect the Australian people from what the world throws at us.
Providing stability and security amidst uncertainty does not mean standing still while the world changes around us.
It means anticipating and creating change, true to Australian values and in Australia’s interests.
Because if people feel like the economy is not working for them, if they’re putting in the effort but not seeing the reward, if planning for the future feels like a luxury, then government cannot provide stability just by keeping things as they are.
There is no security in maintaining a status quo that doesn’t work for people.
Economic reform that drives growth, boosts productivity, helps tackle inflation and lifts living standards is always necessary.
And in times of uncertainty such as this, it is urgent.
We all know the mindset that left Australia exposed to this global shock.
That said it was ok to cut TAFE and training.
To dare manufacturing and industry to go offshore.
To put multinational firms ahead of Australian gas users.
To close our refineries, store our fuel reserves in Texas and run the national energy grid into the ground.
And that Australia could get away with this because there would always be someone else, somewhere else, who would sell us what we needed cheaper than we could make it ourselves.
This approach put our nation in this position of vulnerability, it will not take us out of it.
That’s why our Government is taking a different path.
Investing in a Future Made in Australia.
Creating the National Reconstruction Fund to back manufacturing.
Making Free TAFE permanent and creating new incentives for apprentices.
Bringing new energy online: cleaner, cheaper power that we generate, store and control, for ourselves.
Positioning Australia as a destination of choice for the new jobs and opportunities of data centres and artificial intelligence.
Establishing our Critical Minerals Strategic Reserve.
Securing the future of our industrial base, from the steelworks at Whyalla to the Boyne Island Smelter at Gladstone.
Strengthening our defence manufacturing and our security co-operation.
Restoring Australian leadership in the Pacific and deepening our connections in ASEAN and APEC.
Investing in the jobs and skills and infrastructure for AUKUS.
A landmark security treaty with Indonesia.
A new alliance with Papua New Guinea.
And importantly, diversifying our trade links and economic partnerships too.
Because making more things in Australia doesn’t mean doing less with the world.
That’s why we’ve been engaging in our region.
Stabilising our relationship with China.
And finding new opportunities for co-operation: with India and the United Arab Emirates.
The Critical Minerals Agreement I signed at the White House, the defence technology partnership we are expanding with Canada.
And, of course, our new defence and security partnership and our Free Trade Agreement signed just last week with the European Union.
Giving Australian farmers and growers and exporters new access to a market of 450 million people.
We were investing in Australia’s economic resilience well before the conflict in the Middle East began.
And for our Government, international uncertainty is not an excuse to delay, or hold back reform, it is the reason we must press ahead.
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.
Nor can we go back to those days.
And any party or leader who promises otherwise, anyone who pretends that the solution to housing or jobs or wages or health is to somehow to recreate the 1950s or 60s, or whatever time they imagine everything was hunky dory, is simply not being fair dinkum with the Australian people.
Australia will not find our future security in the past.
Or by copying approaches from overseas.
We have to invest in it, build it and create it ourselves.
We can, we must, and we will.
Because the global shocks we have been hit with this decade are not passing storms, they are the extremes of a more volatile economic climate.
Where economic policy and national security are bound together.
And where international supply chains are instruments of economic and strategic competition.
Australia can do better than respond to this reality – we can thrive in it.
By investing in our unique and unbeatable combination of advantages.
Our traditional resources, our critical minerals and our clean energy.
Our trade ties and diaspora connections to our region and to the world.
Our stability, our democracy, our standing as a middle power and trusted partner.
The investing power of our superannuation funds.
And the skills and capability of our people, from digital technology and advanced manufacturing to agriculture and the care economy.
In a world that is less certain, our national strengths are more valuable than they have ever been.
But only if we continue to be serious and strategic about building on them.
And even as we plan and build for this stronger more resilient future, our number one priority remains helping people with the cost of living.
That is the balance we will strike in next month’s Budget.
It is our Government’s most important Budget to date and it will be our most ambitious.
It has to be.
The scale of the challenge facing us and the breadth of opportunities ahead of us demands that ambition and that urgency.
And our Australian character demands that ambition too.
That’s what I mean when I talk about progressive patriotism.
Uniting to celebrate what we have but working together to make it better.
Recognising that because we live in the best country in the world, we have a responsibility to build for the best.
And to empower every Australian with the opportunity to be their best.
As a matter of national pride and in order to realise our national potential.
Some of you have probably heard me say, that you have to be prepared to learn something new every day.
One of the things I’ve learned in the four years I’ve had the extraordinary honour of serving as Prime Minister, is that no matter how consuming an issue appears, you can’t just drop everything else.
You have to keep the tempo up on other issues, you have to maintain that momentum of delivery.
That’s why, in the same week that we cut the fuel excise in half:
We delivered on our promise to ban surcharges on credit and debit cards.
We backed wage rises for 18, 19 and 20 year olds, who, for the first time, will be paid like the adults that they are.
We legislated against subscription traps.
And today I announce we will build on the reforms we have already delivered to combat gambling harm.
Between 6am and 8.30pm, we will cap the number of TV ads for betting agencies at a maximum of 3 per hour.
We will ban all gambling ads on radio during school pick-up and drop-off.
We will ban cross-promotion content that mixes commentary with odds.
End advertising on jerseys and jumpers and in stadiums.
And ban online advertising, unless the user is verified as being over 18 and has the ability to opt out.
Just as importantly, we will block illegal, offshore gaming sites.
And ban online Keno type products, the so-called ‘pocket pokies’, which represent a huge percentage of Australian gambling losses.
And we will keep building on the success of BetStop, promoting and strengthening a program that is changing lives.
We are getting the balance right.
Letting adults have a punt if they want to, but making sure our children don’t see betting ads everywhere they look.
Because we don’t want kids growing up thinking that footy and gambling are inextricably linked.
We want Australians to love sport for what it is, its joys, its heartbreak, its highs and lows, because that is more than enough for any of us.
To succeed in all that is ahead of us, we need to bring people with us.
That’s why when I stood here after the last election, I said the following 12 months would be a year of delivery.
Working through the commitments the Australian people voted for last May – and ticking them off, one by one.
134 out of the 137 Medicare Urgent Care Clinics we promised are open.
Together with 54 Medicare Mental Health Centres.
And our new Medicare Mental Health Check-In service went live just yesterday.
All 33 of our Endo and Pelvic Pain Clinics will be open by the end of this month.
Over 1,300 more GP Clinics are bulk billing every patient, every time.
Driving the biggest jump in the bulk billing rate in over 20 years.
PBS medicines are at their lowest price since 2004, just $25.
230,000 Australians have purchased their first home with a 5 per cent deposit.
When I came to the Press Club last January, I announced a new $10,000 incentive for construction apprentices.
In the last six months, 11,000 Australians have seized that opportunity.
For the first time ever, full and fair funding for every student, in every school, in every state and territory is becoming a reality.
Over 61,000 nursing, teaching and social work students have benefited from Paid Prac.
There have been nearly 750,000 enrolments in Free TAFE.
More Australians are starting university than ever before.
And 3 million people with a student debt have had it cut by 20 per cent, saving an average of over $5,500.
Over 300,000 homes and small businesses have cut their power bills with a cheaper battery.
The gender pay gap is at an all-time low.
And 14 million taxpayers will get a tax cut on the 1st July.
This year, and again next year.
All these acts of delivery, doing what we said we would do, helping people under pressure.
They also build trust.
Not just trust in our Government, trust in all governments, in our capacity to make a positive difference to people’s lives.
In a more polarised and fragmented media landscape, that is only becoming more important.
Because there is no speech, no ad, no interview that can make a better case for the value of government than someone being able to see a doctor for free, close to home.
That’s the reality our conversation must be grounded in: change that people can see, positive change in their lives.
For a Labor Government economic reform is never an end in itself, it is only the means to an end.
To ensuring more people know the dignity of a good job and fair wages.
Schools and child care that give your child the best start in life.
The opportunity of TAFE, or university.
Health care your family can count on and afford.
A home of your own.
The intergenerational equity at the heart of the oldest and most Australian aspiration of them all, passing on greater opportunity to your children.
That is how we bring people with us. It is also where we want to go.
To an economy that is stronger and fairer. Stronger because it is fairer.
Because people have a share in our nation’s success.
A meaningful stake in our economy and a stake in their future.
And a society that is stronger because everyone knows they are part of it.
People in every part of our country, from all faiths and backgrounds, valued for who they are and for all they contribute.
That has always been the key to the success of the Australian model.
It is how we have been able to avoid the worst of the economic and social divisions that have taken hold elsewhere.
We take pride in that, because we know it’s not down to luck, or distance or natural immunity.
It’s because of what we have built here for ourselves.
A strong minimum wage, universal Medicare, dignity and security in retirement through superannuation.
A democracy where nearly every citizen casts a vote, the first place in the world where women could vote in elections and stand for Parliament.
And just as our national unity is built on respect for each other, it also depends on people knowing the nation respects them.
That your effort is worth it.
That if you work hard and back yourself, government will have your back.
And nowhere is that more important than the great Australian aspiration of home ownership.
The foundation on which you can build a better life for yourself and your family.
This is an enduring mission that demands constant renewal, continual reform.
New effort and urgency to break down the barriers of disadvantage.
Open the doors of opportunity.
Liberate the talents and capacity of the Australian people.
And ensure that every part of our economy nourishes aspiration and rewards hard work.
That is the Australian way.
It is our way through this global crisis.
And it is how we make our way forward.
With no-one held back and no-one left behind.