Anthony Albanese warns of tough times ahead but Australia will stay open for business

Australia’s economy must keep running throughout the fuel crisis, Anthony Albanese has declared as he warned that things would get tougher for Australians even if Donald Trump ended the war in Iran immediately.

In a major pre-budget address, the Prime Minister flagged more measures to increase domestic fuel security and make Australia more self-sufficient across the economy.

But he pushed back on growing calls for a superprofits tax on gas exports, saying that ignored “a whole range of issues” where Australia’s resources sector gave back to the country.

Mr Albanese also used the speech to the National Press Club on Thursday to defend the mixed response to his address to the nation the night before, insisting the gravity of that platform was necessary to tackle a proliferation of misinformation about the fuel crisis.

But he said he couldn’t pretend there were any “absolute certainties” about the future.

“We’ve got emails saying, ‘Are we going to have lockdowns? Are we going to be able to see people at Easter?’ People, because they’ve gone through . . . the global financial crisis, then they’ve gone through COVID, now this is an issue, that uncertainty is there,” he said.

“All we can do is to provide reassurance of where we are now, but also to make it clear that we have plans to adjust any mechanisms if things do deteriorate.”

The PM’s prime-time address broadcast on all television and radio on Wednesday night warned there were hard months ahead but urged people to go about their Easter break like normal then consider fuel-saving measures like public transport.

It came under fire from the Opposition and minor parties for lacking transparency over the level and location of fuel in the countries and potential future restrictions.

“It could have been a social media post,” Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said.

“It didn’t lay out what the situation was clearly. It didn’t lay out what the plan was clearly and it certainly didn’t give the confidence Australians need right now to get about their lives and right now that’s what we want.”

Mr Albanese said the opportunity to talk directly to the nation in a serious format was “more important than ever, because of the nature of noise that is out there, the conspiracy theories that are out there, which are allowed, which propagate, which we can’t do anything about”.

A pandemic-era erosion of trust in governments was driven by “rules that seemed both completely inflexible and constantly changing” and no one wanted to repeat that experience, he said on Thursday.

No on was contemplating the kind of harsh pandemic restrictions people might fear when they heard the economic blow of the fuel crisis compared with the COVID hit.

Australia is currently at level 2 of the four-tiered fuel security plan which national cabinet agreed to last Monday, and the Prime Minister’s objective was to stay at that level.

“Our focus is keeping Australia moving and keeping Australia open,” he said.

“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.”

The government is focused on securing fuel supplies, including shoring up agreements from Australia’s oil-exporting neighbours like Singapore and Malaysia, as The Nightly revealed this week.

It’s also contemplating all options to increase domestic supply, including increasing storage capacity and reopening refineries.

Mr Albanese pointed out his government had been willing to spend big to intervene in other industries such as helping keep struggling metal smelters open.

“It’s about making more things here. It’s about being more resilient. And it’s that principle that, if anything, we need to now turbo charge rather than back away,” he said.

A key argument Australia is making to countries supplying us oil is that we have been a reliable partner when it comes to supplying the gas they need for their energy systems.

Mr Albanese said that certainty was the quid pro quo in his government’s talks about fuel supplies and he wouldn’t put that at risk.

Japan’s ambassador last week warned his country “hates surprises” in the face of suggestions of new taxes on the vital resource.

“Just as we expect countries that supply us to stick to agreements which are there, we think it’s very important that the contracts that we have be fulfilled completely with countries in our region,” Mr Albanese said.

Earlier this week, several of the music-loving Prime Minister’s favourite Australian artists backed the campaign for a gas exports tax, including Jimmy Barnes, Ben Lee, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Amyl & the Sniffers, Missy Higgins and Midnight Oil

That didn’t stop him taking aim on Thursday at advocates who “pretend that there isn’t a return to the Australian people from the resources sector, which is there, which is a real strength for us”.

Mr Albanese said the May Budget would be his government’s most important and most ambitious economic statement.

Its primary aim was to build economic resilience, both in terms of Australia becoming more self-reliant so it was no longer at the end of supply chains, and about giving people a stake in the economy so they felt like they could get “a fair crack”.

He echoed Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ insistence earlier in the week that plans for tax, productivity and cuts packages were proceeding — and were even more important in the face of an economic shock.

“One of the things I’ve learned . . . 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,” he said.

“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.”