Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

The reason that I have spoken about the global conditions and the domestic political economic conditions is that I acknowledge, as everyone should, that the challenges in our economy are dialled up by what we're seeing happening overseas. A lot of these challenges existed before—our inflation challenge, our productivity challenge and global economic uncertainty. But developments in Iran and the Middle East more broadly are having an impact. That's why we've been monitoring developments very closely in the Middle East. It's why I wrote to the ACCC to make sure that service stations are not engaging in price gouging, that they're not taking Australian motorists and Australian consumers for mugs.

Not everyone supports our efforts to prevent price gouging. The new shadow Treasurer this morning was criticising our efforts to make sure that motorists aren't taken for mugs. At the same time, he was once again horrendously wrong. It's his second big gaffe in the space of two weeks. He said that the petrol excise is attached to the price of petrol and not to volume—wrong once again. We're taking steps. The economy is in good shape. We know there's more work to do.

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