Katy Gallagher (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Public Service) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Darmanin for the question, and it's an important one. The escalation of conflict in the Middle East has already had significant impacts on the global economy, including on uncertainty, which always weighs heavily on markets. When this conflict began, we said we expected to see flow-on effects for the global economy, and we are seeing that play out.

Oil is trading at about $90 now, I think—the last time I looked—but it got up to almost $120 a barrel yesterday. It was at $60 at the start of the year and at about $73 at the start of this conflict. It has come down since yesterday, but it remains much higher than it was prior to the conflict beginning. In addition to the comments that Senator Wong has already made, our nation is fuel secure. We are above our minimum petrol stockholding obligations. Petrol companies have informed us that their fuel stocks continue to arrive in Australia on time and in the quantities that they expect, and we are in this position because the government has acted over the last few years to build resilience. But we know the longer this conflict drags on the more significant the impact on Australia will be.

We had an inflation challenge before these developments, but the conflict in the Middle East risks making that worse, and we will update our inflation forecasts in the budget in the usual way. Markets were especially pessimistic over the last couple of days, but have begun to rebound today in reaction to comments from President Trump. The government and regulators are continuing to monitor the markets and the impact of this volatility closely. While Australia isn't immune to the global instability, we are well positioned, and last week's national accounts showed we had stronger economic growth than any major advanced economy. We've got low unemployment, high participation and strong jobs growth. (Time expired)