Jim Chalmers

I think the global oil price dropped 11% or something in an hour or two on comments that President Trump had made about engaging with the Iranians.

And the other thing that that tells us is when you look at the market reaction to some of these sorts of developments from a purely economic and market point of view, the end of the war can't come soon enough.

But that won't necessarily be the end of the pressure on supply chains and the pressures on all of our economies.

It depends very heavily on how quickly the global economy recovers after that.

Well, I mean, again, you've come at the kind of key balance that we're trying to strike here.

And whether the barrel price of oil hangs around at $100, $120, $150 a barrel or even higher,

will effectively determine just how much that weighs on growth and how much it pushes up inflation.

We've tried to be really upfront with people and say, you know, we had an inflation challenge in our economy before, but the war will make things harder and potentially much harder.

And so as we put the budget together and we consider...

the steps that we were already planning in the budget and working up in the budget to lift the speed limit on the economy, make it more productive, deal with inflation, try and make us more resilient in the face of these international shocks, which are coming more and more frequently, to also have a range of contingencies in the event that the economic downturn, the slowing of growth,

is more substantial than we currently anticipate now that's just diligence i think anyone in the position that i'm in as treasurer and thinking about those five big shocks over the course of the last couple of decades every treasurer has a whole series of contingencies and so if it turns out that the risks to growth are more substantial

obviously that would warrant a shift in our strategy.

We're also very focused on inflation, as you rightly point out.

So as the balance of risks change, so do our considerations and our deliberations for the budget.

Of course they do.

Yeah, but I don't dispute your point about consumer confidence was very low.

I think unsurprisingly so, given the pressures that people are under.

And you're quite right that

I've said that there's an inflation challenge already and the war would make it worse, even though inflation went down a little bit, ticked down a tiny bit in the numbers that we got earlier this week.

But let's not forget a couple of other things.