Paul Bongiorno

Albanese pointed out that what we've got is the biggest global spike that's ever happened in Australian history when it comes to oil and energy.

And if we want to get a bit of an insight into what the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, thinks these impacts will be, it put out its World Economic Outlook during the week.

And it says the United States-Israel war on Iran risks creating, quote, an energy crisis of unprecedented scale that could end in global recession.

And Jim Chalmers doesn't quibble with the assessment of the IMF that the situation could see Australia with higher inflation than most advanced economies.

All of those questions are extremely relevant.

And the world bank, the IMF, is warning that incomes, that is national incomes, personal incomes, will obviously fall.

Now, this will be made worse if the usual prescription that we get from the Reserve Bank and central banks around the world

is that if inflation is running out of control, you up interest rates.

So you make life more miserable, especially for borrowers.

And by borrowers, we don't only mean people borrowing to fund their mortgage, to fund their home, but borrowers in business, small business.

This can have, well, a devastating impact.

And during the week, I was talking to a

quite senior advisor to the Prime Minister, who said that Albanese is well aware that walking this tightrope is in danger of poking the bear of the Reserve Bank, that if the Reserve Bank judges that the Treasurer or the government's got it wrong, they'll go harder with interest rates.

So it's more than a dilemma.

It's a real fix that the government and the country is in.

And I guess we just have to hang on to our seats for this very wild ride.

Look, Anthony Albanese is acutely aware of just how perilous the politics of this situation is.

He cannot afford, as the Prime Minister, the government cannot afford to look like it's sitting back, shrugging its shoulders and telling the rest of us to eat cake.

That's why Albanese embarked on personal diplomacy going up into Asia to personally argue our case to our major fuel suppliers in Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia.

Sure, our diplomats could have done it.