Tom Crowley

This is an ABC podcast.

And I'm Tom Crowley.

By day, an economics reporter in Parliament House, but by the very early morning, still night for a little while, I'm also filling in as the political correspondent on Radio National Breakfast, which Carrington makes us colleagues and part of the same show.

We don't get to talk to each other, though, very often, do we?

No.

I'm pleased to be with you today.

I suppose provocative is usually a word that I try to avoid, but occasionally, you know, you do like to set the cat among the pigeons.

I think that I'm watching up here in Parliament House, Carrington, the government's conversation moving very quickly, sort of the policy conversation, and we'll get to this in a moment, changing in increments that are day by day or even hour by hour.

And I think that there is a dawning sense particularly

in the way that Treasurer Jim Chalmers is talking about this crisis, that there's a recognition that even if the war were to end today, but in particular if it were to continue, that the economic damage, while perhaps temporary, could be really severe.

And that as a result, the government, having been fixated on inflation earlier in the year, is now rapidly starting to turn its mind to the question of if there is a recession, if the recession is unfolding, what that might look like.

And I mean, to track it in terms of the treasurer's statements and the modelling that he refers to.

I think it was only a couple of weeks ago that I reported alongside Isabel Rowe, a couple of treasury scenarios.

Here's what would happen if oil remained at US $100 a barrel for three months, perhaps a little bit off GDP and $120, perhaps a little more off GDP.

Within a week, Jim Chalmers was referring to those same two scenarios in a speech to the Australian business economists, and the numbers had changed and the numbers were worse.

And then within a few more days, he started talking about a third worst scenario, a deeper downturn that Treasury is starting to talk to him about.

And now you're starting to see the fuel excise cut.

We're starting to see support for businesses and we're starting to see addresses to the nation from the prime minister, signalling, I think, that the government now sees what is happening as on a par with

with the COVID recession and the global financial crisis, an economic shock of similar magnitude, albeit different contours.

And so that's why I think I frame this question of, well, should we be dusting off the recession playbook, even though we have inflation on our minds as well?