Albanese to announce interest-free loans for businesses hit by fuel crisis

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday will announce interest-free loans for businesses hit by the fuel crisis, in a speech also promising the crisis won’t divert the government from economic reform in the budget.

The loans will help truckies, freight companies and fuel and fertiliser producers. This comes after cuts in excise and the Heavy Vehicle Road User Charge and moves to assist small business were also announced this week.

Albanese, addressing the National Press Club in a speech released in part ahead of delivery, will say the May 12 budget will be “our government’s most important budget to date and it will be our most ambitious. It has to be.”

His message will go some way to reassuring those who fear the prime minister might want to scale back reform ambitions of treasurer Jim Chalmers for the budget, given the crisis and accommpanying uncertainty.

But Albanese says: “economic reform that drives growth, boosts productivity, tackles inflation and lifts living standards is always necessary.

"And in times of uncertainty such as this, it is urgent.”

The Labor government was investing in economic resilience well before this crisis, he says.

“For our government, international uncertainty is not an excuse to delay, or hold back reform – it is the reason we must press ahead.

"Because we will not generate the same prosperity or create the same opportunities, if we continue to rely on an economic model designed in a different time and built for a more predictable world.

"Nor can we go back to those days.”

“Anyone who pretends that the solution to housing or jobs or wages or health is to somehow to recreate the 1950s or 60s, or whatever time they imagine everything was hunky dory, is simply not being fair dinkum.

"Australia will not find our future security in the past. Or by copying approaches from overseas.

"We have to invest in it, build it and create it for ourselves.”

Albanese says while planning for a more resilient Australia, “our number one priority remains helping people with the cost of living”. That balance would be struck in the budget.

The interest-free loans will be provided under the government’s $1 billion Economic Resilience Program.

“No government can promise to eliminate the pressures this crisis will impose. But we can be a buffer against the worst of it,” Albanese says.

“Providing this stability and security amidst uncertainty does not mean standing still while the world changes around us.

"It means anticipating and creating change, true to Australian values and in Australia’s interests.

"Because if people feel like the economy is not working for them, if they’re putting in the effort but not seeing the reward, if planning for the future feels like a luxury, then government cannot provide stability, just by keeping things as they are.”