Albanese promises budget will be ‘most important’, interest-free loans for businesses hit by war

Businesses squeezed by the cost of the war in Iran will have access to interest-free loans as the end of hostilities remains in doubt, Anthony Albanese will announce. The Prime Minister is expected to front the National Press Club in Canberra on Thursday, hours after an extraordinary televised address to the nation. The Labor government has faced pressure over the spiralling economic impact of the United States’ and Israel’s war on Iran, and on Monday cut the fuel excise in half and scrapped the heavy vehicle road user charge for three months. Mr Albanese is expected to announce further support on Thursday under the government’s $1bn Economic Resilience Program, which the government says will mean truckies, freight companies, and fuel and fertiliser producers will be better supported to continue critical work. “These firms are not just being affected by this crisis, they are essential to Australia getting through this crisis,” Mr Albanese said. “So our Government will extend their credit to help them, and the farmers and producers who rely on these supply chains, to weather the storm. “This is just another way we are acting to get ahead of issues.” Mr Albanese said no government could eliminate the pressures the war in the Middle East will impose. “But we can be a buffer against the worst of it,” he said. “A shock absorber, in a time of global shocks. “We will do everything we can to protect the Australian people from what the world throws at us. The loan scheme is a sub-fund under the government’s $15bn National Reconstruction Fund. The NRFC will partner with banks to deliver loans in the next fortnight. Mr Albanese is expected to warn Australians during his address that there is “no security in maintaining a status quo that doesn’t work for people”. “We all know the mindset that left Australia exposed to this global shock,” he said, blaming cuts to TAFE closing of refineries – which occurred under both Labor and Coalition governments – and the relocation of manufacturing offshore. “This approach put our nation in this position of vulnerability, it will not take us out of it. “That’s why our government is taking a different path.” Mr Albanese will say Labor is investing in Australia’s “international uncertainty is not an excuse to delay, or hold back reform”. “It is the reason we must press ahead,” he will say. “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. “And any party or leader who promises otherwise, 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.” Mr Albanese will warn next month’s budget will have to strike a balance, and will also be the government’s “most ambitious”. “It has to be. The scale of the challenge facing us – and the breadth of opportunities ahead of us – demands that ambition and that urgency,” he will say. “And our Australian character demands that ambition too. That’s what I mean when I talk about progressive patriotism. “These Australian values are the right ones to guide us through this crisis – and to shape what comes next.”