Interview with Sally Sara, ABC Radio National

SALLY SARA: Minister, welcome back to Radio National Breakfast. CHRIS BOWEN: Thanks, Sally. Good morning, and good morning to everyone listening.

SALLY SARA: What signals do you take from the G7 meeting overnight and their decision not yet to release energy stockpiles? Is that welcome or worrying? CHRIS BOWEN: Look, I think it's understandable.

It's a big call. It's not a mechanism which is used very often. And I think that mechanism, which is really a way of all members of the International Energy Agency, with G7 obviously being a very important part of that, being able to influence petrol prices by selling stocks, is something which is, as I said, not often used and one that people would want to work through very carefully.

SALLY SARA: What would your message be to Australians who are thinking of trying to stockpile fuel themselves? CHRIS BOWEN: My message, Sally, would be there is absolutely no need for panic buying or panic anything. We are in a very uncertain time internationally, but we enter this crisis very well prepared.

And in fact, panic buying or buying extra is one of the challenges that we're dealing with at the moment, which is making the situation worse, not better. I do understand people's concerns. I'm not being critical, but we are facing no issues of supply at the moment.

That's the important point. We have, for example, with diesel, 32 days’ worth of supply in the stockpile. That's in addition to all the diesel that's in the service stations around Australia.

That's in the stockpile we have 3 billion litres. Now, the other important point, Sally, is that at this point, not one single shipload of diesel, petrol or jet fuel to Australia has been interrupted. They've all arrived on time, on schedule, as expected.

And we expect that to be the case, at least for the immediate future. So we do enter this period of great international instability and uncertainty well placed, and the need to run down to Bunnings and get jerry cans or stock up just doesn't exist, and it does make the situation worse, not better. SALLY SARA: It was revealed in parliament last week that there's about five weeks' worth of petrol in reserve in Australia.

The International Energy Agency says member countries, of which Australia is one, should have 90 days in reserve. Why are we storing much less than that threshold? CHRIS BOWEN: It's a very fair question, Sally, but they're very different things and very different measures and for very different purposes.

So we have in Australia what's called the minimum stock obligation. I signed that law in 2022. That is for domestic purposes.

It's for today – it's for this sort of circumstance to have that stock there. What the International Energy Agency has is something very different, which is a 90-day stockpile, which doesn't need to be held in your own country, which is to sell to international markets to help reduce prices, which goes to your first question. So they're very different things.

Now, we haven't had 90 days, and not one day of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government did we have 90 days. There's a good reason for that, Sally – it's very expensive. To build 90 days' worth of supply, that would cost $20 billion over the next four years.

Now, I've seen David Littleproud and Ted O'Brien saying they want to move to 90 days, well, I look forward to seeing the costings. I assume that's been through their rigorous Shadow Cabinet processes. And I think you've got Dan Tehan this morning.

Perhaps he could provide their analysis of the costings, because there's a reason, to be fair to them, the Liberal Party didn't do that when they were in office, because they couldn't justify the billions and billions of dollars of expense that that would entail. SALLY SARA: This morning on Breakfast, NAB Chief Economist Sally Auld issued this warning about inflation.

Let's take a listen. SALLY AULD: With oil prices having rallied quite a lot just in the last week, this will put further upward pressure on inflation. And so we do think it's quite possible, depending on where oil prices settle, that inflation could get somewhere around 5 per cent by the middle of this year.

SALLY SARA: Do you expect headline inflation to hit 5 per cent? CHRIS BOWEN: Well, I'm not in the inflation commentary business. I'm in the policy business, so I will leave comments about those inflation expectations… SALLY SARA: [Interrupts] But you've got to be ready for what may or may not be ahead of us, yeah.

CHRIS BOWEN: If I could finish the sentence, thanks, Sally. I'll leave that particular commentary on inflation to the Treasurer. But obviously, this crisis internationally is having an impact on inflationary pressures in Australia and every other country in the world.

I mean, that's a given fact. Now, we are in an uncertain time. No one exactly knows how this will play out in coming weeks.

No one exactly knows, however well informed they are, how the Iranian regime will continue to respond, how that will play out. Obviously, there are ways that could play out which are very damaging to the world economy. There are ways that could play out which are less damaging.

SALLY SARA: Chris Bowen, thank you for your time this morning. CHRIS BOWEN: Thanks, Sally. We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of country throughout Australia and recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture.

We pay our respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.