Today I convened a special meeting of the Council of Financial Regulators to discuss the conflict in the Middle East, its potential implications for our economy and financial markets, and actions being taken to shore up resilience.
Australia has a strong and resilient financial system that is well placed to confront global instability, and that was the clear message from regulators today.
While Australia is not immune to global challenges, we have strong economic fundamentals and our banking system is well‑capitalised.
The Government and financial regulators remain vigilant to emerging risks and we are working together in a coordinated way to prepare for all scenarios.
The Council of Financial Regulators (CFR) consists of the Treasury Secretary and leaders of the Reserve Bank, ASIC, and APRA and the meeting today was also joined by the head of the ACCC and Assistant Treasurer, Daniel Mulino.
The recent conflict in the Middle East has compounded uncertainty in the global economy and is having an impact at home, including on fuel prices.
Today I briefed the Council on the decisive action we're taking to make more fuel available to industry and households, help keep fuel flowing to the regions and empower the ACCC to ensure fair prices at the bowser.
We've appointed a Fuel Supply Taskforce Coordinator to work with the states and territories to get fuel to where it's needed, released up to 762 million litres of petrol and diesel from domestic reserves and temporarily relaxed fuel standards to get more petrol to service stations.
We're increasing surveillance, doubling penalties for misconduct and empowering the consumer watchdog to get to the bottom of what's going in the fuel sector.
There's more work to be done and we'll continue to work closely with regulators to ensure we're doing everything we can to maintain fuel security, economic stability, address price pressures and make our supply chains more resilient.
Yesterday I also engaged with New Zealand's Finance Minister, Nicola Willis, on our responses to the conflict and our fuel security plans, part of the government's coordinated work with our international partners.
