It is an extremely serious situation, far more serious than the political games that are going on at the same time. And even though there was an emergency package last week, on Friday last week, it's quite understandable that on Tuesday this week the Prime Minister should be asking for more advice as to how to stop shares falling. I would think. Particularly the region. Almost all of the advice that the Prime Minister will get, be it the Government buying shares, which financial markets will hate, be it flooding the country with money, which will push down the value of the currency, all of that will make the yen weaker and will hurt Taiwan, China, Korea - those countries which compete with Japan, just as when the yen was strong and Japan was booming, that pushed up the economies of those countries.
Japan has the potential to drag the region down with it.
And further down the track it has the potential to hurt Australia. One in every five of our export shipments go to Japan. Peter Martin in Tokyo, thank you. Transcripts on this website are created by an independent transcription service. The ABC does not warrant the accuracy of the transcripts.