Australia’s commodities industries have borne the brunt of the Asian giant’s slowdown, with its property market collapse depressing demand for Australian steel to build new homes and triggering a slump in the iron ore price. Treasury has warned that a further slump in the price of iron ore and metallurgical coal could wipe up to $4.5 billion from federal coffers.

Chalmers said the Chinese government’s plans to boost growth formed part of the discussion at the Australia-China Strategic Economic Dialogue on Thursday evening.

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Chalmers co-chaired the dialogue with Zheng Shanjie, who leads China’s National Development and Reform Commission, a top economic planning body. The meeting marked the resumption of the talks for the first time since 2017. The pair committed to holding an annual dialogue, with Australia to host next year’s discussions.

Chalmers said he also raised the long-standing trade ban on Australian lobsters and repeated the government’s view that they were seeking “a speedy resolution” to the issue.

The lobster ban is the last major remaining hurdle after Beijing agreed to lift almost $20 billion of economic sanctions imposed on a dozen Australian industries when relations between the countries plummeted under the former Coalition government.

Chalmers said there were still a “couple of technical issues” being worked on between Australia and China’s agriculture and trade departments, but added: “Hopefully, we will see wonderful Australian lobster gracing the tables of Chinese homes and restaurants as soon as possible”.

The meeting coincided with an announcement by the Politburo, China’s highest decision-making body, chaired by President Xi Jinping, that it would take steps to ensure the real estate market would “stop declining”, raising expectations of further stimulus measures, which have so far been piecemeal.

The Politburo did not provide any detail on the potential scale of fiscal spending, but citing two people familiar with the matter, Reuters reported that the Ministry of Finance was planning to issue 2 trillion yuan ($284.43 billion) of special sovereign bonds this year. That funding would be evenly split between stimulating consumption and helping local governments tackle debt problems, it said.

It followed surprise measures unveiled by China’s central bank earlier in the week, which included lowering borrowing costs, allowing banks to increase their lending, and slashing interest rates on existing mortgages. It was its most aggressive stimulus package since the pandemic.