Portfolio — 24 March 2026

Senator Gallagher was absent from question time on 24 March for personal reasons, with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator Wong, standing in as Leader of the Government in the Senate and advising that ministers would represent portfolios under arrangements circulated to the President, party leaders and independent senators [TA-260324-senate-dd516f85acd4:s164].

The session was substantively dominated by Senator Wong's responses across three distinct policy domains: Middle East security, the Australia-EU partnership package, and online gambling harm minimisation.

On the Middle East, Senator Wong faced a direct challenge from Greens Senator Shoebridge over Australian military involvement in regional strikes. Senator Wong defended the government's position by citing Iranian regime conduct — including what she described as massacres of its own people, the direction of attacks against Australians on Australian soil, and the sponsorship of Hamas, Hezbollah and terrorism globally [TA-260324-senate-dd516f85acd4:s276].

She stated explicitly that Australia supports defensive actions to prevent Iran remaining a threat to international peace and security, while also confirming the government is not proposing to engage in strikes on Iran. On Lebanon, Senator Wong announced a further $5 million in humanitarian assistance, expressing grave concern about the displacement of over one million citizens — including more than 200,000 children — and stated that a major Israeli ground offensive into Lebanon would only worsen the humanitarian situation [TA-260324-senate-dd516f85acd4:s278].

The most structurally significant announcement of the session was the Australia-EU partnership package. Senator Wong confirmed that Australia has signed a new security and defence partnership with the European Union, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen present at the announcement [TA-260324-senate-dd516f85acd4:s279]. The partnership encompasses capacity-building on complex security threats, combating online radicalisation, countering terrorism financing, and establishing a new space security dialogue — a domain the records flag as currently untagged in the corpus.

Three coordinated deliverables were announced together: the security and defence partnership, a landmark free trade agreement, and the commencement of negotiations for Australian association to Horizon Europe from 2027. Senator Wong framed the package as an expression of what the government terms 'amplified middle-power diplomacy' — strengthening and diversifying relationships to shape a world where, in her formulation, no country dominates and no country is dominated — contrasting this agenda explicitly with what she characterised as the Opposition's focus on internal preference-swapping and One Nation strategy.

In a cross-portfolio pivot, Senator Wong also addressed online gambling harms, asserting the government has taken more action than any government since Federation. She cited a range of measures: banning credit card use for online wagering, mandatory custom ID preverification, monthly win-loss statements, the National Self-exclusion Register, and the removal of research and development tax deductions for betting firms and poker machine companies [TA-260324-senate-dd516f85acd4:s286].

The records note that several of these instruments — including monthly win-loss statements, the Horizon Europe association, and the R&D deduction change — are currently absent from the corpus's topic tagging, suggesting they warrant closer attention as policy signals.

The day's parliamentary record, taken as a whole, shows Senator Wong operating across defence diplomacy, humanitarian response, trade, science cooperation, and social policy — a breadth that reinforces the 'amplified middle-power' framing she deployed explicitly in the EU context.