Shadow Portfolio — 25 March 2026

The Member for Berowra, Mr Julian Leeser, used two separate House interventions on 25 March 2026 to prosecute a consistent opposition argument: that the Albanese government accepts reform in principle but fails to deliver it in practice, whether on national security legislation or school funding.

On the Crimes and Other Legislation Amendment (Omnibus No. 1) Bill 2026, Mr Leeser announced the Coalition will not oppose the measure but framed its passage as evidence of government inaction [TA-260325-house-8e0b2c08f739:s014]. The bill extends cybercrime disruption powers — specifically data disruption warrants, network activity warrants, and account takeover warrants first established under the Coalition's Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Act — for a further three years to 4 September 2029, replacing a sunset clause due to expire on 4 September 2026 [TA-260325-house-8e0b2c08f739:s014].

Mr Leeser characterised this as an admission of failure: the Albanese government received the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor's comprehensive review recommending wholesale electronic surveillance reform nearly four years ago, accepted the principle, and "did almost nothing" [TA-260325-house-8e0b2c08f739:s014]. The Coalition's conditional support — accepting that agencies need operational certainty while demanding accountability for the absence of comprehensive reform — is paired with a call to refer the bill to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, citing scrutiny concerns over mixed-weight drug thresholds, the Director of Public Prosecutions conflict-of-interest mechanism, and extradition warrant timing provisions.

Mr Leeser's second intervention, responding to the Minister for Education's ministerial statement on the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement, deployed the same structural critique across a different portfolio. He disputed three specific government claims — improved reading performance, better attendance, and higher completion rates — with granular data. NAPLAN results show year 3 reading scores fell 35 points between 2022 and 2025, from 437.8 to 402.2 points, with declines in each of 2023, 2024 and 2025 [TA-260325-house-8e0b2c08f739:s034].

On attendance, he presented Coalition-era figures (never below 90.9 per cent between 2016 and 2021) against post-2022 figures that have never recovered to 89 per cent; on the attendance level measure, the Coalition's lowest year of 71.2 per cent exceeded the current government's highest year of 62.1 per cent. On retention, he asserted high school rates never exceeded 83 per cent under any Labor government in the past 15 years and never fell below 83 per cent under the Coalition.

The most targeted element of the education critique focused on Victoria. Mr Leeser contended that the Prime Minister's statement on 24 March 2025 — that every state and territory was on a path to full and fair funding — was factually incorrect, because Victoria and Western Australia held only non-binding heads of agreement at that date [TA-260325-house-8e0b2c08f739:s034].

Victoria's bilateral agreement, signed 8 December 2025, expires at the end of 2026, does not lift funding to the schooling resource standard, and leaves Victoria as the only jurisdiction without a 10-year funding pathway to 2034 [TA-260325-house-8e0b2c08f739:s034]. In 2026 Victorian government schools will receive 90.43 per cent of the schooling resource standard — the lowest of all states and territories except the Northern Territory — producing an estimated $574 million shortfall against New South Wales and leaving secondary students $860 to $1,740 less per student than in comparable states [TA-260325-house-8e0b2c08f739:s034].

Mr Leeser acknowledged bipartisan convergence on explicit teaching, phonics, and knowledge-rich curricula, but pressed the government on an unaddressed gap: the transition of students from the NDIS to education, which he said is generating sector-wide concern among principals.

Across both interventions, the Member for Berowra operated from a single strategic frame — acknowledging operational necessity (agency certainty on cybercrime powers; the value of agreed teaching methods) while contesting the government's record on delivery and accuracy of its public claims. The two debates are distinct in portfolio but identical in method: accept narrow common ground, then contest the government's characterisation of its own performance with specific data.