Shadow Portfolio — 12 May 2026
Senator Susan McDonald, Deputy Leader of the Nationals in the Senate, used two Senate speeches on 12 May to mount a broad attack on Labor's economic record and defend the domestic gas industry. Her cost-of-living critique anchored the day's activity, deploying granular price data — electricity up 32%, gas up 42%, bread up 22% — alongside an international interest-rate comparison to argue Australia is an outlier of fiscal mismanagement.
Her second speech shifted to resource-sector advocacy, targeting anti-fossil-fuel activist groups and what she characterised as misinformation about gas taxation and investment, while advancing coalition alternatives centred on lower taxes, regulatory relief, and expanded gas production.
The official records this note draws on — the raw primary documents themselves, as published.