Portfolio — 1 April 2026

The Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services, Dr Daniel Mulino, had a densely active 1 April across both ministerial media releases and Question Time, with a single organising theme running through every announcement: shielding Australian households and small businesses from the economic consequences of Middle East conflict-driven supply disruptions and broader cost-of-living pressure.

The most structurally significant action of the day was the immediate ban on debit and credit card surcharges, which the Reserve Bank estimates will deliver $1.6 billion in consumer benefits and reduce interchange fee caps from 0.8 per cent to 0.3 per cent [TA-260401-treasu-5898678e73e3]. The Assistant Treasurer reinforced this in the House during Question Time, characterising excessive checkout fees as charges that had been annoying consumers for too long and framing the Reserve Bank's decision as one the government actively supported [TA-260401-house-6ae0f5f9fd41:s164].

The dual-stream alignment — media release and parliamentary statement on the same instrument the same day — gives this measure unusual messaging density.

The fuel excise halving, effective from 1 April, was confirmed across both streams. In the comms record, the Assistant Treasurer explicitly named the intended beneficiaries: tradespeople, regional residents, and outer-suburban workers without access to public transport or remote work options [TA-260401-treasu-5898678e73e3]. In the House, the minister added that road user charges for heavy vehicles had been zeroed and that maximum penalties for price gouging had been lifted to $100 million [TA-260401-house-6ae0f5f9fd41:s164] — measures that extend the fuel-cost response into transport logistics and retail conduct.

A third distinct policy instrument passed Parliament on the same day: legislation banning life insurers from using adverse genetic testing results to deny or limit cover [TA-260401-treasu-91bdab7d8396]. The measure takes effect six months after royal assent, with a carve-out for genetic results volunteered by applicants that do not adversely affect underwriting decisions.

This is a stand-alone consumer protection reform unconnected to the supply-disruption response, and its passage on an otherwise disruption-heavy day is worth noting for portfolio-watchers tracking the financial services reform pipeline.

The government's response to Middle East supply disruptions extended across the tax and credit system. The Assistant Treasurer announced temporary tax flexibility measures for affected businesses — payment plan extensions, remission of interest and penalties, and PAYG instalment relief administered through a dedicated ATO channel — alongside a 10-year extension of the Small Business Responsible Lending Obligation exemption to reduce regulatory burdens on small business credit access [TA-260401-treasu-ddba7af2b9a2].

Australian banks, non-bank lenders, the Business Council of Australia, and the Insurance Council of Australia separately committed to hardship support measures including payment deferrals, loan restructuring, emergency credit limit increases, and more frequent supplier payments [TA-260401-treasu-ddba7af2b9a2].

In the House, the Assistant Treasurer also flagged that the Assistant Minister for Competition, Consumers and Regulatory Reform had introduced legislation the same day targeting unfair trading practices — covering unfair contract terms, subscription traps, and drip pricing [TA-260401-house-6ae0f5f9fd41:s164]. That bill sits in an adjacent portfolio but was cited by the Assistant Treasurer as part of the government's consumer protection sweep, signalling a deliberate cross-portfolio framing of the day's activity as a coordinated cost-of-living response.

Taken together, 1 April represents one of the more concentrated single-day policy outputs for this portfolio: an immediate consumer banking reform, a legislated insurance protection, fuel and transport cost relief, coordinated industry hardship commitments, and two pieces of legislation — all framed under the common signal of government and industry acting in concert to absorb the impact of external economic shocks on Australian families and small businesses.