Shadow Portfolio — 24 March 2026

Mr Tehan, the Member for Wannon, has run a sustained two-day attack on the government's handling of the national fuel crisis, moving from adjournment debate on 23 March into question time on 24 March with a tightly sequenced set of charges that compound across both sittings.

The central line of attack is legislative inaction. The government announced new ACCC powers to tackle fuel price gouging roughly two weeks ago, but no enabling legislation has been introduced [TA-260323-house-068fade26cde:s093]. On 24 March, Mr Tehan pressed the Minister for Climate Change and Energy directly on this point in question time, noting that the minister had told the House two weeks prior that both the Treasurer and the minister had worked closely with the ACCC on the measure — and that fuel prices had in fact doubled in the three weeks since [TA-260324-house-a9c2a02c99ed:s069].

The question puts the government on notice that its own timeline and the deteriorating price environment will be used against it until legislation appears.

Beyond the ACCC legislation, Mr Tehan catalogued a second operational failure: a five-day delay in approving the paperwork needed to restrict fuel exports on sulphur-content grounds during the crisis itself [TA-260323-house-068fade26cde:s093]. He characterised this as ministerial incompetence, and it serves as a concrete instance backing the broader charge that the government's crisis response has been slow across the board.

The geographic accountability argument is a third strand. Mr Tehan charged in adjournment that the Treasurer answered questions on fuel shortages in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria but provided nothing on Tasmania, South Australia, the Northern Territory or Western Australia — despite an Opposition letter of 10 March requesting location-by-location planning detail.

The unanswered states give the attack a national breadth that the government's partial answers cannot cover.

The sharpest personal attack targets the Treasurer directly. Mr Tehan contrasted the Treasurer's current role managing a fuel supply emergency with his 2022 election promise of a $275 reduction in household power bills [TA-260323-house-068fade26cde:s093]. He also argued the Treasurer's concurrent role as chief negotiator for COP is diverting attention from the domestic crisis.

Taken together, these arguments frame the Treasurer as both discredited on energy promises and distracted at the worst possible moment. Mr Tehan closed the adjournment by calling for a ministerial reshuffle, citing the Treasurer's own statements that day that he was done in his portfolio and urging the Prime Minister to act [TA-260323-house-068fade26cde:s093].

The two days of activity cohere as a deliberate escalation: the adjournment speech laid out the full indictment — broken promises, operational delays, selective answers, distracted leadership — and the question-time intervention the following morning extracted a specific public commitment date on the ACCC legislation, keeping the government's inaction on the record.

No alternative policy position is advanced beyond demanding the legislation be introduced and ministerial accountability be imposed.