Shadow Portfolio — 26 March 2026

The Member for Riverina, Mr McCormack, used a matter of public importance debate on 26 March to mount a coordinated parliamentary attack on the government's handling of the national fuel crisis, combining price documentation, ministerial accountability arguments, and concrete alternative policy proposals into a single strategic intervention.

Mr McCormack opened by anchoring the government's failure in constituency-level price data: E10 petrol across his electorate running from 246.9 to 274.9 cents per litre, and diesel from 305.9 to 330.9 cents per litre [TA-260326-house-acd3ee5310f1:s080]. The price specificity is deliberate opposition technique — grounding an abstract crisis narrative in numbers that regional communities will recognise from the bowser.

The attack then moved to ministerial accountability, targeting the Minister for Climate Change and Energy directly for delegating the Fuel Supply Taskforce coordinator role to Anthea Harris, who is simultaneously conducting a separate review into the Water Act. The implication is divided attention and inadequate ministerial ownership of a crisis requiring hands-on management.

Mr McCormack framed the shortage not merely as an energy problem but as a systemic failure cascading into agricultural productivity and food security, and directed fiscal demands at two separate ministers: the Treasurer to cut fuel excise or increase the fuel tax credit, and the Prime Minister to deploy available levers [TA-260326-house-acd3ee5310f1:s080].

The second parliamentary contribution — classified here as procedural but substantively continuous with the MPI attack — shifted from critique to alternative policy. Mr McCormack advanced two proposals from regional industry figures as shovel-ready solutions the government has ignored [TA-260326-house-acd3ee5310f1:s106]. Tim Rose's Southern and Northern Oil refineries re-refine sump oil and carry combined capacity of 70 million litres annually across Wagga Wagga and Gladstone.

Dick Honan's ethanol mandate proposal offers a separate pathway. Mr McCormack characterised both as long-standing submissions that remain unacted upon — positioning the government's inaction not as a capacity gap but as a deliberate failure of political will [TA-260326-house-acd3ee5310f1:s106]. The Opposition's framing ties fuel security directly to farm productivity and national security, arguing that the ability to supply farmers with diesel and petrol is inseparable from agricultural output and food supply.

The two interventions are strategically coherent: the MPI establishes the severity of the crisis and holds specific ministers accountable, while the procedural contribution supplies the alternative policy content — demonstrating the Opposition has answers the government is choosing not to take up. The invocation of "oil sovereignty" as a framing device links the fuel crisis to broader national capability language, giving the attack cross-portfolio resonance across energy, agriculture, and defence-adjacent territory.