Shadow Portfolio — 2 June 2026

Andrew Hastie used a House debate on 2 June to deliver a broad-front attack on the government's economic record and lay out the coalition's alternative platform across at least seven distinct policy domains. The framing device was a charge that the prime minister is waging a "war on aspiration" — introducing taxes Hastie described as "toxic" that would quietly erode the living standards of families, small businesses, farmers and entrepreneurs.

He committed the coalition to blocking those measures and carrying the fight to the next election [TA-260602-house-c5d321b8ff24:s034].

The centrepiece fiscal commitment is a tax-back guarantee — an inflation-indexed mechanism that would automatically return bracket-creep relief to taxpayers each year [TA-260602-house-c5d321b8ff24:s034]. Alongside it, Hastie announced a $5 billion infrastructure injection targeting roads, utilities and sewerage to unblock housing supply. Migration would be capped at the number of new dwellings completed annually, directly linking population intake to construction capacity — a policy that crosses both the immigration and housing portfolios.

Welfare payments and NDIS access would be restricted to Australian citizens.

On energy, Hastie pledged to abandon net-zero targets in favour of what the coalition characterised as cheap, reliable power. On resources, the coalition proposed a sovereign wealth fund to direct windfall commodity profits — specifically naming gas — into nation-building projects. Small businesses would gain an immediate asset write-off threshold of $50,000.

The intervention reads as a platform recital rather than a targeted attack on a single instrument, suggesting the coalition is using available floor time to consolidate and publicly register its alternative-government offer ahead of an election cycle. The breadth of commitments — tax, migration, housing, energy, resources, small business, welfare — signals an intent to contest the government on cost-of-living terms across the full economic width, not just on a single budget line.

No comms-stream material was available for this date; the parliamentary record is the sole source window and should be read accordingly.