Shadow Portfolio — 26 March 2026

Senator Duniam, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate, ran a coordinated multi-front attack across the 25–26 March Senate sitting period, targeting the government on education outcomes, housing policy, and fuel security — each framed through a single unifying argument: that the government spends and promises without delivering results.

The most substantive legislative intervention was the second reading of the Housing Investment Probity Bill 2024, moved by Senator Duniam on behalf of Senator Bragg, which would bar the Housing Australia Future Fund from investing in projects or entities associated with the CFMEU [TA-260326-senate-fe3f4b93a2a8:s004]. The Opposition argued the bill protects taxpayers from union-influenced cost blowouts, pointing to Victorian public infrastructure overruns estimated between $15 billion and $30 billion as the evidentiary basis for the restriction.

Senator Duniam accused the government of being in denial about the Fund's failure to meet its 1.2 million homes target over five years, framing the housing crisis as a product of misplaced priorities — union interests over affordability — rather than insufficient funding [TA-260326-senate-fe3f4b93a2a8:s004].

The same spending-versus-outcomes logic structured Senator Duniam's intervention on the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement the prior sitting day. He cited ACARA data showing per-student expenditure nearly doubled from $11,260 in 2008–09 to $21,169 in 2022–23, while Australia's OECD PISA rankings fell across reading, mathematics and science over the same period [TA-260325-senate-9aaa61ce6ff6:s106].

The Opposition's critique redirected responsibility away from funding levels toward curriculum design, cross-curriculum priorities, and teacher preparation — an argument that more money alone will not reverse declining standards. The two attacks are analytically connected: in housing as in education, the Opposition's position is that the government's core policy instrument (expenditure) is structurally inadequate and that structural reform, not additional dollars, is the missing lever.

Separately, Senator Duniam used procedural business — an amendment to exclude the Treasury Laws Amendment (Doubling Penalties for ACCC Enforcement) Bill 2026 from committee referral — to press the government on fuel security [TA-260326-senate-fe3f4b93a2a8:s024]. He cited diesel prices in Hobart at $3.23 per litre and demanded guarantees on fuel rationing, supply continuity, and price reduction, characterising the government as caught flat-footed by Middle East supply risks [TA-260326-senate-fe3f4b93a2a8:s074].

The Opposition's sharpest accusation was temporal: it alleged that government ministers denied a fuel crisis existed in the prior sitting fortnight before subsequently acknowledging one, and framed that reversal as confirmation the government had lost control [TA-260326-senate-fe3f4b93a2a8:s074]. The fuel security attack broadens the Opposition's cost-of-living critique beyond wages and rents into energy and transport, reinforcing the strategic claim that the government's failures span every major household pressure point — cost of living, housing, and now fuel.