Shadow Portfolio — 13 May 2026

Senator Jonathon Duniam, as Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate, moved to block the government's attempt to exempt the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Responding to Exceptional Circumstances) Bill 2026 from the Senate's cut-off order, framing the opposition's resistance as a demand for basic parliamentary process rather than opposition to the bill's substance [TA-260513-senate-d4ffca432415:s009].

The procedural contest centred on the government's claim that the legislation is an urgent response to a fuel crisis — a claim Duniam turned back on the government by recalling its own earlier position that no imminent crisis existed. The opposition's core argument is that the government cannot simultaneously assert emergency necessity and have provided the opposition with minimal briefing on the bill's scope and likely impact.

Duniam also pointed to the COVID-era AdBlue episode as precedent, noting that existing ministerial powers handled that supply disruption without new legislation — a comparison that implicitly questions whether fresh primary legislation is genuinely required here. The opposition's stated position is conditional: it will support appropriate measures once the government provides clarity on necessity, scope, and impact, and it called on the government to schedule parliamentary scrutiny within the current sitting week rather than seeking to bypass it.

The day's activity is limited to this single procedural intervention; no comms stream material was present in the package, and no prior context candidates were supplied, so the broader opposition messaging arc on the fuel crisis and this bill cannot be assessed from available records alone.