Shadow Portfolio — 23 March 2026

The Member for Cook, Mr Kennedy, used two separate House interventions on 23 March to press a single argument: that the government is failing to build the enabling conditions for Australia to compete in artificial intelligence and energy security. In the procedural debate, Mr Kennedy acknowledged the AI Safety Institute as sound policy but denied it represented a new initiative, pointing to the coalition government's publication of Australia's AI Action Plan on 18 June 2021 as a substantially equivalent predecessor [TA-260323-house-068fade26cde:s112].

The attack was calibrated — accepting the policy object while disputing the government's claim to novelty and strategic leadership.

The substantive critique went well beyond provenance. Mr Kennedy argued Australia is losing the global AI race against the United States and China because the government has not delivered lower-cost energy, secured semiconductor access, or fast-tracked data-centre permitting [TA-260323-house-068fade26cde:s112]. The energy argument was grounded in electorate-level evidence: retail energy costs up 40 per cent and manufacturing energy costs up as much as 100 per cent in the Cook electorate, which Mr Kennedy presented as a direct barrier to private capital flowing into AI infrastructure [TA-260323-house-068fade26cde:s112].

He also identified industrial unions' influence on AI policy as a structural competitive disadvantage, touching a recurring Coalition framing that links industrial relations settings to economic underperformance in technology-intensive sectors.

Despite the sharpness of the critique, Mr Kennedy's closing position was constructive: the Opposition signalled readiness to partner with the government on a comprehensive AI and energy strategy, provided the government commits to lower-cost energy, chip security, fast-tracked data-centre approvals, and copyright arrangements to support frontier model development in Australia [TA-260323-house-068fade26cde:s112].

That conditional offer is strategically significant — it keeps the Opposition inside the policy conversation on AI while maximising pressure on the government's energy record.

The energy theme carried directly into question time. Mr Kennedy asked the Minister for Climate Change and Energy whether the minister had been briefed by state or territory governments on fuel rationing in response to a reported NSW fuel crisis [TA-260323-house-068fade26cde:s218]. The question linked the broader argument about energy affordability and reliability made in the procedural debate to an acute, immediate supply concern in New South Wales.

Together, the two interventions present a coherent day's positioning: the government is failing on energy as both a structural economic enabler and an immediate supply-security matter, and that failure has direct consequences for Australia's capacity to attract AI investment and remain competitive globally.