Shadow Portfolio — 26 March 2026

The Member for Cook, Mr Kennedy, used the second reading debate on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Doubling Penalties for ACCC Enforcement) Bill to register qualified support while pressing a more urgent relief agenda for transport operators hit by fuel price inflation [TA-260326-house-acd3ee5310f1:s030]. Mr Kennedy did not oppose doubling ACCC penalties — his critique was one of pace and scope: the measure arrives too slowly to prevent immediate harm to families and to trucking businesses he described as already at the edge of insolvency.

He cited two specific trucking companies he had spoken to that week as evidence the sector could not wait for enforcement mechanisms to work their way through supply chains. His alternative-policy pitch centred on fuel excise adjustment and road-user charging as instruments the government should have been examining to deliver quicker relief, embedding an infrastructure and transport dimension into what the bill frames as a competition-enforcement instrument.

Mr Kennedy's wider argument framed Australia's vulnerability to the fuel price spike as a structural economic problem pre-dating the immediate crisis [TA-260326-house-acd3ee5310f1:s030]. He contended that elevated inflation and interest rates relative to comparable advanced economies — he named the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan — left Australia less resilient and more exposed when international fuel prices moved.

The framing positions the government as having been caught unprepared, rather than unlucky, and implies the bill is an inadequate substitute for macro-economic management that should have occurred earlier. This is a consistent opposition line — accepting the direction of a government measure while arguing it is belated, narrow, and insufficient — and it gives Mr Kennedy room to vote for the bill while maintaining a critique of the government's overall economic stewardship.

Separately, Mr Kennedy used a procedural statement to highlight community achievements in his electorate, acknowledging Bate Bay beaches winning Best Beach of the Year in Australia for 2026, a youth-led clean-up of Cronulla Beach that collected more than 12,000 pieces of rubbish, and the 30-year-old Shark Island Swim open-water event [TA-260326-house-acd3ee5310f1:s100].

He attributed the beach award to volunteer environmental stewardship across four local surf clubs and noted a 91-year-old participant in the swim. The statement is constituency-facing rather than policy-facing and carries no cross-portfolio signal.