Shadow Portfolio — 26 March 2026

The Member for Dawson, Mr Willcox, ran two coordinated lines of attack across 25–26 March — a regional fuel crisis and a deficient trade outcome for sugar growers — with his parliamentary speech on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Doubling Penalties for ACCC Enforcement) Bill 2026 extending and amplifying the same fuel arguments he laid down in the adjournment debate the previous evening.

The fuel attack is the dominant theme. Mr Willcox framed the crisis explicitly as a distribution failure rather than a supply shortage, noting that the Minister for Climate Change and Energy had himself stated Australia holds more fuel in-country than before the Iran incident [TA-260326-house-acd3ee5310f1:s028]. On that framing, the government's legislative vehicle — doubling ACCC penalties — is the wrong instrument: Mr Willcox argued the ACCC has not undertaken meaningful enforcement to date, so lifting the penalty ceiling changes nothing in practice [TA-260326-house-acd3ee5310f1:s028].

His alternative ask was direct: he called on the Treasurer to direct the ACCC to prosecute fuel price gouging, pointing to a 40-cent bowser price jump in a single afternoon and a two-week lag between global wholesale movements and local retail prices [TA-260325-house-8e0b2c08f739:s099].

To put independent data behind the attack, Mr Willcox launched nofuelhere.com.au, a live community reporting tool that allows constituents to log fuel unavailability at individual service stations [TA-260325-house-8e0b2c08f739:s099]. By the time he rose to speak on the bill the following day, the tool had recorded over 500 service stations as out of fuel [TA-260326-house-acd3ee5310f1:s028].

The tool is strategically significant: it gives the opposition a data stream independent of official Canberra reporting, enabling ongoing pressure with crowd-sourced evidence. Mr Willcox also opposed any fuel rationing regime for regional Australia, arguing it would be unworkable across electorates exceeding 400 kilometres in length and would simply push constituents into long drives searching for supply.

On legislative process, Mr Willcox accused the government of tabling an amendment to the bills and demanding passage without adequate scrutiny, describing this as a failure of transparency and democratic accountability [TA-260326-house-acd3ee5310f1:s028]. This procedural attack adds a second dimension to the opposition's position: even members willing to engage on the substance can object to the process.

The second line — the Australia–EU Free Trade Agreement sugar outcome — was pressed in the adjournment debate on 25 March. Mr Willcox cited a CANEGROWERS assessment that Australian cane growers secured less than 2 per cent of Europe's sugar import requirement, well below the access Brazil secured through the Mercosur agreement, with no expansion pathway [TA-260325-house-8e0b2c08f739:s099].

The framing is generational: he characterised the deal as locking growers into a poor outcome for decades. This sits in agriculture and trade rather than the fuel and energy territory dominating the bill debate, but both lines converge on a common strategic argument — that the government is leaving regional Australians exposed, whether through inadequate trade negotiation or an inadequate crisis response.