Shadow Portfolio — 1 April 2026

The Member for Dawson, Mr Willcox, used a parliamentary debate to highlight an acute operational crisis affecting the Kidney Support Network transport service in Mackay — a volunteer-led service that runs six days a week from 6 am to 9 pm to move renal patients to and from essential dialysis treatment [TA-260401-house-6ae0f5f9fd41:s098]. Mr Willcox argued the service is being squeezed from two directions simultaneously: record fuel prices are deterring volunteer drivers from continuing in their roles, while falling donations — caused by broader cost-of-living pressures on donor families — are stripping the Network of the revenue it needs to sustain operations [TA-260401-house-6ae0f5f9fd41:s098].

The combined effect, he told the House, is that the Network has already been forced to turn away new clients and now faces the prospect of suspending services entirely. Mr Willcox called on the government to provide immediate emergency relief funding and to extend targeted fuel subsidies to transport-reliant charities, arguing that the existing fuel excise reduction is too blunt an instrument to address the severity of the crisis confronting essential volunteer-led services [TA-260401-house-6ae0f5f9fd41:s098].

The intervention frames cost-of-living and fuel price pressures not as abstract economic indicators but as direct threats to life-sustaining healthcare access in regional Queensland — a framing that ties the government's fuel and cost-of-living policy record to concrete patient welfare outcomes.