Mary Aldred (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

For many years I was honoured to be invited to the annual Gippsland interfaith iftar dinner, which was held in the Latrobe Valley. On Saturday night, I attended the first formal iftar dinner held in the Baw Baw Shire. I deeply appreciate the generosity of spirit behind the invitation to the broader community, which brought people together from different faiths and backgrounds bonded in friendship, respect and shared values that are important to our community in Monash. In an uncertain world, evenings like this remind us that regional communities bring people together.

I particularly want to acknowledge the Baw Baw Islamic Network Australia president, Fahad Zakaria; vice-president, Mansoor Shamsi; secretary, Abdul Mohsi Khan; treasurer, Ali Haidar; and committee members Zahid Khan, Mehreen Syed-Shamsi and Sahrish Rafat for their leadership and for the enormous effort that goes into bringing together this event every year. The themes of iftar, including self-restraint and empathy for those less fortunate, are examples for many people in our community who are able to strongly connect to those themes and messages.

When I was elected to this place, I committed to standing up for farmers in Monash at every opportunity, and that's exactly what I will continue to do. Recently, I've been meeting with a number of local residents and farmers deeply concerned about the impact on prime agricultural farmland, coupled with a lack of social licence, presented by a number of renewable energy projects across West Gippsland.

From Yarragon to Darnum and Trafalgar East, I continue to hear from local residents about the giant battery energy storage projects being proposed smack bang in the middle of prime dairy and horticulture country. The residents concerned have no quarrel with the concept of renewable energy, but it needs to win the community support where it seeks to operate. State and federal renewable energy zones were established with the goal of keeping these projects in designated areas, presumably away from soil that needs to be preserved for the food that we grow and produce and that ends up on tables across the country. Well, these projects are well outside the designated renewable energy zones that have been established, and in some cases they are in bushfire prone areas and near waterways. The proponents have put together a slapdash approach to community engagement, hosting community forums at inconvenient times, like four o'clock in the afternoon when many impacted residents are in their milking sheds and can't step away.

The other issue I have with the way these renewable energy projects are being handled in my community, particularly by the Victorian Labor government, goes to the state-owned and managed State Electricity Commission, which has just purchased the Delburn Wind Farm business. Now, this is not the original and best SEC; it's not the SEC that John Monash was the inaugural chair of and that he used to set Victoria up as a manufacturing powerhouse with the once four now three coal-fired power stations in the Latrobe Valley. This SEC was set up by the Victorian Labor government a couple of years ago. It employs one person in Gippsland. It competes with the private sector. And now it has purchased a wind farm that hasn't been capable of washing its own face as a standalone private enterprise or winning the support of the community in which it is seeking to operate.

The purchase, on behalf of the Victorian taxpayer, was around $700 million—this is not loose change!—and yet this is a state that has a debt greater than the debts of the states of Tasmania, New South Wales and Queensland combined. I don't think anyone in their right mind can argue that this is a good use of taxpayer money, or that taxpayers should be bearing the risk of a project that to date really hasn't been able to stand up.

Our region deserves better. Our community deserves better. Farmers in my region deserve to be treated with respect. Our soil, our prime agricultural land, needs to be better respected and better utilised. The treatment that farmers in my electorate have had to bear from the Victorian and federal Labor governments is just not good enough. To the local residents and farmers in my electorate who have contacted me: I will continue to work with my state coalition colleagues on this. We will stand up and fight for you. It is not good enough. You deserve better, Gippsland deserves better and Australian farmers deserve far better than what they've had so far.

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