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

It's a pleasure to follow my colleague the member for Paterson, with whom I'm pleased to be co-hosting a screening of Just a Farmer, a really important film, next week in this parliament to promote the importance and understanding of mental health in our farming communities.

In the Monash electorate I'm proud to represent a community that grows, makes and manufactures things the rest of our country relies on. When my region does well, the rest of Victoria and Australia succeed. So this week I'm really looking forward to the annual Farm World event. It's one of our largest field days in Australia. I think it's the best field-day event in Australia, and it's the hottest ticket in West Gippsland this week. Farm World is a celebration of our region, the produce and the people that are behind our agricultural sector, and this year it's going to celebrate 59 years. I think, give or take maybe three or four years, I've attended every Farm World event over the last 20 years.

This year it'll run for three days and draw more than 40,000 visitors to our region. We'll see close to 500 exhibitors showcasing 700 brands across 100 acres. It never fails to draw a big crowd, providing an opportunity for local farmers to browse machinery, share best practice, look at the latest technologies, talk with experts and, most importantly, have that peer-to-peer connection which is so important for our regional and agricultural communities. All visitors can browse an array of stalls, showcasing items from lawn mowers to plants and clothing, and enjoy the equestrian showcase, rodeo action and motocross, and see a number of working animals in action. It educates people from the city on regions like Monash—electorates like Monash—which grow and make things the rest of our country rely on. I will be sad to miss the women in ag lunch this Thursday, due to parliamentary commitments, but I know it will be a great success.

I've been working with local farmers who are waiting on fuel orders to arrive. I'm speaking with dairy farmers who have been forced to make several trips a day into town with jerry cans while they're waiting on those fuel orders, because without fuel they can't operate machinery to feed their herds, harvest or irrigate. I know that is causing a lot of mental and emotional stress for local farming families in my electorate of Monash right now. I want to say to them I stand with you, I'm standing up for you and I'm doing everything I can to back our community through this fuel crisis.

Added to this stress, a number of farmers from my electorate have also reported diesel thefts from their properties. These farmers are already paying through the roof for fuel, and now they're facing thieves on their farms. I know of a number of situations where farmers are sleeping next to machinery or driving all the equipment off farm, as far as 30 minutes away, to guard against thieves drilling into tractor fuel tanks and siphoning diesel. I want to acknowledge Krowera farmer Shane Uren, who had 250 litres stolen from a tractor at 2 am on Friday; Nyora farmer Russell Follett, who last week discovered a drill hole in his tractor's fuel tank; and Krowera farmer Andrew Thomas, who's also had some concerning incidents on his farm.

I want to say also that I am a huge supporter of agricultural field days across Australia, along with Farm World. There are around 35 agricultural field days across our country, and they play an incredibly important role in sharing best practice, availing farmers of the latest technology and providing that really important peer-to-peer support. That's why I'm backing calls from the Association of Agricultural Field Days of Australasia for the federal government to step up and recognise events like Farm World in my electorate as essential regional infrastructure. We know these events are key to Australia remaining a world-class provider and producer of food and fibre, and I want that contribution to be recognised, understood and supported at a federal government level.

Collectively, those 35 national field days represent over a million visitors annually, 20,000-plus participating businesses, $2 billion plus in facilitated trade every year and $120 million in regional economic output, and they have over 50 per cent farmer attendance. Many of these events have operated continuously since the late 1800s and remain a critical economic driver for federal electorates like mine. But since COVID, with flood, drought and bushfire, with operating costs increasing up to 300 per cent and with a reduced capacity for sponsorship, a lot of these field days are under great strain, and that's why I'm standing up on their behalf.

See this speech in context