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

I'm very pleased to have the opportunity to address this motion. I'm proud to represent a region that grows, makes and manufactures things the rest of Victoria and, indeed, Australia look to. Energy is an essential component of everything that we produce in the Monash electorate and the broader Gippsland region. Twenty-three per cent of our national milk output comes from the Gippsland region, as does 26 per cent of Victoria's beef production. The clean, green horticultural produce and the manufactured goods—the meats, the proteins—that come from our region all rely on sustainable, secure energy supply. Those answers lie above and below the ground in many regions across Australia. In my region, I don't have the power stations—my colleague the member for Gippsland, by a few kilometres, has the power stations and the infrastructure—but I'm very proud to represent the people that work in those power stations: the once four and now three Latrobe Valley power stations.

When we're addressing the issue of sovereign capability and when we're addressing the associated issues of being able to keep our lights on and our businesses running, those power stations have an important role to play. In just the next two years, by 2028, the Yallourn Power Station is scheduled for closure. That power station represents about 22 per cent of Victoria's baseload electricity, and I don't know where that replacement capacity is going to come from. The Victorian Labor government don't have a clear, coherent plan for where that electricity—that cheap, abundant electricity that's set Victoria up as a manufacturing state—is going to be replaced. There are hundreds of jobs and a broader ecosystem of small and family businesses that rely on that quantum of heavy industry, as they do in many regions. And with all due respect to everybody who comes to this place with, I think, good intentions, I wish that a number of the teal representatives in this place would apply the same vigour and zeal they show standing up on behalf of technology billionaires to standing up for regional communities and regional jobs, as I do for my area.

As well as electricity, gas is an essential part of feedstock in regions like mine, and I'll give a shout out to Radfords Meats. They've been operating in West Gippsland, in Warragul, for 80 years. Robbie Radford's the managing director. The family-run business was started by his father. They need gas for their refrigerators. They need gas for their boilers. If I go across to South Gippsland, where we have a number of dairy processors, they need gas as an essential part of what they do.

Energy is a very big part of what we're talking about when we address sovereign capability, but it also flows through to essential products like fertiliser. The Latrobe Valley has the largest single deposit of brown coal in the Southern Hemisphere. Not all of that will continue to generate electricity—there are some terrific prospects for coal to fertiliser and coal to diesel—but the reckless disregard of the Victorian state government, when it comes to jobs and economic security presented by some of those projects, has been reprehensible. There was a project a few years ago now where the proponent spent six years and millions of dollars and got nowhere, thanks to Lily D'Ambrosio, the Victorian energy minister. The proponent took that project across to New Zealand and got done in six months what they couldn't get done in Victoria in six years.

When you're talking about sovereign capability, fertiliser is essential for farmers. Fuel is essential for farmers. I've had too many conversations over the last few months with farmers at financial and emotional breaking points because these issues have not been dealt with satisfactorily. That is why I will stand up on behalf of local farming families. That is why I will stand up on behalf of manufacturing businesses in my electorate. And that is why I will stand up and pay my respect to the power station workers in the Latrobe Valley who have kept our lights on and kept our businesses running and far too often fail to get the respect, recognition and regard that their efforts deserve.

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