Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I've been accused of being 'irresponsible' and 'gutless' by Zoe Daniel. She's accused me of that because I stick up for the people who send me here, to Canberra, to represent them. Maybe if she had done a little bit more of that herself when she was a one-term, one-time member for Goldstein, maybe she'd be here and she could say it to my face. But you know what? I'm not going to listen to the likes of Zoe Daniel. I'm going to listen to the likes of Tracey O'Reilly from Gregadoo, Kerry Langfield from Mangoplah and Leanne Dunn from Talbingo. They are worried about battery energy storage systems, which are cropping up in their neighbourhood. I'm going to listen to the likes of Jasmin Jones, the Yass Valley mayor, who was out the front of Parliament House this morning and who said: 'Don't decimate it on this insane quest of virtue signalling when we're doing all the heavy lifting in the regions for our metro mates. We're already keeping the lights on. We're already doing our heavy lifting, but there are things that we need to look out for, and those things include how do we fight bushfires in Yass Valley surrounded by a thousand turbines. That's what's proposed. We're already doing the heavy lifting for our metro mates. Please consider how we put two farmers—one who has 90 turbines on their property, making a lot of money, and their neighbour with no benefit in the same RFS truck and get them to go and fight a fire that probably is also including an area with BESS storage and lithium batteries and send them home to their families safe. Enough is enough for our regions.' They're the sort of people I'll be sticking up for.