Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health) | Link to this | Hansard source

As I've often said in this place, it's a great privilege to represent the electorate of Nicholls in northern Victoria, one of the great food-producing parts of Australia. Recently, I had the great honour to go to a place called Legacy Packing in Cobram for the official relaunch of their state-of-the-art packing facility. The business has invested $30 million in new AI grading technology, delivered in partnership with the company Tomra. It's the largest investment of its kind in the Asia-Pacific region and it will increase the packing facility fivefold. It's a major vote of confidence in Cobram, which is where the facility is, in the Goulburn Valley more generally and also in the citrus industry.

This area grows a lot of oranges and lemons. Now these will be packed here and sent both around Australia and for export. It's strengthening one of Australia's key export regions. Not only is fruit exported from this part of the world but so are dairy products. It gives the local growers the technology to meet the growing demand. There is demand for wonderful Australian produce. Much of the construction and installation was also carried out by local contractors and tradespeople, supporting jobs throughout the region. Legacy Packing will supply this fruit to supermarkets and wholesale markets across Australia and also to China, the USA, Singapore and the UAE.

Investments like this help Australian citrus remain competitive in global markets, and regional communities share those successes. We've also got high-tech investment in the dairy industry and the apple and pear industry and we have some new investments in the processing facility SPC, which is an iconic brand in Australia that processes peaches, pears, apples and also tomatoes.

But I do worry about the future of these industries and the future of investment because of government policies around irrigation water to do with the additions to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan which are incredibly regrettable and passed in the last parliament. These are changes which are making energy more expensive. The government not facilitating particularly the gas industry, which this fruit processing relies on, lack of business confidence and taxes are all threatening these future investments. A major agribusiness operator in northern Victoria who operates very successfully has told me: 'We're doing no more investment in Australia. The government's making it too hard. My investment from now on is going to be over in California.' It hurts me to hear that because that's a lot of jobs and investment that we won't even know we're missing out on. We won't be seeing it.

In addition, just in relation to the state of Victoria, there's a national company that's looking to put its new facility somewhere in Australia. That facility is going to create a lot of jobs and a lot of economic activity wherever it goes. I'm not going to mention what that facility is or what that company is because it was told to me in confidence. They said that they took Victoria off the list straightaway. They will put it maybe in New South Wales, Western Australia or Queensland, but they won't even consider Victoria. The taxes, the government interference and now this proposed work-from-home legislation just mean that Victoria is not an option. As a Victorian, as a person who loves the people I represent and wants to see them do well, it's really regrettable to me that a company would have that attitude. But, sadly, I think that's as a result of the way the Victorian government has conducted itself, and I worry that with the federal government conducting itself in such an anti-business way we're going to see global companies cross Australia off the list when they're looking at their investments.

We talk a lot about workers and rights, as we should, but we've got to have private industry in this country if we're going to have the jobs. So I urge the government to look at these things that they've done, look at this legislation around irrigation water, energy policy, taxes and business confidence and make sure that, when people are considering where they're going to invest, particularly in agribusiness but in all sorts of manufacturing, that they're not crossing Australia off the list because of bad government policy.