Anne Webster
Mallee · National Party · Australia
“The government's first duty is to protect its citizens and, arguably, its most vulnerable citizens—in this case, children. Today that duty extends into a digital world, where the playground has actually moved online and where too often it is unpoliced and unsafe.”
“We know that, despite the ban, large numbers of children are still accessing these platforms because enforcement has been weak and the regulator has not been given the tools it needs.”
“They worry about exposure to violent content; harmful algorithms; cyberbullying; scams; predatory, paedophilic behaviour; and the relentless pressure that social media can place on young people's mental health. These concerns are real, and they deserve to be taken seriously.”
“For many young Australians, social media is where they access news, educational content and creative learning. It's where they stay connected with friends and family. It is where they participate in their communities and engage in public debate.”
“My constituent asks that there be some sort of agency or protocol where these accounts can be collated, investigated and closed where applicable.”
“Labor rejected it and then, in the 2024 budget, accepted it. We pledged in June 2024 that we would deliver the under-16s social media ban, which Labor, thankfully, copied.”
The complete record
Every one of 760 lines we hold for Anne Webster, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 14 of 16.
“This bill will provide all families, up to a combined income of $533,000, with access to 72 hours a fortnight of subsidised child care. For Indigenous families this will be increased to a maximum of 100 hours a fortnight of subsidised child care. It sticks in the craw of rural families in child care deserts that Australians on a combined income of more than $500,000 get government subsidised childcare support but they cannot access a cracker because they are in a childcare desert. The coalition will oppose this legislation. This bill is flawed in a number of ways. It increases access—or demand—without addressing supply issues. It removes priority access for working families. It disincentivises aspiration to be working, studying or volunteering if not taking care of one's children.”
“It proposes to expand eligibility to subsidised care by removing the activity test for three days a week, so that families who need child care so they can work will be competing against families who may not be working, studying or volunteering at all. When the former coalition government introduced the activity test in 2018 it was designed to encourage workforce participation. It was also designed to ensure priority of access was given to vulnerable families alongside working families. Members on this side of the House firmly believe in providing support to those most in need, and that is why when the activity test was introduced it included several exemptions for children and families with increased need for care.”
“Let me remind us that the families I described previously across the electorate of Mallee are families who are struggling to buy their own homes or, owing to the high cost of rent, which is now 17 per cent higher than it was before this government came to office, with health costs that have increased by 10 per cent in the same period, electricity prices that have increased 32 per cent and gas prices that have increased by 34 per cent. These are families who need two incomes to survive. They need to work and they need child care to work. They can't get the child care they need, and they need it now. This bill proposes to make taxpayer-subsidised child care available to a larger pool of families.”
“Some families tell me they may leave the district if a solution isn't reached soon. Healthcare workers and their professional organisations frequently tell me that a lack of access to child care is a major barrier to getting the doctors, nurses, physios and other professionals we desperately need in rural and regional towns to provide essential health care. As the shadow assistant minister for regional health, I see childcare access, which relies on childcare supply, as a key strategy in boosting the health workforce in our regions.”
“Dedicated Rainbow community member 41-year-old Katherine Durant and her farmer husband, Ben, have two boys under six years old. Ben works seven days a week and up to 16 hours a day, leaving Katherine to sole parent. Katherine says: You just have to look at the faces of the rural women with small children during cropping and harvest. They are doing the best they can and, like me, probably cry every day in frustration. But we do it. We shut up and we do it. The lack of child care in Rainbow and Jeparit leaves nurses and teachers unable to return to work in a desperately needed workforce. This is a common issue across regional, rural and remote Australia—gaps in childcare coverage. Left unaddressed, they threatened the future viability of rural, regional and remote towns.”
“In Gannawarra shire late last year, 86 children were waiting for a place in long day care, with some waiting since January 2023. Meanwhile 42 Cohuna and Leitchville families have been waiting for family day care places since May 2022. In Wimmera Southern Mallee, at one point there were 300 children on local waiting lists and 84 additional staff needed to meet the demand. According to data collected by the By Five Early Years Initiative, in many rural towns with populations of less than 5,000 people, there is no childcare service at all. So waitlists alone do not tell the tale of the huge hole that is hurting families. There is no waitlist for a service that doesn't even exist. Wimmera families and councils have been left to fend for themselves.”
“1 priority is to have a date to work towards after the Victorian government made an in principle commitment to establishing the town's first childcare centre sometime in 2027 or 2028—a long way off when families need care now. Funnily enough, the very day the shadow minister and I were meeting Cohuna residents about their childcare desert, the Allan Labor government mysteriously finally set a date for when the childcare centre would open there. Beulah's Heather Sherwell has two young children and says of the lack of child care: We're essentially killing small towns … we've got to choose between, does one of us stop working, does a farm lose an essential worker … or whether we just have to pack up and forget about everything we've built.”
“In Hopetoun, mothers told us of the mental health struggles they have endured not being able to obtain child care for their children. The local provider ceased operations recently and the local shires of Yarriambiack and Hindmarsh have been working hard with Wimmera Southern Mallee Development's By Five Early Years Initiative to strengthen child care in the region. I'm working with them at the state and federal levels to cut through the red tape and promote policy that will bring sustainable child care to the region. By Five reports that over 50 per cent of the Wimmera Southern Mallee alone is considered a childcare desert. Cohuna residents and stakeholders said their No.”
“So much so that, in October 2024, I invited the shadow minister for early childhood education, Angie Bell, to my electorate to meet with families in the desert, visiting Robinvale, Cohuna, Hopetoun and Beulah. Parents came to see Angie and me to share their personal grief and struggles at not being able to find childcare places locally or within 100 kilometres driving distance. At Robinvale, for instance, there is just one service run by Murray Valley Aboriginal Co-operative, which takes all children from the community. Robinvale is one of Mallee's worst childcare deserts, which are defined as having 'less than one place for every three children needing it'. In Robinvale, there are 10 children needing each place.”
“You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that this will increase demand, and increasing demand without increasing supply is a real issue, especially in the regions where the private market is struggling to meet the needs of communities for childcare services at present. Supply is already an issue in the regions. While the Albanese Labor government crows about increasing wages and subsidies for child care, Mallee families are stranded in a childcare desert, with long waiting lists, and, in some towns, no childcare service at all. There's nothing to crow about in the childcare deserts, just crows squawking with no childcare place in sight. I have been meeting and listening to families all over Mallee about the challenges they face in childcare deserts. Mallee parents regularly contact me desperately seeking help.”
“When it comes to the legislation before us this evening, the question must be asked: does this bill help working families who are doing it tough in a cost-of-living crisis, trying to make ends meet and put food on their table? And, importantly, does it help working families living in rural and regional parts of the country, who are frequently unable to access the child care that they need? Unsurprisingly, the answer is no. If this bill passes, families, particularly rural, regional and remote families who need child care so they can work, will be competing against families who will now be eligible for taxpayer subsidised access but may not be working, studying or volunteering at all.”
“That's the nasty, vindictive behaviour by Labor in Mallee. Labor intend to punish regional Australians for supporting a sensible approach to energy policy, all so Labor can keep living their out-of-sight out-of-mind wind turbine fantasies in the inner cities. I commend Peta Credlin from Sky News, and the Weekly Times for sharing my constituents' stories. Come out and take a look at the industrial wasteland Labor is creating on our paradise—our Grampians, our Wimmera plains and our Gannawarra wetlands. Australian voters can't wait for the election, and neither can I. Bring it on.”
“As one older lady said at a public meeting I attended in Warracknabeal in my electorate, admitting she's not a very good shot, if a farmer shot an eagle they would be prosecuted, yet somehow, if a wind turbine chops one up, that's good for the environment, or it's okay with the activists. Let's not forget that popular Counting Crows song, often wistfully sung by would-be environmentalists, bemoaning that 'they paved paradise and put up a parking lot'. Well, in my electorate of Mallee, they're wrecking paradise and building a very large pincushion, a pincushion of wind turbines, to punish Mallee voters for having the common sense to see Labor's energy pipedream for what it is. Labor are punishing the sensible Australians who yelled to the emperor that he isn't wearing any clothes and throwing them in the political clink.”
“Nobody has a crystal ball, and it's fanciful to suggest that, in decades or centuries to come, wind turbines will be a permanent fixture in our oceans, mountains and landscapes. They will become redundant and they will need to be removed. Requiring a rehabilitation bond is surely environmentally responsible. The political children on the crossbench, principally the Greens, like to hop up and down and demand that miners rehabilitate land if mines go ahead. We have state laws that require that rehabilitation. It is the law of the land. Yet somehow if it's an energy project, such as wind turbines, no, the Greens go missing. Don't impose environmental rehabilitation requirements on wind projects! God forbid!”
“Let's remember that the onshore turbines proposed for my electorate are at this stage potentially up to 280 metres high, 17 metres short of the Eureka Tower in Melbourne, one of Australia's tallest buildings. As I said earlier this week in the House, there's a turbine over 350 metres high proposed for Germany right now, which, if built here in Australia, would make it one of the nation's tallest constructions. These energy cowboys, foreign owned companies, want to put massive turbines offshore. It seems to me that the member for Nicholls's bill—and I disclose an interest, a very passionate and strong interest, in the genesis of that bill—is a perfectly reasonable proposition. If you're putting gigantic infrastructure on Australian shores, you need to put down the money to show you'll rehabilitate them when they are finished.”
“King Canute was actually trying to demonstrate that his power had limits and that nature, or God in his context, had a supremacy he could not counteract. But not the Albanese government, not the energy minister—they'll yell that renewables are the cheapest form of electricity, because they hope that, if they say it enough, the lie will become the truth. I want to commend my colleague the member for Nicholls for moving a bill, the Requiring Energy Infrastructure Providers to Obtain Rehabilitation Bonds Bill 2024. The premise of the bill is a simple one. I have mentioned energy cowboys, the foreign owned companies that come and build projects. But who knows if they'll still be around to clean up the mess if they've gone broke, leaving these huge turbines in the ground, rusting away.”
“We know there is a rush for Labor's political target, a hypothetical emissions reduction target that is hurting every Australian in their power bills—a mad rush to a renewables future because Labor have thrown dirt in the face of coal and gas and said, 'Get out of our country!' 'Nick off,' they say. 'We've got abundant wind and solar.' There's one problem. The wind doesn't blow at the precise moment everyone has their air conditioners on in the peak of summer when the sun has gone down. It's very thoughtless of the sun and wind to do that—to not shine and blow when Labor want them to for their supposedly green dreams! I can picture the minister, frustrated by the setting sun, saying, 'How will renewables be the cleanest form of energy if you keep going down all the time?' It's like King Canute yelling at the tide, a footnote in history.”
“This vindictive brand of Labor that we currently have at federal and Victorian levels takes the insult one further. They determined that Mallee would be the state's primary renewable energy zone. There were going to be six REZs—renewable energy zones—but three of them suddenly vanished. Two others are in Mallee, and the other will point the foreign owned wind turbine cowboys to Wannon. But the big purple patch on the Labor REZ map is absolutely Mallee. 'Go bulldoze your way through Mallee,' they tell the foreign owned wind turbine cowboys. 'Pretend you care, but go your hardest. Conduct a fig leaf consultation, but, hey, we've got your back. We'll fast-track the laws; we'll have sham environmental approvals so you can get through.' Why?”
“When asked whether they thought our energy system should prioritise reducing emissions, ensuring electricity is affordable or ensuring reliable supply, 57 per cent backed affordability. I don't think this Labor government gets it. The Australian people are not mugs, but Labor is trying to take the Australian public for mugs. Australians see their power bills going up, they listen to the energy minister, Chris Bowen, say that renewables are the cheapest form of electricity, and they laugh. It's not, 'Ha ha, that's a funny joke.' It's a nervous laugh, which would be funnier if it weren't so painful. This government is a joke, but it's not the funny kind; it's the sick joke kind. I can tell you that Mallee voters cannot wait to render their verdict at the ballot box. It gets worse, though.”
“I surveyed thousands of voters in my Mallee electorate and asked, 'Do you support extracting more gas for use in Australia?' This is in Victoria, remember, where the Andrews and Allan Labor governments cripple investment and exploration for gas. Over two-thirds of Mallee voters—68.6 per cent—said, yes, they support extracting more gas for use in Australia. Just 15.7 per cent said no. Incidentally, 46.5 per cent of respondents said that Australia's carbon emissions reduction targets are too high, and 62.5 per cent said they were likely to support nuclear power, like small modular reactors, as part of Australia's future energy mix. This is Australians talking.”
“This is a government waging an ideological war on coal and gas, offering damp squibs to coal and gas miners and workers—for instance, proposing coal-fired workers in the Hunter Valley be re-employed making solar panels. Never mind, that's in Labor's la-la land, where China already dominates the market and nobody in business would go anywhere near trying to take China on without serious subsidies. Labor has weakened the energy grid and Australians are being forced to rely on expensive unreliable renewables without the necessary firming power. Labor has no plan for affordability, no plan for reliability, and certainly no plan to keep the lights—and Aussie families are paying the price. It's time to embrace a balanced energy mix as a cheap, clean and consistent path forward.”
“The coalition's policy is to establish nuclear energy facilities to support energy jobs at existing coal-fired power sites in the existing transmission network. That's the nonsense that those opposite—and their ideological friends in the Greens and Climate 200-backed teals—propagate in Australia. They gaslight Australians that regional people want wind turbines. When you actually ask regional people, farmers facing the imposition of wind turbines, their answer is a 90 per cent no, they don't. That is a fact. Nuclear will not require the 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines across regional Australia that Labor is proposing.”
“Given their track record, either they don't know or they don't care, as long as their cowboy mates in the foreign owned wind turbine industry get to railroad regional communities. You only need to look at their form—not only in my electorate of Mallee, as I was saying earlier this sitting week on the appropriation bill and Victorian Labor's fast-tracking of regulations to turn my electorate into a pincushion of wind turbine projects and a spider's web of transmission lines on prime agricultural land. On transmission lines, let me add that there are people with very interesting lives who listen to parliament and are listening right now. One took it upon themselves to write to me, responding to my earlier speech this week, saying, 'Nuclear energy will require transmission lines just like wind turbines do.' No, that's incorrect.”
“He asked, 'Why is this government running a protection racket?' When you consider that the majority, if not all, of both the offshore and onshore wind turbine proponents are foreign owned, you have to ask if the Albanese government is acting in the national interest. Why are foreign owned energy companies acting like cowboys across Australia, dividing communities with sham consultations, as the member for Wannon said earlier? Why the haste to put this retrospective legislation through the parliament in what may well be the dying days of the Albanese Labor government? Labor still hasn't told us how much offshore wind will cost or how much it will cost on our power bills.”
“Labor's energy approach comes at five times the cost Australians were initially promised. Australians are watching quarterly wholesale prices rise to a level of over $100 per megawatt hour, when Minister Bowen promised that wholesale prices would be just $51 per megawatt hour. Wholesale prices skyrocketed 83 per cent in the past year, with record highs in New South Wales and Queensland. So what was Labor's 2022 pre-election energy modelling? Perhaps it was complete and utter fantasy. Perhaps they accepted their modelling from their cowboy mates in the foreign owned wind turbine industry, for goodness-knows-what benefit to everyday Australians. So we come to this bill, and the shadow minister mentioned in the House a 'protection racket'.”
“As I rise to speak on the Electricity Infrastructure Legislation Amendment Bill 2025, I reflect on where I am standing: the Federation Chamber, the chamber where non-controversial bills land and where non-controversial speeches are made, apparently. The shadow minister for climate change and energy earlier challenged why this bill is being sent to this chamber, which was used for covert purposes earlier in this parliamentary session in Labor's hope that the media weren't watching. Newsflash: they probably are. There's no press gallery here, but I can assure you the Australian public are watching this government very closely on energy policy. They are watching failure after failure from the Albanese Labor government to deliver the $275 reduction in their power prices, which was promised 97 times to help Mr Albanese get into the Lodge.”
“I can only hope the expenditure in this bill might go towards departments and staff who will call out this nonsense on behalf of regional Australians—salt-of-the-earth, hardworking farmers like Glenden Watts, Ben Duxon, Tess Healy, Barry Batters, Gerald Feeney, Andrew Weidemann, Ross Johns and too many more to mention from my electorate who didn't choose this fight. It chose them, and they are fighting. I am fighting alongside them, and I'm grateful to Peta Credlin from Sky News for giving them a platform. I look forward to hosting Peta and shadow minister Ted O'Brien in Mallee before the election to show all Australians the human face and cost of reckless energy policy and the alternatives at our fingertips.”
“Moody's, late last week, confirmed Labor's energy plan could cost up to $230 billion over the next 10 years alone and drive household electricity prices up another 25 per cent in that time. This is yet another independent warning that Chris Bowen's renewables-only approach will continue to hurt Australians, forcing families and businesses to the wall. Chris Bowen promised wholesale prices of $51 per megawatt hour in 2025, but the reality is that Australians' quarterly prices have been in excess of $100 per megawatt hour over the past year. Energy policy failures are why regional Australians are urging their city cousins to desert the Labor-Greens-teal axis, whom, I must add, are backed by the energy barons of Climate 200, the very enablers of this destruction in not only our regional landscapes and lifestyles but our environments.”
“Labor is happy to transform Mallee into an industrial wasteland. The Victorian government has removed from their 2022 report an item that says without offshore wind generation, Labor will need up to 70 per cent of Victoria's agricultural land for their renewable energy objectives. Don't worry: I kept a copy of the document, though they've removed it. With offshore wind in Victoria on the rocks, you could see the wind turbine map of electorates like Mallee rapidly turning into a pincushion. Australians are feeling the pain of this reckless energy transition in their energy bills and will continue to do so. As the coalition revealed late last year, Labor's renewables-only plan will cost almost $600 billion, with the coalition's responsible energy transition being 44 per cent cheaper, at $263 billion.”
“Each turbine, at 280 metres tall, would clock in at number seven in the list of tallest structures in the nation, behind the Sydney and Q1 towers, Australia 108 in Melbourne and three naval communication towers. But wait. It gets worse. A German company is planning to build a turbine 364 metres tall to the tip of its blades. If we had those in Australia, that would be the equal second-highest building in the nation. It's out of sight and out of mind from those inner-city electorates where Labor is competing against the Greens and teal candidates. Labor proposes pincushioning electorates like Mallee with massive turbines. After the Berrybank turbine collapse and other recent safety incidents, you have to ask whether turbines are safe or good for the environment—let alone the potentially devastating impact on agricultural primary industry.”
“I connected with Andrew and, in turn, connected him with Mallee farmers and landholders who are being railroaded by Labor governments and harassed by the foreign energy cowboys Labor has enticed into regional Australia, stirring up bad blood in regional communities and families. Andrew called out those cowboys and sought greater regulation of their behaviour. This has not happened. The unreliability of Labor's energy plan is writ large when you look at the recent collapse of a wind turbine in Berrybank, south of my electorate. These foreign energy cowboys are proposing turbines as tall as 280 metres, which is just 17 metres short of the Eureka Tower in Melbourne.”
“Energy policy is nobody's direct responsibility, just like health policy, as I find all the time as shadow assistant minister for regional health. The national energy arrangements, like the Australia Energy Regulator and the Australian Energy Market Operator, are set up under national, not federal, arrangements. Australia's energy policy is an accountability vacuum, and we all pay as a result. The former coalition government intervened in this accountability vacuum by creating what is now known as the Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner. The first commissioner was Andrew Dyer. Andrew retired relatively recently from the role, and let me put on record my appreciation for his work.”
“The same bureaucrats and boffins in whom we are asked to invest in this bill today back in the early 2000s projected that electricity demand would keep rising. What they didn't foresee is that energy efficiency would improve and the take-up of rooftop solar panels. The gold-plating of the grid, based on false prophecies, saw us all paying early this century for new substations and transformer upgrades, more transmission and distribution lines, investment in network reliability and redundancy, and capacity for peak demand that's rarely used. In Australia's energy policy today, we also see another clear illustration of the need to revisit where we a federation stand as when it comes to responsibility.”
“Labor is dividing the Mallee with duplicated infrastructure that we will not need if we put zero-emission nuclear energy at existing coal-fired power plant sites. Labor forgets that, during the early decades of this century, energy bill payers already paid a fortune to gold-plate our transmission network. Government set reliability standards that were high in order to meet peak-demand events which might occur only a few times a year—namely, those couple of hot weeks we endured recently, when everyone is home in the evening and air conditioners are churning. Into this mix, they've thrown intermittent wind turbines, which cannot guarantee peak generation when it's hot. It's incompetency at a nearly criminal level.”
“While Australians struggle with the cost of living and 27,000 small businesses have gone to the wall under Labor, with energy costs a major factor in failing business viability, Labor pretends that it's $275 permanent energy reduction promise never happened. The arsonists stand there with a bucket of water, pretending they're helping. They toss into the energy crisis bonfire a one-off series of four quarterly payments to somehow nurse their wounded polling through an election. Mark my words: once the election passes, power bills will surge back up again. This government cares far, far more about its own political survival in inner-city electorates than it does about struggling Australians and battling small businesses.”
“In my home state of Victoria, we have a state Labor government as well as the federal Labor government zeroing in on my electorate of Mallee as Labor's dumping ground for bad policy, namely railroading small regional communities and farmers with unwanted wind turbines, solar panels and transmission lines to boot. Don't buy the spin from foreign wind cowboy companies. Over 90 per cent of over 1,800 people who own, work or have close connections with farms oppose renewable projects on farmland according to a recent survey by farming advocacy group Farms for Food. Victorian Labor had six renewable energy zones in their initial plans. Now almost all the singular REZ is landing in Mallee.”
“What about our farmers and fishers and the impact that that reckless energy policy is having on them? Either those agencies are incompetent, or this is a government so blind to its political and ideological energy target that it simply won't listen to sound advice. Worse than the direct taxpayer impact of the government spending in this bill, spending on agencies that are either incompetent or ignored by the government anyway, there are hidden costs to every taxpayer as a consequence of collective energy policy failures at state and federal levels.”
“No nation of the geographic scale of Australia with a tiny emissions profile like Australia's is doing what this blind government is doing with 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines across agricultural electorates like mine with VNI West. Almost every other developed nation is turning to zero emissions nuclear energy for the long term. The coalition has a responsible plan for energy policy. When I look at the almost $179 million in the bill for the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, and the $263 million-plus from the Department of Industry, Science and Resources, and the $33 million for agricultural, fisheries and forestry, I wonder, for that collective taxpayer spending of in excess of $575 million, how nobody has piped up and said: What about nuclear? What about learning from the rest of the world?”
“The promise to reduce energy bills is also broken because Labor are joined at the hip with the Australian Greens political party. Labor didn't run in the Prahran by-election for some bizarre reason, but in the seats that Labor do hold they fret about losing them to the Greens. So Labor rob regions such as mine in Mallee to buy votes in the inner cities, throwing country people under the figurative bus to save themselves from the Greens. Labor thinks that a rapid race to a political carbon emissions reduction target is the smart thing to do. It is not. The Albanese Labor government is turning Australia into an international pariah.”
“The coalition is committed to fighting tooth and nail for everyday Australians to find savings everywhere we can. On that front, I focus today on energy policy, because this is a government that, before they were elected, promised 97 times that they would reduce power bills permanently by $275 per annum. That promise was officially broken on 1 January this year. They hate to talk about it. It was a big promise. It was a bold promise and it is broken. Why is this promise broken? It is because this government couldn't deliver an outcome even if it was gift-wrapped on their doorstep. Yes, that's part of it. Is it broken because this is an incompetent government unready for office and showing no sign of improvement? Yes to that, too.”
“This set of appropriation bills— Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2024-2025, Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2024-2025 and Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 2) 2024-2025—seeks appropriations for a combined $12.1 billion. We on this side of the House care greatly about how taxpayers' money is spent, and an incoming Dutton and Littleproud government will have the nation's first minister for government efficiency, in the form of Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, alongside the future assistant minister for waste reduction, James Stephens. I cannot wait to see them run the ruler over every agency and find efficiencies and, of course, inefficiencies. We know that under the Albanese government the cost of living has increased substantially and real wages are not keeping up.”
“There are 120 businesses that cannot get insurance in Halls Gap, even though there is no instance in history where fire has struck Halls Gap itself. I am working continuously with locals, the insurance industry and my coalition colleagues, including the member for Wannon, who is in the chamber right now, to look at solutions to this emerging wicked problem. Under the Albanese Labor government, insurance costs across the nation have risen 18 per cent. These fires, combined with the impact of recent wildfires in Los Angeles on global reinsurance markets, may combine to push insurance premiums up further and make policies even less accessible.”
“It is indisputable that businesses in Halls Gap are in dire need of government financial support, yet, as of the end of last week, the Allan Labor government had still not requested category D assistance from the Australian government under its Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements, DRFA, despite ongoing advocacy from every angle. Without this request from the Victorian government, Halls Gap businesses cannot access the maximum amount of funding—or any, for that matter—for recovery from these devastating circumstances. Insurance costs for some Halls Gap businesses have almost quadrupled since the Pomonal fires in February 2024, with one business paying $55,000 for public liability insurance, which even then does not cover external fire and does not provide business interruption insurance, the very thing they need.”
“They heard from constituents who tell me that business owners are at breaking point, with many expressing the feeling of being abandoned by the government as they continue to hear reassurances about resilience rather than tangible support. Spending in Halls Gap has dropped by 63 per cent since the fires began compared to the same period last year. At the one-month mark, $13 million in business earnings have been lost. As the fires have persisted, an estimated further $8 million has been lost. The Grampians typically attracts between 1.3 million and 1.7 million visitors annually. However, cancellations are now extending until May 2025. Projections suggest that an ongoing reduction in tourism will see total losses in the region of between $34 million and $103 million over the year. This is simply devastating.”
“Communities near the Grampians National Park have been struck twice in 12 months by natural disaster, after a fire in February 2024 in Pomonal, Dadswell Bridge and Dunkeld, which destroyed 45 homes and cost the local economy an estimated $200 million and hundreds of thousands of tourists. The late-2024 bushfires closed the town of Halls Gap to the public over the lucrative December-January tourist season for 18 days. Some tourist sites remain closed today. Fire related closures are having a cumulative devastating impact on the Halls Gap community, whose small businesses are struggling to stay afloat and are in desperate need of support. I invited Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton, shadow minister Perin Davey and the member for Wannon to Halls Gap.”
“Last week in the House, I briefly highlighted the peril of communities in the southern part of my electorate due to the ongoing impact of bushfires in the Grampians National Park and Little Desert National Park. The first of these fires in the Grampians began 55 days ago, with the initial fire burning for three weeks near the 450-strong community of Halls Gap. The Grampians fire burned 76,000 hectares, destroying four homes to the south in Moyston and Mafeking, 41 outbuildings and 540 kilometres of fencing. The fire also burnt 10,000 hectares of pasture and 1,285 beehives and killed 775 sheep, not to mention the incalculable cost to native flora and fauna. All up, including the subsequent Little Desert fire, which burnt the western two-thirds of that national park, over 230,000 hectares have burnt in the Grampians and Wimmera area.”
“I move: That this House: (1) notes that bushfires have ravaged the Grampians National Park and associated tourist destinations including Halls Gap, Pomonal and Dunkeld in February 2024 and over Christmas 2024, the latter being a critical annual income period for small businesses in the region; (2) acknowledges that to protect lives and property, access to towns and tourist sites like Halls Gap was closed in some cases for weeks, depriving them of tourist visitors; (3) further notes that: (a) businesses have expressed concern that they have been unable to afford, or even access, insurance against bushfire risk notwithstanding that in Halls Gap's case, the town has never itself been struck by bushfire; (b) the region was struck again over the 2025 Australia Day public holiday weekend with further fires in the Little Desert National Park at times threatening Dimboola, which led to further park closures and tourists deterred from remaining in the region; and (c) fires that started over the 2025 Australia Day public holiday weekend have continued to burn in the southern part of the Grampians National Park into February 2025; (4) commends the bravery, commitment and selflessness of Country Fire Authority services and volunteers, farmers, landholders and community members to protect life and property, fighting and containing the fires; and (5) calls upon: (a) all levels of Government to prioritise opening and maintaining access to as much of the Grampians as possible to maximise the social and economic health of the region; (b) State Governments to: (i) provide maximum transparency on the bushfire mitigation efforts they undertake, to assist insurers in determining reasonable insurance premiums; and (ii) fast-track their processes for seeking Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangement assistance from the Commonwealth including Category D support for small businesses affected by fire disaster related closures; (c) the Commonwealth Government to take immediate steps to ensure bushfire insurance is affordable and accessible; and (d) the Commonwealth and Victorian State Governments to implement a marketing strategy to encourage all Australians to consider travelling to the Grampians as soon as possible to support an internationally renowned attraction and the communities that depend on tourism for their survival.”
“Bedridden elderly Australians should not have to fight the system to get the help they need to stay at home. Bloated bureaucracy and inaction on aged-care workforce shortages in the regions are an ongoing failure of this government.”
“I rise to speak this afternoon about the direct impact of bureaucratic failures and an inadequate aged-care workforce on people in acute need of help and support in my electorate of Mallee. I refer to a constituent named Liz who came to me distressed by the red tape and inaction she had encountered regarding access to aged-care services. Liz is an older Australian living at home and has stage 4 metastatic lung cancer. In her words: 'I am bedridden. Surely I am a priority.' When I contacted Centrelink, I found her case had been waiting for more than 309 days. I called Minister Wells to discuss Liz's very acute need for increased support and subsequently worked with staff at the department. She is now receiving the care she needs and can safely remain at home with appropriate support.”
“However, the coalition remains concerned that under the Albanese Labor government it has never been harder or more expensive for women in Australia to access critical primary care. As I said, the GP bulk-billing rate has collapsed. When the coalition left government, bulk-billing was at 88 per cent. It has now fallen to 77 per cent. Patients are now paying record-high out-of-pocket costs to see a doctor during Labor's cost-of-living crisis. This led to more than 1.5 million Australians avoiding seeing their GP in 2023-24 due to cost concerns. What is the outcome of that? What it means is that people live with chronic health conditions for a longer time, inevitably leading to more hospital admissions. While the Labor government wants to brag about the urgent care clinics— (Time expired)”