I was honoured to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Mallee farmers and community members in Ballarat who turned out in force on Friday protesting the appearance of Prime Minister Albanese and Premier Allan.

Farmers are angry at Labor’s cunningly named ‘Emergency Services Volunteer Fund’ Levy, $8,000 fines if they don’t open their farm gate for TCV to force the VNI-West transmission line through their farm, $6000 for removing a TCV sign on their farm fence, and taxes on unrealised capital gains on-farm.

I stand with Mallee residents because they are right, they are suffering injustices and are receive zero respect from either Labor Federal or State Governments.

This brings me to two letters to the editor last Wednesday by Tom Parkes of Stawell on energy policy and Robert Blakeley of Horsham on super taxes.

Tom criticised the National Party’s energy policy, even though it is in tune with the Northern Grampians community. As I process Mallee’s Biggest Survey results, the inconvenient truth for him is that over half of Northern Grampians respondents do not support Labor’s unattainable 2030 target of 83% ‘renewables’ as our energy source, nor do they back a 2050 ‘net zero’ target, and 62 per cent do not want to pay a cent for ‘net zero’ – but they already are!

Five years out from the 2030 target, only the Labor PR machine is saying we will get there. Experts say we will not reach 2030 or 2050 targets without tripling the current rollout pace. Brace yourselves for future power bill shocks.

Tom claims the Coalition had no credible alternative energy policy, when our policy last election was 44 per cent less - $263 billion cheaper - than Labor’s potentially $1 trillion ‘renewables only’ policy.

Meanwhile, Robert says farm value increases in recent years justify taxing unrealised capital gains.  Robert forgets drought conditions in the district and growing asset values do not equate to increased income.  If Robert’s home suddenly increased in value, should he be forced to sell?  I don’t think so.