Member for Mallee Dr Anne Webster has welcomed the Coalition commitment to a National Food Security Plan which places farming squarely as the primary industry for regional Australia.

“Mallee families are being forced to pay more at the supermarket checkout because food manufacturing costs are higher and there are mounting threats to farming families, farming communities and our food security,” Dr Webster said.

“Labor has been railroading regional communities in their reckless rush to renewables and shambolic approach to securing social licence, be it the Victorian Labor-run VNI West project or enticing cowboy operators to divide farming families and communities through secret deals and a tokenistic approach to consultation.”

“Under the Albanese Labor Government, the cost of everything has gone up. The Coalition’s National Food Security Plan will make it easier for farmers and primary producers to run their businesses, ease cost-of-living pressures in Mallee and establish the importance of farmers being able to continue to feed the nation and the world.”

The Plan will be underpinned by a Coalition Government’s $20 billion Regional Australia Future Fund, to grow local economies, build infrastructure and local facilities and deliver the essential services communities need, that are local and affordable.

The Plan’s first actions include;

• ‍Protecting food producing land and water – Stopping Labor’s water buybacks and preventing Labor’s reckless overbuild of industrial renewables and transmission lines.
• ‍Biosecurity – Legislating minimum funding for biosecurity, introducing import container levies, not taxing farmers to pay for the risk of importers.
• ‍Getting the workers Australia needs from paddock to plate – Reinstating the Agriculture Visa, reviewing the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility Scheme, investing in more apprentices and reversing damaging aspects of Labor’s complex industrial relations reforms.
• ‍Cheaper, cleaner and consistent energy – Delivering a balanced energy mix that is 44 per cent cheaper than Labor’s plan, establishing an East Coast Gas Reservation, delivering lower energy prices by decoupling and unlocking gas, investing in infrastructure to get gas where and when it is needed.
• ‍Advancing sovereign manufacturing capabilities – Establishing a $20 billion Regional Australia Future Fund and developing a regional manufacturing roadmap.
• Logistics – Delivering major investment in roads and key freight routes and getting the Inland Rail project moving again.
• ‍Slashing the regulatory burden on farmers and across the supply chain – Abolishing Scope 3 emissions reporting, fast tracking environmental assessment and approvals.
• ‍Fairness for farmers at the farmgate and families at the supermarket checkout – Legislating  ‘big stick’ divestiture competition laws, tough new $2 million on-the-spot fines for supermarkets who do the wrong thing, establishing a Supermarket Commissioner to confidentially take up complaints, work with the ACCC to take action and stop exploitation and conduct random supermarket audits.

 “The only way to bring prices down at the checkout is to put downward pressure on costs right along the supply chain,” Dr Webster said.

 “Only the Coalition has a meaningful plan to support our food producers, which will ensure stronger regional, rural and remote communities.”

 An elected Dutton-Littleproud Coalition Government will task the Department of Agriculture to develop the comprehensive National Food Security Plan, supported by an Industry Advisory Committee.  The Plan will deliver an interim report within the first six months of a Coalition government being elected.

 Securing the food supply chain is part of the Coalition’s plan to get Australia back on track.

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