I am proud to have taken Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to task in Question Time this week in Canberra on behalf of Mallee farmers concerning his misrepresentations during his Bush Summit appearance at Ballarat last Friday.

I was equally proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with those farmers protesting outside the Summit on Friday, as they voiced their objection to Federal and State Labor Governments disrespecting them, their property rights and their right to farm

For those with delicate sensitivities I will paraphrase, rather than directly quote, the Prime Minister because Mr Albanese told farmers in Ballarat ‘I won’t BS people’.

The Prime Minister’s answers to my questions to him in Question Time were, shall we say, particularly offensive.

The PM told the Bush Summit audience that he was the ‘first Prime Minister to visit Horsham in forty years’.  A couple of years ago the PM opened a riverfront project I had secured funding for under the former Coalition Government, but Labor excluded me from the opening.  I attended a farmer-led protest at that opening, during the early days of a building protest movement from St Arnaud, Charlton, Bendigo, Melbourne, Canberra and now to Ballarat.

The Prime Minister exposed his own BS telling Parliament he was the first PM to visit in 40 years. Former Prime Minister Abbott was in Horsham on Thursday 12 March 2015 to expand Horsham’s cancer centre, announcing $1 million in funding for the Wimmera Oncology Unit.

I will call out the Prime Minister and Labor’s misrepresentations about Mallee, in the energy debate and beyond because that is my job in Opposition, to hold the government to account.

As I wrote recently in this column about Mallee people feeling invisible under Labor, I take my hat off to our farmers who have worked with me raising their profile in the national media so they are seen and heard.

Meanwhile, for 6 years I have continuously tackled our invisibility without a local TV news service and further lobbied WIN television and others this fortnight in Canberra. I am optimistic about a breakthrough.