Late August 2024 The Albanese Labor government crow about increasing wages and subsidies for childcare, but Mallee families are stranded in a childcare desert, with long waiting lists or – in some towns – no childcare service at all. Childcare is an essential service in modern, regional Australia – without it, young families will leave…
DetailsLate August 2024 While the Albanese Labor government crow about increasing wages and subsidies for childcare, Mallee families are stranded in a childcare desert, with long waiting lists or – in some towns – no childcare service at all. Childcare is an essential service in modern, regional Australia – without it, young families will leave…
DetailsAugust 2024 After a whirlwind of winter visits across the Mallee electorate I have returned to Canberra for a sitting fortnight and in the first week I was talking about Labor’s ‘Future Made in Australia’ Bill, likening Labor’s use of the term ‘Made in Australia’ to Mickey Mouse’s sorcerer’s apprentice in Disney’s 1940 classic, Fantasia.…
Details7-9 August 2024 I am grateful to the many farmers and community members who came to see me at the Mallee Machinery Field Days at Speed on Wednesday and Thursday last week. Farmers are rightfully angry about mining and energy projects, and other threats to their ability to feed and clothe the nation and the…
Details28 July 2024 – 3 August 2024 Prime Minister Albanese’s Sunday ministerial shuffle of the deck chairs reminds me of the movie Titanic. Musicians played on as a bewildered captain wades to the wheelhouse and the ship sinks into the Atlantic. The foreseeable iceberg of Labor regulation and spending has torn a hole in the…
DetailsJuly 2024 Small businesses across Mallee have been telling me exactly what new data is indicating – more than half of them are considering closing their doors under the weight of the Albanese Labor Government’s policies. The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (ACCI) Small Business Conditions Survey 2024 found that 57 per cent of…
Details25 June 2024 The lack of rain to the region hasn’t just wrecked the start to the cropping season for farmers, the lack of wind has been miserable for so-called wind ‘farms’ as well. Our first ‘wind drought’ since 2017 highlights what the Germans call dunkelflaute, or the ‘dark doldrums’ for renewable energy where the…
DetailsAs the Federal parliamentary sitting year resumes in Canberra, Labor is dragging my Coalition colleagues and I into debating again the tax cuts that we passed five years ago in Government – with Labor’s support! Fresh from a divisive, half-a-billion-dollar doomed referendum in 2023, this distracted Labor Government had a mid-January crisis brainstorm about tax…
DetailsThis week I met with the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) to talk about mining projects in Mallee and the potential impact on prime agricultural land. Projects such as mineral sands mining or construction of transmission lines require proponents to complete a state Environmental Effects Statement (EES) on the possible impacts their development may have…
DetailsThe Productivity Commission has confirmed just how valuable agriculture is to Australia. Last week the commission released a paper titled Productivity Growth and Wages – a Forensic Look which laid bare the importance of the sector. This paper highlighted that while agriculture – combined with mining – accounted for just over 4 per cent of…
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