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IN THE NEWS

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October 14, 2025
‘Gap fee’ at the doctors is $49.14.  Not zero.

Worse still, when asked ‘when will that gap fee get to zero?’ - as the Albanese Government had promised – the Department said the out-of-pocket cost of seeing the doctor will probably go UP.

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October 10, 2025
Outage had tragic consequences

I am also proud to be the first ever Opposition MP to hold Regional Communications as a Shadow portfolio. The Nationals fought hard for this new Shadow portfolio because Regional Communications needs continuous focus as essential infrastructure

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October 8, 2025
The Communications Minister ducked and weaved

Sadly it took the tragic deaths of 4 Australians due to Optus’ second outage last month for the Albanese Government to bring legislation into the Parliament to properly establish the Custodian.

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October 1, 2025
Labor and Greens are happy to ride on the coattails of foreign money

To mix metaphors, while it is always healthy and good management to not have all your (economic) eggs in one basket, sometimes regional development advocates fail to see the forest for the trees.

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September 24, 2025
Rehabilitation remains at the forefront

When mining occurs interstate on pastoral country the post-mining impacts are less pronounced as what we have seen at Douglas and Ouyen, and potentially at Dooen and other mineral sands prospects.

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September 24, 2025
Miners to rehabilitate prime agricultural land

the Government can compel landowners and homeowners to step aside and let a miner use that resource. Some Mallee farmers are facing losing access to their homes for 40 years.

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September 23, 2025
Scrambling to Find Workers

The Albanese Labor Government are behaving poorly, previously signalling Vietnamese workers would be available, but now postponing the Arrangement leaving horticultural businesses scrambling to find workers.

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September 10, 2025
Scales are tipped against local communities

The scales are tipped against local communities - as one former mayor put it to me this week, why can a company can spend 6 years preparing an EES proposal but the public, and their council, get just 6 weeks to respond to a 6,000 pages

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September 5, 2025
The Prime Minister’s answers particularly offensive.

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

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