It was my great pleasure to bring Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Hon. Milton Dick, to Wimmera Lutheran College Horsham campus on Monday morning. It is great to show the next generation the vital importance of our world-leading stable, healthy Australian democracy and the value of bipartisanship. The Speaker is, after all, a Labor MP.

As I told the Speaker in the House earlier in February, it may disappoint him that there is a little grumbling about Labor in the region.

At the time of writing on Monday morning, I could not believe my ears when I heard, yet again, that Labor Premier Jacinta Allan still had not moved to help fire-affected Halls Gap businesses by asking Prime Minister Albanese for support.

The Grampians fire started on 17 December and was contained by 8 January, yet here we are 71 days since the fire started, and 49 days after it was contained, without the Premier lifting a finger.  It is a point I made in Canberra in a speech on 10 February.

When you consider that the Queensland Liberal-National Premier sought support for flood-affected Townsville within 15 days … you can see why Labor are a bit on the nose in the Grampians.

A federal election will soon be upon us and Horsham, Wimmera and Grampians residents will be asking themselves – am I better off under the Albanese Labor Government?  Those I ask that question to give me a resounding no.  Tuesday week ago the Reserve Bank of Australia may well have granted interest rate relief at long last – 1,567 days since our last rate cut and after 12 interest rate hikes under Labor – but Australian families and businesses are far from out of the woods.  The RBA indicated that living standards under Labor will not improve to the levels they were under the Coalition until 2030.

Families, pensioners, self-funded retirees and small businesses cannot hang in there for another 5 years.  We’ve seen 27,000 small businesses across the nation go insolvent in the last 3 years.

A Dutton-Littleproud Coalition Government will get Australia back on track.