I look forward to seeing Wimmera community members at the upcoming Wimmera Machinery Field Days after a frenetic summer period. I was about to say ‘holidays’ - but it wasn’t for some of us!  The bushfires in the Grampians and Little Desert have been highly stressful for Wimmera communities and for the farmers and volunteers who fought the fires, I can only say thank you!  How can we ever thank you enough?  To put aside your family time and challenges on the farm to protect your community is perhaps the epitome of the Australian spirit.

I spent time following Christmas in Halls Gap visiting what was, at that usually bustling tourist time, a ghost town.  Business owners are still on the financial brink and I moved a motion in Canberra on Monday 10 February calling on state and federal governments to help.  Coalition MPs also joined Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton’s call - from Halls Gap, which he visited in January at my invitation - urging Australians to book holidays in the Grampians.  Sadly, Prime Minister Albanese and Premier Allan flew over Halls Gap and didn’t visit the struggling community on the ground.

The mood at recent Field Days has been soured by the looming threats to farming from industrial-scale energy projects and mining operations.  I will emphasise every time that social licence is paramount – if a project proponent gets a community on board fair and square, go your hardest.  That is not what I am hearing across Mallee.  The Allan Victorian Labor Government has marked Mallee as though it is a blank on the map with nobody living there, enticing largely foreign-owned mining and energy cowboys to stir bad blood in small farming communities to divide and conquer, trying to get their project over the line.  The Allan Victorian Labor Government’s railroading of farmers and communities with fast-tracked planning and ‘environmental’ approvals is reprehensible.

Feel free to say g’day at the Field Days, I hope to talk with many of you, and as always, you are welcome to email anne.webster.mp@aph.gov.au with more for me to consider during this huge 2025 election year.