Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

In my electorate we're quite literally at the coalface. The four large power stations in the Latrobe Valley—sorry; there are only three coal-fired power stations in the Latrobe Valley now, because the Andrews government worked so hard to shut down Hazelwood—are absolutely critical to the economic wealth of Victoria and much of the south-east corner of Australia. So we are quite literally at the coalface of this debate. When it comes to the other major providers of jobs in the Gippsland electorate, they too are dependent upon reliable, affordable base-load energy. The dairy farmers in my electorate obviously have a high dependency on good, cheap, reliable energy. The food-processing companies, which employ hundreds of workers in Gippsland and the Latrobe Valley, rely on affordable base-load energy. The timber mills—the ones left after the Andrews government cut their supply of timber—rely on base-load energy to be available to them 24 hours a day.

We need a balanced approach to this issue. Unfortunately, the Labor Party, with their absolute obsession with winning green votes in the city, have failed to stand up for the jobs of blue-collar workers in regions like the Latrobe Valley.

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