Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to make a contribution towards this debate, and I do feel like I need to give the National Party and the members of the National Party a bit of a 101 on how to organise a rally. I've organised a few in my time, not just here as the federal member—I do confess I've helped organise a few—but also in my life before. Rule No. 1 in organising a rally is: do not overinflate the number of people who come, because you will get called out. There weren't thousands of people out on the lawns. You'd be lucky to have had a hundred farmers, and then all the staffers stacked it out to probably about 400 people. So rule No. 1 in rally organising 101 is: do not overinflate the number of people at a rally, because you will get called out and usually by your own.

Rule No. 2 relates to the rallies that happened in my electorate over the break. We had the bush summit in my electorate—mine is, you know, a bush electorate. We had the Rural Press Club hold an event, and the National Party in Victoria bussed in some farmers to protest against the Premier of Victoria. To show you how ridiculous this MPI is, because it tries to link farming and resources: some of the signs that the farmers had at the rally in Bendigo included, 'Save our farms, no mines,' and 'Farming, not mining.' These are signs that stacked-out National Party rallies had in my electorate. There was also, 'Farmers say no to mineral sands on the Wimmera,' but possibly my favourite was, 'Grains of wheat, not uranium.' This was at a National Party rally. I have to say, I said to those farmers: 'I'm with you. Grains of wheat, not uranium. Our party is opposed to nuclear energy.' So, another rule in the 101 of organising rallies is: make sure you get the message right to the constituents who are turning up if you want to get a clear message out about what you're rallying about. If you're going try and organise a political protest, be organised. That's the 101 of organising a rally. At the moment you're trying to please two constituencies, big energy—big mining—and big farming, and it's not working.

In my part of the world, central Victoria, we do have the balance of mining and farming. We have goldmining that is growing and going gangbusters. We've rediscovered gold in Bendigo. I'm the first to stand here and say that I'm really proud of what our local mining industry is doing and the way in which they are working not just with our local farmers and agricultural community but also with our First Nations community. Fosterville goldmine has about a thousand workers, including contractors, and Mandalay Resources over in Costerfield are also mining gold. We have significant mining work going on, and it's a demonstration of what can be done well when you bring people together in a collaborative way where you don't try and blow up the relationships, like we are seeing to the north of my electorate and to the west of my electorate.

I just don't know how the member for Mallee—who I notice isn't speaking on this—can reconcile those two issues: 'Grains of wheat, not uranium' and 'Farming, not mining of mineral sands.' They're at this stage where the farmers in the Mallee are starting to call for a moratorium on mining farming land because they don't want mining going on. The Nationals are heading for a collision within their caucus room—a collision between their original constituency, the farming community, and then their big mining mates. To give you an example of the mining mates that have moved into the north, Gina Rinehart has an interest to the north. These are the kinds of interests that are coming back into Victoria, and it's a problem that they've created because of the way in which they've fuelled misinformation and disinformation in communities.

In the government, on our side, we believe in bringing people together and in finding common ground to work through smart policy. We want to make sure that new resource projects stack up economically and environmentally. We want to make sure that, when people are investing in these, the local constituents, the local people who might be concerned, have their day and can raise their concerns, but that then decisions are made based on the law—that we've applied the law to all projects. I can see that rolling out in my state of Victoria, as well as in other parts of the country. We also want to make sure that, when we are farming, we are doing it in a way that is collaborative and we're supporting and embracing new farming technologies and new farming methods.

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