WATER, agriculture, health and regional development were what two parliamentarians were keen to hear about when they visited the Swan Hill region this week.
United Australia Party senator Ralph Babet and Victorian One Nation MP Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell joined forces on a tour of northern Victoria, meeting residents and businesses in an attempt to gain a better understanding of regional issues.
“This is the first time that two members of One Nation and the United Australia Party have come together in the spirit of doing what is best for the people of regional Victoria,” Senator Babet said.
“It’s time to put party politics aside and focus on the issues that are important to regional Victorians and deliver results for all – for too long the major parties have focused on the city but have neglected the regions.”
Senator Babet, from Melbourne, told The Guardian he was keen to learn more about various aspects of water management and how it was affecting northern Victoria.
“I feel as a federal parliamentarian I need to get out into the community and speak to the people that are affected in their day-to-day lives in regard to water, and figure out ways that we could potentially do better at the federal level to help the people that are on the ground here,” he said.
Mrs Tyrrell, a former irrigator from Invergordon, near Shepparton, said she wanted to explore further along the river.
She had found that reliability and stability in water supply and pricing were issues primary producers were particularly concerned about.
“Consistency is really important for our agricultural producers because at the moment, the way that the water is being managed, it’s not consistent enough,” she said. “They have enough to deal with with red and green tape tied up with government restrictions and also our weather.
“It’s been doing them over for far too long now, and with our population growth, we need to see that consistency to be able to feed Victorians.”
Mrs Tyrrell said many people she had spoken to were also vehemently opposed to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and water buybacks, from both an environmental and irrigation perspective.
“It is continuing to fail irrigators and the environment – it’s just not working, it really needs to be reassessed,” Mrs Tyrrell said.
“We do need some form of a plan that will benefit everybody here in the irrigation districts and the river systems, but the plan at the moment as it is, it is failing everybody.”
Mrs Tyrrell and Senator Babet are both eager to see how the Victorian budget, set to be released next month, will turn out.
They are concerned that not enough funds are being allocated to crucial issues impacting regional Victoria, such as health services, housing and roads.
“We have to move away from this idea of having a really big government and get back to basics – have a lean government that gets out of the way, lets private individuals go out and make their way in life and achieve for themselves, rather than moving in this direction which I think, personally, we’re slowly moving towards a welfare state,” Senator Babet said.
“People increasingly expect things for nothing, and that only works up to a certain point, but eventually the chickens come home to roost and those loans have to be paid back.”
