Tuesday, 12 August 2025

 Jade BENHAM (Mildura) (14:59): (1228) My question today comes from the Sea Lake Off Road Club and is for the Minister for Environment. How can we work with the government to bring back the Mallee Rally to Sea Lake? The Mallee Rally was denied an event permit in 2019 due to the need to undertake a conservation management plan, of which the final plan and report have never been released. The interim report was, and the off-road club responded accordingly at the time. Since then there has been deafening silence from the government. FOI requests have been tangled up in the broken FOI system and bureaucracy, and any mention of the event is stonewalled, with no direction or willingness to even come to the table on this. The Mallee rally has been run on the banks of Lake Tyrrell for almost 50 years and injects critical funds into a small local economy that for the most part is at the mercy of the weather. We understand the need to recognise and preserve cultural heritage, but to what end do we close down events in small communities?