Wednesday, 18 March 2026

 Jade BENHAM (Mildura) (16:31): Today I rise to grieve for the state of Victoria and the slippery slope that we are on, not for what we are capable of, because in all honesty I love Victoria – this is a state of extraordinary people, resilient communities and immense potential – but for what it is and has become under a government that increasingly treats transparency not as a duty of public service but as a mere inconvenience. What we are witnessing is not just poor governance now. This is governance conducted behind a curtain – some might say an iron curtain – and every time Victorians try to pull it back and ask questions, we are met with statements like ‘Let me be clear.’

I want to address a few issues in this grievance debate today, and I will start where public concern is most acute, and that is the ongoing and deeply, deeply troubling revelations surrounding the CFMEU and the Big Build. Victorians have watched with growing alarm and frustration as allegations of corruption, coercion and criminal infiltration have emerged on major infrastructure sites – projects that are funded by the taxpayer, projects that have been sold to the public as nation-building that now appear to have been not only compromised but completely rorted. And the response of this government is reluctance, delay, evasion and that catchcry ‘I want to be clear. Let me be clear.’

We have seen a government dragged kicking and screaming while we are trying to hold them to account, and governments should be able to be held to account and should step up to scrutiny. We have seen questions met with not just deflection but complete and utter evasion, investigations resisted and handballs all around the place. The government appears more concerned with managing the political damage than actually confronting the truth, and it is disgusting. Transparency is not optional when billions of dollars of taxpayer money is at stake. It is not optional when there are allegations of state-sponsored strippers, coercion, abuse and control, and it is certainly not optional when public confidence is on the line, although that has nearly completely eroded now.

This is not an isolated incident either. This is a pattern of behaviour from this government. Let us consider the Suburban Rail Loop, a project of staggering scale and cost – a train line from nowhere to somewhere no-one wants to go. And at what cost? We do not really know, because despite its magnitude we have seen business cases withheld, costings drip-fed – no-one really knows; they have not been updated in several years – and scrutiny resisted at every single turn. Victorians are effectively being asked to sign a blank cheque, look the other way and trust that everything is going to be fine for a project whose true cost we still actually do not know. It is shrouded in layers of secrecy, and again, this is a pattern of behaviour.

Let us go now to the Commonwealth Games. We should be happily watching the Commonwealth Games, with screens screening the regional Commonwealth Games all around this precinct right now. It was announced with great fanfare and abandoned with even greater haste. There was nearly smoke on the heels of the Premier at the time to abandon that – billions of dollars in costs sunk into planning, contracts, dinners, compensation, trying to get it and then trying to get out of it. And still Victorians are left without clarity, without clear answers and without transparency. It is so important. Most of the time if you actually say something to people of substance with some honesty, people will accept that. It is the lack of transparency that has left Victorians incredibly frustrated.

We will talk about the ballooning state debt, but while all this is going on in cabinet rooms, on Big Build sites and in press conferences, out in the regions we are dealing with something far more immediate, despite the beliefs of those on the other side. This is immediate, it is happening now, it is practical, it is alarming and it will affect every single Victorian in this state. In Sunraysia, the Mallee and the Wimmera, across rural Victoria and into South Australia, there is a very real concern, and we have seen – again, despite claims of the other side that we are being alarmist – that we are having severe fuel shortages. That is just a fact. That is not alarmist. On Saturday Robinvale not only ran out of unleaded but ran out of diesel in all of the service stations. Facts: yesterday when the Premier was questioned here in question time and then accused this side of the house of making alarmist claims, right then I was notified that Robinvale had once again run out of diesel, despite an answer to the supplementary question from the Leader of the Nationals that Robinvale had fuel. Sorry, incorrect – they did not have unleaded fuel. The Happy Valley Store had 300 litres left, which will fill 2½ cars. They had 1200 litres of diesel; for some context, 1200 litres of diesel will fill one truck and about six cars. That is it.

This is not a hypothetical concern. It is not alarmist. This is real. And like I said, this will affect every single Victorian, including those who will be unable to get medicines and medications – because that is what it is coming to. I am hearing from pharmacists now who are concerned about their deliveries of medications that save lives. Do I need to mention food security? I would certainly hope not. But maybe those members on the government side would like a little refresher on where food does actually come from. Farmers cannot afford disruptions like this during harvest anyway. I was talking with another grower today, Cos Cirillo is his name, who has 600 or 700 acres, runs his own trucks and has farms at Paringi and Mildura and all over. He knows a thing or two; he has done it his whole life and now does it with his sons. He is just at breaking point along with a lot of other families – and I spoke earlier today about the need for Lifeline fundraising and how vital it is, because already this government has blood on its hands because it is ignoring what is happening out in the regions, not only in our ag sector but in the towns and the regional cities that are built on the backbone of our agriculture sector. Suicides are already happening. And when you look at the broader picture here – and I know this will make zero sense to anyone on that side of the house, but hear me out – when you have water at $550 a megalitre that you have had to lease to put on vines through a heatwave, that is already putting you under stress. Then when you have rain, an entire year’s rainfall over a weekend like we did two weeks ago, you cannot get in to spray. And you think you are through it because you can get pesticides to help fight the grey mould and the diseases that come after that on table grapes and every other crop they are trying to get off, and trying to get them is now expensive. And what happens? The price skyrockets.

Then you have to be able to get in there. You have got disease, you have got the price of water and you have got the audits. In my region we are growing a huge amount of export-quality food. The amount of audits and the regulatory burden that has been placed on growers and farmers by this government is strangling them. It is not only the time that it takes to complete these audits when it would be just as simple to have someone like GLOBALG.A.P. or Freshcare take care of it all – we cannot do that – but the cost physically to do an audit is ridiculous. Then you have a government who refuses to admit that there is a problem here. All the growers are looking for is a bit of accountability and a bit of transparency, and if the government is not aware that there is a crisis here, that in and of itself is a huge problem. All we are asking for is a bit of transparency, and you know what we need you to do then: get out of the way so we can get back to business. It is as simple as that.

You can understand why growers in my region and right around regional Victoria need fuel – and their workers, mind you, because the workers cannot get to work if there is no fuel to get them to work. They might have to travel 40, 50, 60 k’s to get to work and then home again. That is why they are buying it, and they are getting no clarity from the government at all. They are getting assurances that everything is okay. Guess what, the food is not harvested with assurances. There is no detailed plan. There is no clarity whatsoever. That is all we are asking for, just some clear communication and some contingencies. That logistics chain is so fragile, if one part of it breaks, we are all in a huge amount of trouble. You cannot run a regional economy on reassurances and you cannot harvest food with a press release, and to think you can is again holding regional Victorians and all Victorians in contempt. It is absolutely disgusting. Victorians are sick of it, and we deserve better.

I know those on the other side think that this is just a joke, and they sigh and think that I am being alarmist. The Premier said to me yesterday that we had alarmist claims. Honestly, the contempt that we are treated with is disgusting, and the public can see it. They can see it now, thank goodness, and they are all telling us that waiting until November is too long. It will be too late. There will be too many more suicides from those on the land because they cannot take the pressure. They cannot take it. We are resilient people. There is nothing tougher than a Mallee farmer. But I tell you what, you keep piling it on, using us as cash cows. I did not even talk about the emergency services levy. There is another one. These things just keep popping up. When we have CFA volunteers who are more often than not food producers, fibre producers, being taxed for a free service that they provide and where they are paying for their own diesel usually to get to the jobs and then they get taxed for the very pleasure of doing so, is it any wonder that they are going to the media and saying this is an absolute kick in the guts?

They have had enough, and they know that traditional channels of trying to communicate with this government fall on deaf ears if they even get there. They know that the media is their only hope, and then they have to hope that the media is gentle with them. It is tough out there, and everyone in the city is about to find out exactly how tough, because it will not take long before everything stops and the logistics chain is broken. We need transparency and we need to keep this state moving. I am sorry, it does not run on renewable energy and electric vehicles. It runs on the back of crumbling roads and diesel-powered trucks. It is as simple as that.

Today I grieve for a state where too often the truth arrives late if it arrives at all and more often than not it arrives in the Herald Sun or the Age after an investigation – that is embarrassing, quite frankly – and only after sustained pressure. I grieve for a government who has normalised secrecy and called it strategy. I grieve for regional communities, who are continually left in the dark, used as cash cows and treated with utter contempt on issues that affect not only their livelihoods and their industry but their families, their children, their environment and their land, which we are now happy to compulsorily acquire. I grieve for the state of Victoria under this Labor government. This Labor government has sent regional Victoria down a slippery slope, and I would certainly hope that everyone remembers this come November. You might be hungry and cold by then, but that is what the socialists want, isn’t it? They want us all to be hungry, cold and miserable because that is the socialist way. Thriving communities are happy communities, and that is what the Nationals want regional Victoria to be.