Wednesday, 12 August 2026

 Gaelle BROAD (Northern Victoria) (17:43): I am pleased to be able to speak on the petition to remove the eastern section of Central North renewable energy zone (REZ) from the Victorian transmission plan. I note that there have been over 11,000 signatures, and I thank Wendy Lovell for tabling both of those petitions. I know that this is something that Kim O’Keeffe, the member for Shepparton, has been advocating for, and also Sam Birrell, the federal member for Nicholls, calling on the Victorian government to remove the Dookie district from the proposed Central North renewable energy zone, because industrialising some of Victoria’s most fertile agricultural land would ruin one of Australia’s most important food-producing landscapes.

I grew up on a farm between the Yarra Valley and the Dandenong Ranges, started by my great-grandfather and then my grandfather and my dad continued it – fruit, flowers, vegetables – and I understand the value of soils. Soils are so different. Certainly in Silvan there is rich red volcanic soil that can grow anything. But different areas have different soils and different rainfalls, different terrain, and you grow what is suited to the region if you want to do well. Dookie, in the Goulburn Valley, is special: the yields are much higher. The Shepparton council commissioned a review, and it found that the wheat and canola yield is much higher than the Victorian averages.

What happened with this inclusion in the Central North REZ has really caught the community by surprise. The draft plan, released in May 2025, showed only a Western Bendigo to Tatura area. The final plan, released in August 2025, added an Eastern Shepparton to Glenrowan section that covered Dookie. Community meetings have gathered hundreds of people from Dookie and surrounding areas who were really outraged and surprised by the inclusion in the Central North REZ in the final Victorian transmission plan, and the response from those attending was very clear. The Dookie soil is unique, and they want the zone to avoid capturing prime agricultural land. VicGrid’s case for the eastern section is the strong solar interest and proximity to existing transmission. The counter case is that these advantages do not outweigh Dookie’s exceptional food production, the flood constraints, public agricultural investment and the cumulative fragmentation risk that can occur, because once you lose prime agricultural land, it can be lost for good. I know that Dookie, certainly as I was growing up, was the place to go to learn about agriculture. Now with the University of Melbourne campus it is certainly a hub for agricultural research, and there is a reason why it was located in that area.

But the government has a choice. Central North has not been declared, and its boundary remains open to consultation. I heard the Minister for Energy and Resources during question time today say that consultation was ongoing with the local community. The Protect Dookie and the Goulburn Valley group has been working hard to highlight the issues. They have made their request to decision-makers clear: to remove Dookie and surrounding high-value agricultural land from the proposed Central North renewable energy zone, to ensure the independent findings of the report that has been done by the council are fully considered before any planning decisions are made, to publicly release the locality-specific evidence assessments and data sets relied upon in selecting Dookie and acknowledge and address the consultation deficiencies surrounding Dookie’s inclusion, and to strengthen planning protections for strategically significant agricultural land before future renewable energy zone boundaries are finalised.

I know my colleague Kim O’Keeffe has been speaking in the other place about an inquiry that was done into securing Victoria’s food supply, and one of the key recommendations of that inquiry was the protection of high-value cultural land. In the Shepparton electorate we are seeing increased pressure from development and competing land uses. What we need to remember is the need to protect not just our land, but the ability to feed future generations.

It is timely that this petition has been tabled today, because Emma Kealy, the Shadow Minister for Agriculture, has introduced to the Victorian Parliament, to protect the state’s most strategic agricultural land from being permanently lost to poorly considered development, the Planning and Environment Amendment (Agricultural Land and Food Security) Bill 2026 to ensure agriculture is finally recognised as the strategic asset it is rather than just being treated as another land use in Victoria’s planning system. Because Victoria produces around 28 per cent of Australia’s gross value of agricultural production, and we need to look after it.