First and foremost I wish to acknowledge the traditional owners of my electorate, the Ladji Ladji and Barkindji people, who have enriched and continue to enrich us with their culture, which will forever remain enshrined in our region. I also pay my respects to their elders past and present.
Today I begin my journey to represent them and represent every man, woman and child within my entire community.
For that I am forever grateful, and over the period of my term in office as the member for Mildura I will never take that for granted.
I am indeed honoured and humbled by the support and comfort that the voters in my electorate in the far reaches of the great north-west of Victoria have afforded me.
It has been overwhelming, yet it has given me a great sense of expectation that the work starts now.
It was hard work that the Mallee was built on, and I have witnessed firsthand the triumphs and tragedies that have impacted this region, even now with a significant flooding event, with a potentially devastating disease that has ravaged our growers who produce the vast majority of our country’s dried fruit and table grape exports and with a sudden hailstorm which has wiped out cereal crops across the southern Mallee.
They are part of my community.
They are my friends.
They are my neighbours.
By representing them in this Parliament I hope they receive the support to get them through a wasted season – another one – with no income for another year.
Just imagine for a minute in this chamber – or any of your constituents – living for one year with no pay, trying to put school shirts on your children’s backs, unable to provide them with sporting gear so they can enjoy the crisp Mallee air of a Saturday morning playing the sport of their choice, let alone have aspirations of greater education and career opportunities ahead.
Ours is a region that faces these challenges over and over and over again.
This is the reason I am here.
This is the reason that I fought so hard to be in this Parliament: to fight for the people of the Mildura electorate.
Now here I am, because in the Mallee we need to fight tooth and nail for everything we get.
But too often something has to give: the crops fail, the floods come.
Our socio-economic status is one of the lowest in the state; our unemployment rate is one of the highest in the state.
And yet we fight on.
That is what we do in the Mallee – we are full of fight.
In year 11 I was told by a teacher – not one like you, Daniela – that I would never amount to anything, as are many in my community, whether it is because some believe that we will just end up blockies’ wives, I kid you not, or blockies ourselves.
Or perhaps it is due to the perceived lack of opportunity or vision for something bigger.
I hope now I can be that vision for young people who know their parents cannot afford to send them on to higher education or who are told over and over again they will amount to nothing.
Guess what?
Yes, you will –with just a little bit of fight.
The opportunities are honestly endless in the great north-west; you just sometimes have to create them for yourself.
I come from a long line of women who had a whole lot of fight in them and refused to stay quiet – shocking, I know – who refused to be the victim simply because of the place where they lived.
My Italian grandmother emigrated out here to be with a man she did not even know in the 1950s.
She could not cook – yeah, we got ripped off – but she had the fight in her.
She fought to come out to this country because she knew there was a better life waiting for her future family here in Australia and the place that we now call home.
Every day she worked so hard to grow her family the food they needed to survive and ultimately thrive.
My maternal grandmother, daughter of a World War I hero, grew up on harsh Mallee country in the 1920s and would tell stories of the hut that they lived in and of the Natya school where she was educated.
She went on to become the first A-grade netball umpire in our part of Victoria in the 1970s.
Imagine the work, dedication and effort that must have taken in the 70s.
But she had the fight in her.
She was determined.
She got there.
Now my own mother, my sister and I carry that legacy today, although none of us have been able to reach the A-grade status that she did.
But she fought for it, and she won.
My mother at just 26 years old faced the prospect of having a nine-month-old baby and the fight of her life on her hands – to run a grape block as well as raising her new child, me, alone at 26.
Where were you at 26?
I bet it was not running a farm with a toddler on your hip.
Now, fight or flight should have kicked in here, and it probably did.
She chose fight.
Whilst her husband – my dad – was booked for a course at Castlemaine college courtesy of Her Majesty, she fought every single day to make sure it was all there when he got home.
She was there.
The farm was there.
Everything was there because of the fight in her.
Under the most trying circumstances she refused to be a victim and walk away.
She refused to give up.
She knew that if she put her head down and her bum up, she could get through this, and then they could get through anything.
Despite being wiped out with hail later on down the track and a few other ups and downs along the way, I am happy to say that they are still married and sitting over there after 47 years and still live on that same block that they bought together when they were first married – the one she ran while dad was on ‘holiday’.
She fought.
She won – and she is still winning.
I am a second-generation Australian on my father’s side and a World War I soldier settler’s great-granddaughter on my mother’s.
The Mallee is in my blood, and in the Mallee we fight.
We always have.
The entire Mildura electorate is a marvellous place – very, very different from end to end.
It is probably the place where the last carrot you ate came from; in fact there is a 35 per cent chance it came from just up the road from my place.
Smashed avo on toast – yes, we are growing that too.
The avocados and the grains that go into your sourdough – that is coming from us.
And the almond latte you order from your barista in the morning, that is us.
In fact we are producing 60 per cent of Australia’s almonds in our region, and that is just the tip of the iceberg.
Grapes, legumes, sultanas, oranges, Mallee prime lamb, asparagus, wheat, lentils, stone fruit – they are all grown right in my patch, and they will land on your plate without notice or consequence.
You will enjoy them – you might even compliment the chef – but without our visionary, innovative and dedicated efforts in the far north-west, you would be missing out.
Next time you do eat the glorious things we have grown for you, spare a thought for the fight that it took to get to your plate, fridge or fruit bowl.
Think about the many families out on farms right now as we sit here – harvest wives making sure that the crews are fed in the hope that they can have Christmas Day off, or the families in the district who on the daily have to fight ever-growing numbers of trucks on roads with gaping potholes, crumbling shoulders and huge drop-offs, quite often having to leave the road entirely and come to a stop because there is no other choice if we want to stay alive on our country roads.
Think about the school bus drivers that fear for their precious cargo’s lives every time they turn a corner that has not been maintained, or think about the fact that whilst your food is delicious the cost is far greater than the money you are paying for it.
Thankfully, Mallee growers are full of fight.
They have to be or none of us would ever eat.
That lamb or granola, grapes, carrots or whatever it is has caused our growers incredible stress and heartache.
It has cost them more to produce this year than it ever has before because of chemical prices, freight costs, labour issues, flood, hail, disease and so on.
Think about the actual price of getting it to you.
It is a lot more than $2 an avocado, I promise, but we fight on.
We fight because we have a job to do, and that job is feeding your family.
Whilst our growers are incredibly stressed – and I know this because I am married to one – seeking help for those health issues, both mental and physical, that manifest is getting increasingly harder in the Mildura district.
Imagine being in a mental health crisis and being told a GP appointment for a mental health plan is at least eight weeks away or that your four-year-old requires antibiotics urgently but you have no idea where you might be able to get a script for that.
Because of the recent closure of Tristar Medical and other issues surrounding rural medicine and GPs we cannot get a doctor’s appointment for three months or a telehealth appointment for at least 10 days now.
Just this week I had a gentleman contact me who, in his mid-seventies, requires pain medication and who throughout COVID has become accustomed to telehealth.
Imagine him, living alone, being told he would not be able to have his medication for Christmas because there are simply no appointments available.
And imagine him being told that he should try going up to accident and emergency at our hospital.
He does not want to do that, of course, because he knows the pressure that Mildura Base Public Hospital is under.
He knows that he would have to sit outside for a RAT and wait times could be lengthy.
Imagine being Mildura mum Katrina, wife of Scott who, with an undiagnosed heart condition, suddenly died because he could not get an angiogram in a regional city of over 40,000 people.
When Scott’s heart condition took a turn, even though they lived only minutes from the hospital, ambulance services could not get him to life-saving treatment.
Now she fights with every fibre of her being so that the people of our tri-state area of Mildura have access to specialist care and procedures like angiograms.
The Umback family have just celebrated their fourth Christmas without their husband, dad, son, brother and uncle over the weekend.
I plan to help Katrina fight.
The great north-west of this state is just getting greater, but our roads and healthcare systems are failing us.
I believe it is worth fighting for basic services for those that provide you with your family’s food every day.
It does not seem like a huge trade-off, does it?
Decent roads and transport infrastructure to get food to market and port, a doctor’s appointment when you need one and a rural healthcare model that grows with our region and does not force those who need support to move to larger centres where they can get it – these are just two of the issues that gave me the fight to run for the seat of Mildura.
Now that I am here my intention is to follow them through.
I have only ever wanted the best for my community, and my promise is to do that each and every day of the week.
My family has been and continues to be my strength.
To my husband Luke, who is the backbone and heart of this operation, words will not ever be able to thank you enough, but I will work so hard that the outcomes just might be.
To my children and stepchildren Brooklyn, Scarlett, Peyton and Parker, your generation is why Mamma is always working.
I will think of you every day that I am away for work.
I love you to the moon and back and all the twinkle stars.
To my mum and dad, who filled me with this fight in the first place by showing me exactly what it looked like, thank you.
I hope I have made you proud despite the green boots.
We are only just getting started.
To my ride-or-die squad, Kel and Brylee, thank you.
To the National Party dream team, Matt and the team at head office, and our campaign committee on the ground – Daniel Linklater, Jon Armstrong, Grace Walker, Brylee Neyland, Xavier Healy, Alan Malcolm, Gerry Leach and John Watson – you all have the fight in you and you are amazing.
Thank you to the federal member for Mallee, Dr Anne Webster, for all your work – I cannot wait to work closely with you for the betterment of our community.
To the volunteers who hung or hosted signs or handed out how-to-vote cards on polling day and over the course of pre-polling, I say thank you.
It takes stamina and fight, and you had plenty.
I welcome other new members of Parliament and look forward to working with the current government and other members to get a fair go for the Mildura electorate – the region that puts food on your plate and champions on racetracks, and punches above its weight every day.
I invite all of you to come and see it for yourself.
I am deeply humbled that my journey to represent the people of Mildura begins today.
Thank you.