I would like to speak on the amendments regarding the National Electricity (Victoria) Amendment (VicGrid Stage 2 Reform) Bill 2025, and I would like to pick up that last topic that was raised by the member for Tarneit: ‘This is a hard topic for some people in regional Victoria’, in reference to renewables. I am deeply offended that regional Victorians would be pitched in such a way. It shows how tone-deaf Labor MPs are in this place when it comes to the concerns of landholders, and I note the giggles from the member for Wendouree. It is disgraceful. They are your members. These are Labor members representing them in this place, and they are laughing at Victorians, who are being told that it is a hard topic for them. Do you know why it is a hard topic for regional Victorians – because they are being pitched as being some sort of group of people who do not like renewables, a group of people who are Neanderthals in some way, who are all backwards, and they need to take this on for the greater good. I mean, it is like that Hot Fuzz movie around the greater good: ‘Why do we do it? For the greater good.’ Listen to what people are saying in regional Victoria who own property or live around the VNI West corridor. They are saying that they are not being heard, and at no point through Labor’s discussions and their government bureaucrat discussions on the ground have they actually made the effort to hear what country people are saying. That is the point. It is completely unfair, and it is maligning regional Victorians to put it any other way. There would be members in metropolitan Melbourne who would be equally upset if there was a road proposed to go from one side of Melbourne to the other and we did not know where the road was exactly going to go. You are speaking to thousands and thousands of different households: ‘It might go here or there.’ You are pitting neighbour against neighbour. You are looking at offering different rates for different properties. You are organising meetings and saying you will not meet with a group, you will only meet one on one, but then you bring five people from the department with a security guard onto their property. That is a one-way conversation. That is not consultation, that is being told that the government is going to enter your property. This is what this legislation does. Within the VicGrid legislation and the amendments there is a reference that not only can you not have the discussion, which is the experience of regional Victorians who live through the VNI West corridor, but actually now we have got Labor making legislation so that if you refuse to let those officials onto your land you get a fine. This is not bringing people on board. They have simple, straightforward questions. They have legitimate concerns. We have got biodiverse areas which VNI West looks like it will run through. These are particular areas of forest that contain areas of native environment – plants and animals – that are on the endangered list, and the government are not even listening to that. Isn’t it bizarre that we are saying, ‘We’re going to save the environment with this new powerline by unlocking more wind and more solar to save the environment, and at the same time we’re going to bulldoze very important, diverse protected areas of our natural environment’? It simply does not stack up. It also does not stack up when you look at the cost of this project. It is a project that has gone from $5 billion to $7 billion, and now we are expecting $11 billion in just two years time. And that is not funded by the big energy companies. It is not even funded through the mystery coffers of the government and diverted taxpayer dollars. It comes under ‘poles and wires’ on each and every Victorian’s energy bill. Have a look next time you look at your energy bill: it is coming through, and it is getting bigger and bigger and bigger. One of the aspects of that is poles and wires, and that will be VNI West. That will be a huge chunk of money on every single Victorian’s power bill, whether you are a household or whether you are a business. That will have an impact on people’s ability to feed their family, keep a roof over their head and keep on running their farm and growing the food and fibre that Victorians and Australians and people all around the world rely on and enjoy. That is the implication of that. It is a cost-of-living issue, it is a cost-of-business issue and it is something that appears to have not been heard by Labor MPs. It is deeply concerning, because our regional Victorian voice has not been heard for many, many years. I do not like seeing my people forced to protest on the front steps of Parliament. I equally do not like the fact that we have got farmers who are resorting to getting in tractors and chasing the Prime Minister down the street because they do not feel like they have been heard. I do not like that there is a local woman who is so concerned about the mental health impacts of this government’s bulldozing of local people’s rights that she is going to the bush summit holding a noose around her neck – not because she has not tried to have the conversation, not because she has not engaged with the government and not because our people have not written to the Premier and written to ministers and written to their local Labor MPs raising these issues but because they are not being heard. They are not getting a response. They are not getting anything back apart from this bill, which just puts a great big fine in place. I asked the government – and this might be something that is unexpected from me – to please, for the mental health of our community, provide more mental health supports. I suggest to the government – and this is in respect of comments from previous speakers that the Labor government just want to get on with it – that if you are going to get on with it, then just do it. Have compulsory acquisitions of land and make it quick and make it fair so our people can move on, because it is completely unfair to grind down the mental health and the welfare of people who live in regional Victoria. It is cruel, what the government is doing to our people. It is cruel for the people who grow our food and grow our fibre to have this level of uncertainty – ‘You might be in or you might be out’ – when we are continuously told this project will happen. I call on Premier Allen: please, if you care about regional people, go out and do compulsory acquisition, as you would for a Melbourne project, and let our people deal with this, because the uncertainty is dividing families. I met with a school last week where I saw the impacts on the kids who hear these concerned conversations from their parents. They see the tears, they hear the conversations, they see what is happening in the media and they are taking that to the schoolyard. Principals in tears, teachers in tears, kids in tears – that is not fair. I ask every single member of this chamber to at least please listen to this, no matter what party you are involved with: have some fairness and find some kindness and respect, because our people are not being treated with respect right now. Our people have been let down time and time again, and the only response that they ever get from the government is that it is a hard topic for them. Absolutely it is a hard topic. They have been trying so hard to have the conversation, but nobody will listen. No-one will say what is next. It is so cruel and unfair, and I invite everybody in this chamber to do what I have done: sit at the kitchen table, go to the Wallaloo Golf Club and have a meeting with impacted landholders on VNI West. Go and actually hear what their concerns are, because just speculating and stereotyping that they are some sort of rednecks that just hate renewables – you have completely missed the point, and that is so rude. It is so disrespectful – to even think that people in this state could be maligned in that way. It is grossly unfair, and if it was based on race, you would be calling it out for racism. It is against regional Victorians. Respect them. I appreciate that there are amendments in here that mean that the community benefit fund cannot be redirected to consolidated revenue. I absolutely support this. I also ask the government to ensure that every dollar of the community benefit fund goes back to the communities that are hosting this infrastructure. They deserve it. They deserve better roads, they deserve better hospitals, they deserve better schools and they deserve better public transport, but, more importantly, they deserve far more respect than they get from the Allan Labor government. They should not be paying the price for this mindless end towards bulldozing landholder rights.