This weekend, Senator Matt Canavan will be joining me for two Community Energy Forums to explain a cheaper, better and fairer way to lower emissions.
On Saturday, 29 November, we will be at Dubbo and Dunedoo, the heart of the Central-West Orana Renewable Energy Zone – Australia’s first renewable energy zone.
The Albanese Labor Government’s rush at all costs to chase the impossible Net Zero target is hitting all regional areas, including the electorate of Parkes, hard.
The experiment of the Central-West Orana REZ has shown that centralising solar, wind and battery projects in one region has a massive impact on the community. It impacts on road infrastructure, on the environment, on the very fabric of these towns.
Net Zero by 2050 is not the answer. Come along to Dubbo at 10am on Saturday at Ollie Robbins Oval or Dunedoo at 2pm on Saturday at the Dunedoo Sports Club to find out more.
I was in Dubbo last week for an affordable housing roundtable with Senator Bridget McKenzie and representatives of the Housing Industry Association (HIA) and the building industry.
The roundtable discussed the regional housing shortage and talked about local solutions, which are always the best answer to local problems.
This is a good step towards working together for affordable and appropriate housing to retain young people in our communities and attract more people to provide essential services into the future.
It was also my pleasure to attend the Dubbo Regional Sports Awards last week. Dubbo has a strong sporting community and I congratulate each of the deserving winners along with those of Dubbo Regional Council’s Dubbo Day Awards, including Donna Falconer who received the 2025 Tony McGrane Award recognising outstanding contribution to the community.
The Dubbo Day Awards mark Dubbo’s gazettal as a village on 23 November 1849 and recognise the hardworking volunteers who go above and beyond to positively contribute to their community.
In Lightning Ridge, I attended the opening of renovations to the Lightning Ridge Bowling Club. This is a wonderful addition to the club which is a hub for social interactions in this great town. Well done to the Board of Directors who have made this happen, and to all the people who have come before them who have contributed to this club.
I met this month with Shanna Whan, Australian of the Year ‘Local Hero’ in 2022 and a Member of the Order of Australia, in Narrabri to hear about the work Sober in the Country is doing. Sober in the Country is changing and saving countless rural lives through an incredibly user-friendly message that it’s #OK2SAYNO (to booze) – and that our mates choosing less or no booze deserve to be catered for and supported in that choice.
Shanna and fellow AgriFutures Australian Rural Woman of the Year recipient Carol Mudford from sHedway featured on Sunday on Landline. I know the two organisations will continue to work together for the good of their communities.
Finally, this week is the last Parliamentary sitting week of the year and I will be taking the Albanese Labor Government to task over absolutely dangerous planned Telstra outages in Lightning Ridge, Rowena and Brewarrina.
These outages go for two to seven days, leaving businesses without the means to carry out transactions, ordering and other processes essential to business, farms without connection to the outside world and people on the Telstra network without access to life-saving emergency services.
This is despite an election promise by Labor to provide universal mobile coverage across Australia “anywhere Australians can see the sky”. Labor’s promise was to expand Triple Zero access for all Australians, expand outdoor voice and SMS coverage into existing mobile black spots, and to improve the availability of mobile signals during disasters and power outages.
Instead, we are seeing the signal switched off altogether for extended periods.
This cannot happen. We have seen this happen before and unfortunately, there have been serious incidents and even deaths.
This would not happen in the city, and I will be asking questions at the highest level.
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