Federation Chamber

19 August 2026

Federation Chamber Australian Parliament

10:09 - 10:13
Speaker 1
Are there any constituency statements?  I call the member for Farrer. 
10:13 - 11:21
Speaker 8
Thank you, Deputy Speaker.  There is no difference between a skilled rice worker in Leeton and a skilled potline worker at Tomago.  Both belong to a union.  One processes grains that feeds people, the other smelts bauxite into aluminium that builds things.  Both are good men and women with families and mortgages, both represented by the Labor government in Canberra. 

The only difference is postcode, and that postcode decides who gets rescued and who gets a redundancy notice.  Tomago sits in the seat of Paterson, Labor's heartland.  Rio Tinto warned that the smelter could lose its power contract in 2028.  Albanese and the Minns government moved.  In August 2026, they announced a 2.5 billion bailout to save roughly a thousand jobs, about 2.5 million per job saved. 

SunRice in the conservative Riverina seat of Farrer is a 1.8 billion ASX-listed company supporting roughly 2,000 family farms.  In mid-2026, when the harvest collapsed to just 178,000 tonnes, SunRice confirmed close to 100 job losses across the Riverina mills. 

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