ADJOURNMENT

Mr TEHAN (Wannon—Manager of Opposition Business) (19:29): The Portland Observer is a very, very good newspaper in my electorate. It's a fantastic publication. Everyone will remember Portland—they may or may not—because that's where the Minister for Climate Change and Energy went to with great fanfare to announce a big offshore wind farm and then had to, a few months later, retreat.

Then he went back to Portland and announced that he was going to put it in Port Fairy and Warrnambool. I don't think he quite knew where he was. But, anyway, we'll put all that aside.

I raise this latest article in the Portland Observer because it says, 'Blades to arrive via port'. It got me thinking about this made in Australia policy of those opposite and how everything was going to be made locally and renewables were going to deliver jobs everywhere. Do you know that Portland used to manufacture towers and still has the ability to do so?

It used to manufacture blades. Now, there'd be a serious investment involved in bringing that back to life, but here we are. We're going to have the towers and the blades that are going to a north-west energy zone coming right through the Port of Portland literally past where they make the towers—no jobs whatsoever—heading up to north-west Victoria.

Not only that, there's going to be an assessment of the impact that these big trucks will have on the roads. But is there anywhere where it says, 'We'll fix the roads, we'll repair the roads and we'll make the roads better'? No, all they'll do is monitor what happens.

Where is the local community benefit from any of this? Where is it? Now some people, those opposite on the government benches, will say that it will deliver us cheaper energy.

We're still waiting for $275 off our power bills. We're still waiting for that one. I think there will be a few Christmases before we ever see it.

As a matter of fact, I don't think we will see it at all. It's time the government got serious and invested in affordable energy which is going to drive jobs in this country, including manufacturing jobs. If they keep this approach whereby everything comes from overseas, then what we're going to see is that we will become more and more reliant on overseas energy and overseas components, and that is not what we want.

Speaker, I'm glad that you're here in the House while I am able to address this issue, because we have in Wannon at the moment the My First Speech competition going on. This is something which is run right across the nation, and I know it's something that the Speaker is very, very engaged with himself. What I want to do is encourage all those young people in Wannon to enter the My First Speech competition because in the end, if you practice, if you contribute, if you enter, you never know, one day you might be just standing here at this dispatch box— Mr McCormack: Representing Wannon.

Mr TEHAN: giving your first speech or, as the member for Riverina has said, representing the great electorate of Wannon. So please enter. It's funny and it's great that the member for Riverina is here in the House as well, because it wasn't so long ago that I was in this chamber giving my first speech.

I've got to say it was one of the great honours of my life. It's one of the great chambers of any parliament in the world, this chamber. So to every young person in Wannon who aspires to maybe one day make a contribution in local government, state government or federal parliament: please think about entering the My First Speech competition because it is well worth it.

It's a very well run competition, and you can have a lot of fun with your fellow students if you do enter. So make sure you give it a go.