CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS
Mr FARLEY (Farrer) (09:30): There is no difference between a skilled rice worker in Leeton and a skilled potline worker at Tomako. 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 are 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 close once its power contract expires in 2028. Albanese and the Minns government moved in August 2026: they announced a $2.5 billion bailout to save roughly a thousand jobs.
That's 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 a hundred job losses across Riverina mills.
What did the workers get from Canberra? Not a dollar of equity; not a water allocation, but a statement saying that job losses were concerning. Tomago's crisis stems from bad energy policy.
The rice industry's crisis stems from bad water policy. Yet rice is generally internationally competitive. Aluminium smelting is not.
George Orwell already wrote the ending: all industries are equal, but some are more equal than others. This is not an argument against the Tomago deal; it's an argument that the criteria for the $2.5 billion rescue cannot quietly be which seat is politically inconvenient to lose. If energy policy driven uncompetitiveness earns a decade of taxpayer funded support, then water policy driven uncompetitiveness in a genuinely export competitive food industry deserves the same table: a guaranteed baseline water allocation and equity co-investment in the value-adding Riverina.
It should not take an electoral map to decide which one gets saved. It should take integrity, morality and common sense and, more importantly, what is best for Australia and what is best for Australians.