Portfolio — 12 July 2026

Dangerous goods regulation dominated the Member for Eildon's parliamentary window across three June 2026 sitting days, with the district's voice shaping a broader Assembly debate that drew bipartisan support but surfaced a persistent fault line over regulatory burdens on rural operators — a tension directly relevant to Eildon's agricultural and transport-dependent communities.

On 16 June, the Member for Eildon delivered a substantive speech supporting the Dangerous Goods Transport Bill 2026 and the Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (Dangerous Goods) Bill 2026 [TA-260616-vichns-9dec69d94dd9:s197]. Both bills respond to catastrophic chemical fires at West Footscray in August 2018 and Campbellfield in April 2019, which exposed the failure of Victoria's 40-year-old dangerous goods regulatory framework.

The Member cited Victorian workplace fatalities rising from 20 in 2014–15 to 53 in the prior year as evidence of systemic pressure on the safety system. She welcomed the bills' shift to a risk-based approach and the new overarching duty on all transport participants to carry out activities safely so far as reasonably practicable, but challenged the 2028 commencement date as too slow — a decade after the precipitating incidents.

She called for close government engagement with the Victorian Transport Association, the Victorian Farmers Federation and the Australian Institute of Health and Safety during regulation development, and for a structured post-implementation review. That call was echoed in the broader Assembly debate: the Coalition collectively signalled it does not oppose the bills but put the government on notice that feedback from primary producers and transport operators must shape the regulations [TA-260616-vichns-9dec69d94dd9:s202].

The convergence across both lanes — the Member for Eildon's individual speech and the Coalition's collective position — shows a consistent emphasis on protecting rural and agricultural operators from disproportionate compliance burden under the new duties-based framework.

Also on 16 June, the Member for Eildon directed two questions to the Minister for WorkSafe and the TAC over a construction worker on the Footscray Hospital Big Build project, backed by the CFMEU, who she alleged had locked a female colleague in a storeroom while smoking ice in her face [TA-260616-vichns-9dec69d94dd9:s103]. She asserted the conduct had escaped WorkSafe prosecution.

The questions sit alongside her support for the dangerous goods bills as a dual-track WorkSafe accountability frame: legislative reform endorsed in principle, ministerial enforcement challenged in practice.

On 17 June, the Member for Eildon turned to district-specific matters. She raised a speed limit reduction on Mount Buller Road from 80 to 60 kilometres per hour imposed without prior notice, the closure of the Mansfield Secondary College Mount Buller annexe, and recognised Celeste Dennehy of Barjarg on winning Cowgirl of the Year 2026. She also delivered a wide-ranging statement on the government's economic management and the district's exposure to the January Longwood fires.

The fires burned 144,000 hectares, with 70 per cent in the Murrindindi shire and mostly farmland [TA-260617-vichns-9fa22f0e851d:s350]. She called on the government to provide consolidated recovery data, accelerate modular home deployment, and clarify uptake of bushfire recovery grants by primary producers. Separately, she requested urgent ministerial action on wild dog predation across the Alexandra, Gembrook, Noojee, Erica and Mansfield zones, reporting one Glenburn sheep producer losing 20 to 40 lambs nightly during lambing — wiping out 40 per cent of their flock in weeks — with attacks extending from the Yarra Ranges to Orbost [TA-260617-vichns-9fa22f0e851d:s373].

The wild dog and fire recovery matters together constitute a district-level agricultural crisis narrative that reinforces the regulatory burden concerns the Member pressed at the statewide level in the dangerous goods debate.

The Member for Eildon also announced the Coalition's 10-year economic plan, targeting budget cash surplus by 2032, payroll tax relief, first home buyer stamp duty exemption, energy security restoration and a hiring freeze on back-office roles — framed explicitly against the government's economic record and its handling of fire recovery. Regulation commencement under the dangerous goods framework is not anticipated until April 2028 to allow industry preparation time, aligning Victoria with the Australian Code for the Transport of Dangerous Goods by Road and Rail [TA-260616-vichns-9dec69d94dd9:s214].