Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (10:12): I move:
That the bill be now read a second time.
In moving the Planning and Environment Amendment (Agricultural Land and Food Security) Bill 2026 I am very proud to not only read this but to support our Shadow Minister for Agriculture Emma Kealy and the Liberals and Nationals in bringing this forward to this house.
Victoria is Australia’s largest agricultural producing state, accounting for approximately 28 per cent of Australia’s gross value of agricultural production, with a farm gate value of around $22 billion each year. Our state is home to more than 21,300 farming businesses, representing around one-quarter of all farming enterprises in Australia. Together they produce the fantastic food and fibre that feed and clothe millions of people, generate billions of dollars in exports and underpin one of Victoria’s most important industries. But agriculture’s contribution extends well beyond the farm gate.
This sector supports thousands of jobs across transport and logistics, food processing, manufacturing, agricultural technology, research, science and innovation. It is the economic backbone of many of our regional communities and a vital driver of investment, employment and prosperity across our state.
Farmers are also the custodians of our landscape. Every day they manage our soils. They care for our waterways. They protect biodiversity and safeguard the natural assets for future generations that can depend upon them. They carry the responsibility of producing the food and fibre the world needs while ensuring the land remains productive for those who come after them.
That is why this bill is important. This bill is about protecting capability, not preventing opportunity. It recognises that Victoria’s most strategic agricultural land should be protected, while ensuring development elsewhere only proceeds where our long-term agricultural capability can be maintained. Yet despite agriculture’s enormous contribution to our economy and our communities, agricultural land receives surprisingly little recognition within Victoria’s planning system.
When major projects are assessed, we rightly consider biodiversity, cultural heritage and native vegetation as well as landscape values and environmental impact. But too often, agriculture is treated simply as another land use rather than a strategic asset that underpins food security, regional economies and export industries.
This bill seeks to change that. Its purpose is straightforward. It is not to prohibit development. Its purpose is to ensure that when decisions are made that affect agricultural land, those decisions are informed by agricultural expertise and are made transparently, consistently and with proper regard for Victoria’s long-term agricultural capability.
Agriculture is unlike almost any other industry. We cannot manufacture more high-quality agricultural land. Once productive land is unnecessarily fragmented, sterilised or permanently degraded, its productive capacity may never be fully restored. That is why decisions affecting agricultural land deserve careful, informed and transparent consideration.
This bill seeks to establish a new framework within the Planning and Environment Act to ensure agriculture is properly recognised within those planning decisions.
It establishes clear objectives recognising the importance of agricultural land and food security. It provides for identification of strategic agricultural land. It requires decision-makers to give significant weight to protecting that land.
It introduces agricultural land impact assessments for prescribed developments. It requires consultation with Agriculture Victoria before significant decisions affecting agricultural land are made. It requires agricultural expertise to be represented on advisory committees and Environment Effects Act inquiry panels. It is very important to have that local agricultural expertise. It strengthens rehabilitation obligations through mandatory rehabilitation in terms of bonds and ongoing monitoring. And it establishes a public register and annual reporting requirements so Victorians can better understand the cumulative impact of development on agricultural land.
These are practical reforms. They improve decision-making. They improve transparency. They improve accountability.
Importantly, this bill does not presume every proposal should be refused. Nor does it elevate agriculture above every other public interest. Rather, it ensures agricultural impacts are properly understood, properly assessed and properly weighed alongside all other relevant considerations.
Projects that can coexist with agriculture should be able to demonstrate that they can do so responsibly. Projects that permanently reduce Victoria’s agricultural capability should be required to justify those impacts and why they are in the broader public interest.
Victoria faces increasing pressure on agricultural land. Urban growth. Renewable energy generation. Electricity transmission. Extractive industries. Major infrastructure. Each of these developments may be necessary. But each also has the potential to permanently alter productive farming landscapes. As these pressures increase, our planning system must evolve to ensure that agriculture is no longer the forgotten consideration.
Regional communities deserve confidence that agricultural expertise will be at the table when decisions affecting their livelihoods are made. Farmers deserve confidence that the long-term productive capacity of their land will be properly considered. Developers deserve certainty about the information expected of them and the standards they will be required to meet. And government deserves access to better information upon which to make balanced decisions. This bill provides that framework.
Ultimately, this bill asks a simple question. Not whether Victoria should choose between agriculture and development. But whether development can occur without compromising our long-term agricultural capability. The Liberals and Nationals believe it can.
We need to see, and we should be able to see, that we can protect Victoria’s most strategic agricultural land. We can support responsible development in appropriate locations. We can strengthen rehabilitation, improve transparency and ensure agricultural expertise informs major planning decisions. And we can leave future generations with a planning system that values both economic opportunity and productive capacity of the land that sustains us.
I commend the bill to the house.