VFF president Ryan Milgate – has launched the VFF’s 2026 state election priorities and forum program.
VICTORIA’S peak farmer body today unveiled its election issues priority platform with a call for rural voters to critically assess electoral candidate and party policies rather than exercise a protest vote.
The Victorian Farmers Federation also called on every party and candidate to back Victorian farmers ahead of the next state election on 28 November this year.
The VFF’s ‘Back Victorian Farmers’ sets out five priorities and fifteen commitments the VFF is seeking from every party and candidate contesting the 2026 Victorian election.
VFF president Ryan Milgate said the federation’s five priorities include:
Remove unfair taxes and regulations;
Rebuild the infrastructure that carries our rural economy;
Protect productive land and secure our water;
Defend Victoria’s farms, and;
Back communities and the next generation.
Among the fifteen ‘asks’ or commitments, the VFF plan calls on parties and candidates to:
Scrap the Emergency Services and Volunteer Fund for good.
Commit an extra $2 billion to fix Victoria’s crumbling regional roads.
Appoint a Land Use and Food Security Commissioner and protect farmland in law.
Take VNI West and the Western Renewables Link back to the drawing board.
Establish Right to Farm laws and lift wild dog and pest control.
Deliver the childcare, healthcare and housing that keep farming families in the regions.
Deliver the Western Victoria water security and pipeline strategy and continue the fight against federal water buybacks.
Although the VFF would not be endorsing specific candidates or parties in the election Mr Milgate said it was the VFF’s role to give its ‘asks’ to the political parties.
However, Mr Milgate said the VFF will score parties and candidates against its five priorities and 15 commitments.
“We want to give our members and rural people some indications of how they fit in key priorities going forward – it’s absolutely something that we will do.”
Protest vote possibility is ‘a real concern’
Mr Milgate said he is concerned that the state’s farmers will exercise a protest vote in anger over issues rather than on an assessment of a candidate’s policy suite and the ability to implement real policy change.
“I reckon that is a real concern; I think what we are going to see is a huge protest vote.”
However, Mr Milgate said a protest vote can potentially lead to a “poorer position” than previously.
“We need to be apolitical at the VFF, but we want to make sure that people fully understand the policies and what each candidate and party are talking about.”
Mr Milgate said it is “more critical than ever” that voters critically assess the statements of candidates and whether they are backed up with policies that will make difference.
“A lot of people are going to be heading in with a protest vote and that challenges me; they’re voting with their heart and not their head.
“I understand the frustration, but it concerns me that by voting with our heart and not with our head we are not actually addressing the ongoing elephants in the room that really need sorting,” he said.
“We need people in parliament that know how the system works, have robust structures and organisations behind them and understand how to come about change.
“We need robust structures and smart people to help navigate us out of where we’re at, not broad brush statements that we are getting,” He said.
“I don’t anyone disagrees that the finance of Victoria are absolutely in the toilet and it is going to take a fair bit to work through and get out and you need some pretty smart people to be able to work through that, not just someone who tells us what we want to hear and then get into power and say ‘I can’t do that’.”
Mr Milgate said Victorian farmers are one of the state’s most productive industries, but too often policy failed to reflect the reality of life at the farm gate.
“Victorian farmers have spent generations building one of the most productive food and fibre economies in the world.
“Through the good years and the bad, and we have seen what our sector can achieve when it is given the right conditions,” he said.
“Far too often we are held back by needless bureaucracy, contradictory rules, rising costs and decisions made by governments without any real understanding of life at the farm gate.
“This election is a chance to change that,” he said.
“Farmers are problem-solvers by nature. Give us the right settings, get the barriers out of the way, and we will deliver a stronger, more productive Victoria for generations to come,” Mr Milgate said.
The full platform, ‘Back Victorian Farmers’ is available at vff.org.au and can be downloaded here.
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