On Wednesday, December 4, he visited the Euroa electorate with State Member for Euroa Annabelle Cleeland.
“It is a bit of a daunting task, But it’s an absolute privilege and honour to be elected the leader of the Nationals,” he said.
“The key thing for me is that nothing changes in terms of what the Nats are, and what we stand for.
“We've had over 100 years now of being the voice of rural and regional Victoria, and that will continue to be the case.
“There's no change in that approach, just a change of figurehead.
“And we will be fighting with our local MPs, with myself, our deputy, Emma Keeley, to ensure that we continue to be the voice for all regional Victoria, and particularly, here in the north-east.”
Mr O’Brien said after speaking to local people he found one of their main concerns was already on his radar — that the regions are not getting their fair share.
“We’ve done some research through the Parliamentary Budget Office that showed we're getting about 13 per cent of the infrastructure spend, despite the fact that regional Victoria is 25 per cent of the state’s population,” he said.
“You can see it in particularly our roads, which is the most obvious situation at the moment.
“An example I give is the Metro Tunnel’s most recent cost blowout.
“But also our health services and the ability to get an ambulance when you need one, or elective surgery.
“Our CFA and other emergency services.
“There’s a lack of support for our volunteers.”
He also pointed to cost-of-living pressures compounding all these issues in regional Victoria.
Mr O’Brien said housing availability and energy policy also needed to be addressed, and pointed to the amount of, and cost of, taxes in Victoria.
And he plans to do that by helping the coalition back into power at the next election.
“There are two roles for us in opposition,” Mr O’Brien said.
“One is to hold the government to account, which we do with great relish.
“But then we also need to provide that alternative government, which we’ll be doing more of in the next two years.
“Now that I’m in the leadership role, we can continue the Nationals policy development, full-steam ahead.
“But we will certainly be putting forward strong policies for regional Victoria.”
Ms Cleeland said one area the Nationals were keen to address was childcare.
“In the 2022 election, Labor committed to a new childcare (facility) in Seymour,” she said.
“It wasn’t allocated in the latest budget.
“There is a wait list of 80 families on a single childcare (facility) here. And it’s a room that has capacity for 80 children.
“A consequence of that is we had three not-for-profits and private companies interested in investing here.
“They’ve pulled out and withdrawn.”
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