Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is certainly the community that are wonderful. In particular, we have so many groups right across the board who care for people. One group in particular is Twin Towns Friends and its marvellous coordinator, Doreen Welsh. She runs a volunteer group and they visit elderly people in their homes. They receive no funding at all. As I say, it is a volunteer group. Doreen is just fantastic. Day after day, she goes out visiting people. We have so many people who move to our area. They retire here. Often their spouse becomes ill. They do not have a lot of family living close by and it is groups like these that spend all their time visiting them and providing that great community support. We have so many groups right across the board throughout the entire electorate that are so committed and that do such a wonderful job. It is this that forms the basis of a strong community.

As I have said, all we have seen from the Howard government is inaction right across the board, which is outrageous. We have to provide so much more for those within our community who so desperately need it. We have also seen—and I hear this all the time in the area of the Northern Rivers—the National Party abandon rural and regional Australia, which is a concern to so many people. We have seen them selling out on issues like Telstra and industrial relations. Lately, we have seen them involved in so much infighting and being concerned about themselves. I am afraid they are a spent force in representing regional and rural Australia. It is a concern that people raise with me constantly. The reality is that they are not able to represent people within these areas.

The reality is that we need to have so much funding within these vital areas right across the board. As I said earlier, 20 per cent of our population is aged over 65. If we do not start addressing these issues now, the crisis that we are seeing in Richmond particularly in areas like aged care and health care we will be seeing right across the nation. We need to be formulating plans, particularly with the baby boomers retiring, to make sure that we can adequately provide as people are ageing. Instead, we have not seen the government addressing any of these issues at all.

The issue of youth unemployment that members spoke about earlier is also of major concern. Particularly in regional areas, the options for young people are so limited. So many families tell me now that the option of their child going to university is just not on their radar anymore. They just cannot access HECS fees at all. There is a lack of training and employment opportunities for them. It is unfortunate that so many of them will have to move away, which is very difficult. They do not have the financial resources to do that. We need to keep people within our areas, staying with their communities and also their families. It is so vitally important.

I would also like to commend the community who also work so hard to preserve our local environment. We have a beautiful pristine area. A quote that we often hear from locals is, ‘We don’t want to be like the Gold Coast.’ That is because we do not. We are a very unique area and we want to maintain that. We want to sustain and preserve that for the future.

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