Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

Toxic! There are 238 Medicare offices in Australia, and so far this year we have rolled out family assistance services to 150 of those offices, including those three in the electorate of the member for Grey at Port Pirie, Whyalla and Port Lincoln. The good news is that more than 100,000 families have already accessed this service through those Medicare offices.

There are parts of Australia that do not have Medicare offices or even, for that matter, Centrelink offices. I know one town in the member for Grey’s electorate—Mungeranie. I am sure all my colleagues have been to Mungeranie. It is 1,000 kilometres north of Adelaide, 1,000 kilometres west of Broken Hill, sitting on the Birdsville Track with a population of three. They may want to access Medicare services. They might want to access Centrelink services—John and Genevieve Hammond out there. They can do it by telephone or online, even though I think they are unlikely to access the maternity payment. Ten people per day access the maternity payment, and the maternity payment is going up to $4,000 on 1 July. If that is not an encouragement to have more children, then I do not know what is. I am going to give it a shot! We must be close to the summer break—the winter break, I mean!

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