Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to inform the House of what the Baird and Abbott governments have done to our community. The Killara women's refuge in Randwick is the only women's only domestic violence shelter in our community. As a result of the Baird government's Going Home Staying Home reforms, the Killara women's shelter is about to close. Some women fleeing domestic violence in my community will have nowhere to go and will be forced to live in halfway houses. Often they leave home with their children, fleeing domestic violence situations, with nothing else but the clothes on their backs. That opportunity for a women's only shelter is now closed in our community.

At the Prince of Wales hospital in Randwick, our local hospital, the Baird government have cut $30 million from their operating budget over the last three years—30 beds have closed, two physiotherapists have been sacked. My wife is a nurse and she tells me of the pressures that nurses are under at the local hospital because when nurses leave they are not being replaced.

Our local TAFE college in Randwick has lost 40 teachers over the last four years. There has been $1.7 billion cut from the TAFE budget in New South Wales and 1,100 teachers have been sacked. I have an email from a constituent who says that the cost of a certificate III in jewellery has gone from $419 in 2014 to $10,651 now. That is what a Liberal government does to education in our community. (Time expired)

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