Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The people I represent in Fremantle, East Fremantle and Cockburn know that the most important things are the public goods and services we create and share together: our schools, our parks and coastal reserves and our public health system. That's why I'm so pleased that Labor is committed to providing $5 million for an urgent-care clinic at Fremantle Hospital as part of Labor's $2.8 billion better hospitals fund. It's why I've been so glad to be involved in delivering grants through the stronger community grants program to the Freo Street Doctor, the Fremantle Women's Health Centre and the oral health clinic at St Patrick's Community Support Centre. All these services are vital to providing health care and dental care to people in my community, and especially to those facing disadvantage.

The urgent-care clinic, which would be funded by a Labor government if elected, is a much needed investment in local health services. It means that people in the Fremantle area will have access to free out-of-hours health care for serious but not life-threatening illnesses or injuries, the kinds of issues for which many of us would have presented in the past to the ED at Freo hospital, needing care either for ourselves or our kids. With an urgent-care clinic at Freo hospital that service will exist again and not only will provide better, closer and more-accessible health care when accidents or illnesses flare up out of the blue but, in so doing, will also take pressure off the fantastic new ED at Fiona Stanley. For those reasons I'm very glad to make the urgent-care clinic the focus of my campaign in Fremantle.

As I've said, the people I represent in Fremantle, East Fremantle and Cockburn know that the most important things are the public goods and services we create and share together: our parks, our coastal reserves, our public health system and, of course, our education system and our local schools. The people I represent know that, unfortunately, every level of education, from early childhood through schools to TAFE and university, has been squeezed and neglected by this Liberal government. It means kids are simply not getting the chance to be their best and our schools are not set up to provide teaching resources where they're most needed. It means we're not equipping people for the jobs of the future and we're not unlocking the creativity and innovation that is critical to Australia's future as a whole. That's why Labor has an across-the-board grassroots-to-treetop plan for sustaining high-quality education in this country. We're creating 100,000 fee-free TAFE places, we're abolishing the cap on university places and we're introducing a national preschool and kindy program. In the Fremantle electorate, that means an additional $24 million in funding to schools on the basis of need. Every school in the Fremantle electorate will receive more funding. It means $1.4 million over three years for Lakeland Senior High School, $1.3 million for Fremantle College, Beeliar Primary School would get an extra $620,000 and South Coogee primary school would get $560,000.

My community knows that education is the key to opportunity and equality. It's the key to inclusive prosperity and shared wellbeing.

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