Emma McBride (Dobell, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Hansard source

They say budgets are about priorities. This afternoon schoolkids from my old primary school visited Parliament House. I asked them what mattered to them and this is what they told me. Jayden said, 'People doing the same job should be paid the same.' Eliza said, 'Women and men should be treated equally.' Jamie and Michaela both said that potholes in local roads need to be fixed. Leah said, 'We should find money to help people living overseas.' Summer said, 'All medicines should be free.' Stevie said that kids who are homeless should get the same chance at education as she does. All the kids agreed it was expensive to buy things and that, for those who had pocket money, it didn't go very far. What schoolkids in the electorate I represent on the north end of the Central Coast of New South Wales care about are things that everyone relies on. When they grow up, they should be able to find a good job locally. They should be able to buy or rent a home on the coast. They should be able to afford health care when they need it. What worries me is that this budget has let them down.

Australians felt let down when they found out the government expects real wages to fall over the next four years and has no plan to do anything about it. A government that for the last eight years hasn't supported increases in real wages and stood by while penalty rates were cut has done nothing to combat wage theft and is content to let another generation of Australian women face a gender pay gap without taking any meaningful action. As Eliza said to me this afternoon, men and women should be treated equally and that means in the workplace too. Eliza deserves better.

Older Australians should have the care they need without having to wait. Over Christmas last year, there were 1,057 of older people on the Central Coast waiting for a home-care package. Across Australia, there were 97,000 older people waiting for the care they need. The government's announced 40,000 packages this financial year and the next is, of course, welcome, but they won't clear the waiting list while more people join the end of the queue. Older Australians shouldn't have to wait for the care they so desperately need. Older people on the coast can wait 12 to 18 months for a home-care package, people like Alan. His daughter told me: 'My father is currently living with us as myself and my husband care for him. He was approved for a level 3 package seven months ago. Over the last six months, my father's needs and requirements have been increasing, placing a great deal of pressure. We contacted My Aged Care and have been informed that the package will still have a nine-month wait.' She goes on, 'This is really concerning as we're now trying to work out how we can support him appropriately.' She says, 'Both my husband and I work full time and this has created a great deal of stress and anguish.' Her father is still able to do much and they just wish for him to be able to maintain the independence he still has. That's what everyone deserves—people like Alan and the 97,000 other people like him across Australia waiting right now. They deserve to be independent. They deserve quality of life. They deserve dignity of care. Alan deserves better.

I am increasingly concerned about access to health care on the coast. You might ask: why does this matter? It's because in Australia your health and your quality of life is worse if you live outside a big city. Your life expectancy is shorter and your risk of hospital stays increases. People living outside of big cities face longer waiting times to see a GP or a specialist. The budget does nothing to fix this. The community and local GPs have described the shortage of GPs on the Central Coast as a crisis. I wrote to the health minister about their concerns and the reply from the minister's office said: 'Lake Haven and surrounding arounds of the northern Central Coast are non-DPA because they have been assessed as receiving adequate GP services for the needs of the community.' Well, Minister Hunt, this is what local GPs in my community are describing as a crisis. The shortage of GPs means many local GPs are working a 10-hour day in their practices and following up with shifts at the Bridges after-hours clinic on the grounds of Wyong hospital. If that clinic is overwhelmed, which it often is, people end up waiting in the emergency department of Wyong hospital, sometimes for up to 12 hours.

I worked at Wyong hospital for nearly 10 years. The staff there are dedicated and capable. They're doing the very best they can under enormous and growing strain, and the government doesn't recognise the problem—or, if it does, it doesn't care or isn't acting on it. In this correspondence, the minister's office said that if the situation were to change significantly, the status would be reviewed by 1 July. I'm urging the minister to act now and make the coast a priority so locals can get the care they need when they need it. It's better for them, it's better for our community and it's better for the budget.

Out-of-pocket costs are another barrier to local people getting health care. Despite a trillion dollars of debt, this problem isn't going away. Out-of-pocket costs have soared in the eight years that this government has been in office. The average out-of-pocket cost to visit a GP has increased by 29.6 per cent, while the out-of-pocket cost to visit a specialist has increased by 44.7 per cent. Costs for cancer patients needing radiotherapy have nearly tripled. The budget announcement of incentives for bulk-billing in remote areas is welcome, of course, but will do nothing for people living in the outer suburbs and the regions, where this crisis is growing. At the same time, real wages have stalled, so people are finding it harder to meet these costs. The concerns of locals were summed up in a letter from Joanne of Wyong, published in the Coast Community Chronicle this morning. It reads:

I am absolutely furious.

I've been sick for about eight weeks and because I have a cough, I’m not allowed to go into my GP's medical centre, even though I have had a negative Covid test.

I was forced by them into a telehealth appointment, the doctor even told me it was a waste of time because he couldn't examine me, and sent the pharmacy a script for some antibiotics, which he told me probably wouldn't work (and they didn't).

The medical centre advised me that there would be a $20 fee charged to my credit card as a "gap" and Medicare covered the rest.

Our family has been with the centre for several years, they only started charging a gap in April.

However, they charged me $50 … and when I contacted them I was told because I hadn't been into the actual centre for a year (yes, in a global pandemic and I was there in March 2020), that Medicare required them to charge $50 with no rebate …

Between the medical centre's charge and antibiotics, I'm $70 out of pocket and still sick.

Now I have another appointment as the doctor says I have to go into the centre and he will see me in person, ready to be charged another consultation fee for that privilege, bringing me up to $90 plus any additional medication.

By the time I see the doctor it will be four weeks since I tried to see a doctor.

Good job I'm not dying or unable to work.

This goes back to what Summer from St Cecilia's primary school told me earlier today. She said that medicines should be affordable. As Summer knows, this is just not good enough.

I'll now turn to roads and infrastructure. The government is spending a billion dollars on local roads across the country, right around Australia, but not a single cent is being spent on the northern end of the Central Coast. So I'm sorry, Jamie and Mikayla, there is no money to fix your potholes. The government must invest to clear bottlenecks like the Pacific Highway through Wyong and Bryant Drive in Tuggerah so locals can get around safely and to open up investment to boost local jobs. The government has announced spending to build better regions, but despite a rapidly growing population, there is, again, nothing for the northern end of the Central Coast. In fact, the last major roads project in our region was the M1 upgrade started by the member for Grayndler when he was minister for infrastructure.

It gets worse. When I put a question in writing to the Deputy Prime Minister last November, asking him to explain the allocation of road funding on the coast in last year's budget, which seemed skewed towards one end of the coast, his reply, which came six months later, was: 'The allocation of funds is a decision of the Australian government.' What does this say about the government's priorities on the coast? It says, 'I'm sorry, Jamie and Mikayla, there is no money to fix the potholes in your street in Tuggerawong.'

Everyone deserves a safe place to call home. This government has had eight years to fix the problems of housing affordability for renters and buyers on the coast, and it is just getting worse. It's harder to rent than ever before, it's harder to buy than ever before, and there are more people, especially women and young people, couch surfing or living in their cars. When a local family of two police officers and three kids can't get a start in the housing market, we have a problem. Vacancy rates are as low as 0.1 per cent in parts of the coast and rents have climbed by over $100 a week in just the last few months. In some cases, tenants are paying $430 a week for a small studio apartment. One of the many posts on my Facebook page on this subject was from Dana of Hamlyn Terrace. This is what she said:

We recently found ourselves seeking a rental after seven years and could not believe how competitive it was!

Two fulltime working incomes - rental mortgage history for over ten years and rejection after rejection.

She went on to say:

I couldn't believe it.

And it is tough. It is a growing problem. When two full-time workers with a rental mortgage history for over 10 years can't secure a rental, we have a problem that the government hasn't recognised or doesn't care about.

Homelessness on the coast is a growing, but often hidden, problem, as women and young people couch-surf or live in their cars. Last year, 10,000 women and children across Australia were turned away from refuges because there wasn't a bed, and the shortfall of social housing has climbed to 3,500, leaving many people waiting up to 10 years for a place to call home. To fix these problems won't be easy. It reminds me of Geoff, the social worker I worked with in Wyong hospital in the acute adult inpatient unit. He would hand someone a phone book and point them to the phone in the public mental health ward and say: 'You've got to try. You need to call. You need to find a place to stay.' What chance does someone who's been discharged from a mental health unit in a public hospital have in a competitive rental market? What chance do they have of having a roof over their head, being safe and being able to get the support that they need for their wellbeing? It is just not good enough.

Labor has a plan for housing Australians: a future fund which will change lives and create jobs. Over the first five years, it will build 30,000 new housing properties, including homes for women and children fleeing family and domestic violence and for older women aged 65 plus who are on low or fixed incomes or receiving a pension and who are at the greatest risk of homelessness. How can you rent in a competitive rental market and, at the same time, be living or getting by on an age pension? You can't. It doesn't stack up. It's just not good enough. There needs to be a plan for housing for people in communities like mine.

There really needs to be a plan for jobs. As I said earlier, people on the coast—such as the young people from my old school like Jaedyn, Aliza, Jamie, Mikayla, Leah, Summer, Stevie—deserve, when they grow up, to be able to go to Wyong TAFE or to the Ourimbah campus of the University of Newcastle or to go straight into work to be able to get the skills they need locally to be able to go into a secure job, have a good career and be able to support themselves and their families. But this government has no plan for jobs. The number of apprentices and trainees in Dobell is currently 25 per cent lower than when this government took office. So what chance do people like Jaedyn, Aliza, Jamie and Mikayla have? They deserve better. Kids on the Central Coast and kids in the regions and the outer suburbs deserve better. This government has overlooked the outer suburbs and the regions in its budget, particularly in coastal communities like mine.

I have met with local small business owners and visited manufacturers. They're punching above their weight. They're innovating, they're designing and they're building word-class products, but they need proper support. TrendPac in Berkeley Vale, a contract manufacturer specialising in personal care and home-care products, have been supplying large retailers since the 1960s, and they employ more than 220 locals. I met Larry and his team at Bioaction in Tuggerah, who have developed leading technology in wastewater management and protecting infrastructure, and they are providing skilled jobs on the coast. I recently caught up with Joel and Breah from the Marshmallow Co. in Wyong. They've built their business from the ground up with passion and hard work, and growing demand since 2020 has led them to new premises and a larger kitchen. TrendPac, Bioaction and Marshmallow Co. are capable local people who are innovating. They need better support. They need to be able to obtain capital for start-ups. They need to be able to scale up. They need to be able to face the challenges of businesses getting off the ground or expanding in regional communities. But there is nothing for them in this budget. Local manufacturers on the coast have the know-how and the ideas to compete with anybody locally, nationally and globally, but the government needs to do more to support them to scale up, to expand and to employ more locals.

As we recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, we need to be squarely focused on jobs—secure, local jobs in the outer suburbs and the regions. If you want good, secure jobs with fair pay and good conditions, you need a government which makes regional Australia and the outer suburbs in the regions a priority. If you want an Australia that makes things and supports local jobs, you need a government focused on skills and training, working in partnership with industry and with the education sector. This budget has once again left the people on the northern end of the Central Coast behind. Those young kids that I met from my old school, St Cecilia's in Wyong, care. I want to thank Jaedyn, Aliza, Jamie, Mikayla, Leah, Summer and Stevie. They know what matters. They know what the needs of our community are. The government should listen to them. They should listen to local school kids and really do better for regions like ours.

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