Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to support this motion which covers one of the most vital safety nets we have in this country in our social services. One of the things that really sets Australia apart from so many countries around the world is the fact that we do not leave the most vulnerable people in our community to languish on their own. It's the fact that, as a community and as governments, we understand there is an obligation to people who are in a time of need or suffering from some affliction that means that they can't work or can't access support through family or friends, so that they can turn to their government for help.

Of course, we're in modern times now and that help can be accessed in many ways, and there's no doubt that online services have made life so much easier for so many people across the community. But we know that telling someone to get online and get to a myGov account and somehow work out how to access their disability support pension, their age pension or their single parent pension doesn't work for everyone and we know that it doesn't work all the time—not least because of the difficult track record that this government has had with rolling out IT but also because some people don't have enough money to have an iPhone with a data plan that allows them to be on the internet all the time; they live in an area where the NBN botched rollout means that they don't have access to the data that they need; they can't afford a computer; or perhaps they're of an age or a literacy standard or a background which means that they just don't know how to use that technology. Many people need the face-to-face services that have traditionally come with Centrelink offices and Services Australia. The Centrelink office in Frankston has social workers who are there to help people with complex needs not just to work out what payment they may be entitled to but also to work out what are the hurdles in their lives that are stopping them from taking the next step forward. That's an essential service which perhaps can be done on the phone—and which, during the COVID pandemic, has been done on the phone more than ever—but often requires that real relationship and face-to-face contact.

In the name of cost-cutting, however, this Morrison government has taken the approach to Centrelink offices and Services Australia which isn't one where online complements that face-to-face service that so many need but is looking to replace it. Just outside my electorate in Mornington—which used to be part of Dunkley but is now part of the electorate of Flinders—there is a Medicare and Centrelink office. It's used by people in my electorate—predominantly pensioners from Mount Eliza and some from Frankston South—and it's used by people in the Mornington area. Some 800 people visited Mornington services centre every week before the pandemic. Yet, at the very start of this pandemic, this Morrison government made a decision in the dead of night and without any consultation with anyone—it would seem without consultation with the member for Flinders, who's the Minister for Health and Aged Care—to shut down that office. It was to go on 23 March 2020. It took an amazing community campaign to get a reprieve. It took locals from Mount Eliza and from Mornington. It took the Mornington support information service and the council. I got onboard with the campaign. It took petitions. It took interviews with the media. It took inquiries to the government to say, 'What are you doing?' for us to even get a reprieve for that centre for six months. It was only in September of this year that we finally heard that the Mornington Service Centre will stay open at least until March 2022. But, given the effort and the blowback from the community, we're confident we can keep that pressure on.

I was proud and pleased to be part of that campaign—for the people of my electorate, in Mount Eliza and Frankston South, who used Mornington Centrelink; for the people not in my electorate who needed to use that Centrelink service; and for the people in my electorate who used Frankston Centrelink, which would have been even more overwhelmed. This government is letting people down in their time of need, and it has to stop. The global pandemic isn't over, and the needs of our people for social services aren't over. (Time expired)

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