Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I start by congratulating the North Cyprus Turkish Community of Victoria for having completing an amazing renovation and renewal of their community centre. Last week I attended an event with hundreds of people, with music, dancing, delicious food—a real celebration of culture. The fact that so many people attended the new community centre shows how important it is to the North Cypriot Turkish community in the west of Melbourne. The new community centre is a modern and beautifully designed building that will be a wonderful place for the community to come together for cultural events, important days of celebration and, perhaps most importantly, spending time together catching up and socialising over a meal or a coffee.

I say well done to the incredibly hardworking committee and to all of the many volunteers who put in such hard work. This project has been years in the making and, like anything of this magnitude, has involved a number of setbacks along the way, but, at each setback, the community, the committee and all the volunteers got back to work, and eventually all of their hard work has paid off. The committee has shown incredible determination and commitment.

I acknowledge a few people and apologise that, whenever you highlight a few names, you inevitably miss a number of others. Of course the Consul-General of Turkey in Victoria, Dogan Ferhat Isik, was at the event, which shows how important this event was to the broader community. I also acknowledge Doctor Lutfiye Ali, who is the grants and program manager of the North Cyprus Turkish Community of Victoria. I also acknowledge Candan Ahmet, the President of the North Cyprus Turkish Community of Victoria, and Emel Huseyin, the President of the North Cyprus Turkish Community Centre of Victoria Elders Group. And there are may others, of course.

On the day, a number of certificates were handed out to volunteers, who gave so much throughout this process, and also to a number of the builders and tradespeople. A number of the people who contributed to the building—the building managers and project managers but also a number of the tradies who run their own businesses—gave so much over a long period of time to make sure this project came in on budget and on time. Of course, we know that's a very difficult thing to achieve in this environment.

It was great to be at the official launch with so many friends of this community, including Natalie Suleyman, who's been a very good friend of this community for many years; Ingrid Stitt, the Minister for Multicultural Affairs; and also Sarah Connolly. I once again thank the local North Cyprus Turkish community for inviting me to this very important event. It was wonderful to celebrate with you.

The Albanese Labor government has delivered a Medicare urgent care clinic in Maribyrnong to give better access to high-quality, free, bulked-billed healthcare services. The Maribyrnong Medicare urgent care clinic service is at Edgewater Medical Centre, on Edgewater Boulevard, which is a very accessible part of the community. In the 2024-25 budget, the Albanese government provided $227 million to deliver 29 more Medicare urgent care clinics; this will take the total to 87 across the country. Seven existing state-funded priority primary care centres in Victoria will now transition to the Albanese government's Medicare urgent care clinic network, and this is one of those.

I'm thrilled that an urgent care clinic has opened in my electorate. It will significantly boost the availability of bulk-billed healthcare services for people in my community. The Maribyrnong clinic will help reduce the number of people attending hospital emergency departments for urgent-but-not-life-threatening conditions such as sprains, infections, rashes and cuts. Indeed, more than a third of the presentations at Footscray Hospital's emergency department have been for non-urgent and semi-urgent issues. This is not only highly inconvenient for individuals but also an inefficient use of our scarce hospital and ED resources. The urgent care clinics are a highly effective way of improving access to bulk-billed services, particularly for vulnerable people. This is one of the key underpinnings of our Medicare system.

We're already seeing this deliver benefits in our community and in Victoria more broadly. More than 40 per cent of presentations to existing urgent care clinics in Victoria have been outside of standard business hours, which means that these clinics are filling an important gap in services. One in four of the visits to these clinics have involved patients aged 15 years or younger, so I'm sure that the Maribyrnong Medicare urgent care clinic will form an important link in that network and help vulnerable people in my electorate.

See this speech in context