Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to raise a number of issues today that relate to my electorate of Gellibrand, because I have some severe concerns—which, unfortunately, are growing with every letter I receive from a government minister—regarding a range of funding problems that seem to be occurring in my region. Decisions are being made by the Howard government where I have to question whether there is some systematic defunding or withdrawing of services that have, up until now, been funded either for long periods of time or successfully if they have been pilot programs and other things recommended by departments, which they are not putting to my electorate. So the question that I want to ask tonight in the grievance debate is: is the Howard government systematically withdrawing services and funding from my region—the electorate of Gellibrand?

I have a couple of current examples that I can refer to, but these are just examples from a range of issues that we obviously could not cover all of today. However, one that has most recently come to my attention is the community partnerships funding which is provided to ethnic community groups that provide multilingual services to aged care providers. I know a lot of people in this House would be aware that often elderly people who spoke another language as children revert to that, particularly dementia patients, and the issue of dealing with people who do not speak English in our aged care facilities is a very difficult one. The government did provide funding that proved very successful, and in my electorate in the previous funding round the Polish services, CELAS for the Spanish-speaking community and the Maltese service all were successful in obtaining funding and ran incredibly successful programs.

I visited one where the Polish community organisation had worked with an aged care provider, and 35 per cent of the aged care population—the residents in that service—were Polish speaking. The staff indicated to me that learning a few simple words in a person’s language brought about changes that were amazing. To see a Filipino woman and a Vietnamese woman telling me stories about learning how to explain eating and caring requirements in Polish to their elderly residents was quite moving.

Unfortunately, all these services lost funding in this round, and others who had applied, like the Macedonians and the Filipinos, who had not previously received funding but had hoped to this time, were also excluded. When I got a list of the people and organisations who have received this funding, I found that large amounts of money had gone to regional areas where there are very small migrant populations. Some of them, of course, are well needed in regional areas and others are not. But I am very concerned that an electorate like mine in the heart of Footscray, Braybrook and Altona and other areas that have high migrant communities are not receiving this funding. Add to that the changes that the government has made in reducing migrant resource centre funding and CSSS funding. The Inner West Migrant Resource Centre closed in May 2003, the Westgate Migrant Resource Centre in Altona is now under threat and the Polish and Croatian services have lost funding in previous rounds or are losing funding this year.

I am very concerned that as individual ethnic groups are targeted for funding by the government we are losing the benefit of providing cross-ethnic groups with the fertilisation that occurred between the older migrants and the more settled migrant communities assisting others—the cross-cultural and cross-religious understanding that was achieved by having these migrant resource centres that were not targeted just to one community group. You had the Vietnamese, the Greeks, those of Middle Eastern background and the newest arrivals from Africa all sharing their experiences together, which seemed to me to be a much more advantageous structure if you are trying to help these people settle and, to some extent, integrate into our community. Now what we are doing is dividing and conquering—I think that is what the government believes. We have small, often very inexperienced community groups getting funding for one funding round. Maybe they are the newest arrivals, but are they being staffed by people with the most expertise to help them? We even see the government chopping and changing between them, so the groups that got funding last round to service the growing Horn of Africa community in my electorate did not get it this time around. Just as people build up expertise, they lose their funding.

I have lodged some questions on notice to see whether all of this adds up. Is the government really just taking money away from migrant resource centres who are providing this service to a broader range of communities and targeting specialised groups or are they using that as a cover to divert funding to other electorates in less need—or perhaps to Liberal electorates instead of Labor electorates? I hope that I get the results to these answers. It is interesting that the minister is at the table, because no doubt he will pay particular attention to the answers he provides to make sure all this adds up. Has my region lost money or is the government redirecting it in a way that means, when all the figures are added up, that we are still getting sufficient services?

This is just one area. We can also look at the arts area. The Footscray Community Arts Centre is losing its federal funding through the arts council and is putting pressure on the state. In fact, the state has stepped in to try to pick up the tab of this shortage, but a community program which has run in our region for a very long time is now being stretched for funds. The area consultative committee is always pushing it uphill to be able to get the western suburbs up and funded. Again, they are going to regional areas instead—or outer regional areas rather than urban regional areas. The family relationship centres program is another one where the government’s own departmental advice said that there needed to be two family relationship centres in the western suburbs of Melbourne. Instead, we have got one. I am very pleased that we do and I hope that the Sunshine centre will do well. But having one centre for the large community that we service, instead of two, and having two centres in the northern suburbs of Sydney when only one was recommended seems to me to fit my concerns that the government is diverting money away from people in need to areas that meet their electoral needs instead.

I am very concerned that in our region it seems that the only governments that have been delivering are the state Labor governments. We need to go back to when Labor was in power federally to see some of the big infrastructure projects that were funded or to some of the local Labor councils to see some of the services and infrastructure. Imagine what the western suburbs of Melbourne would look like if we did not have the Western Ring Road, the Sunshine Hospital or the Victoria University. All these key infrastructure projects were funded by Labor governments, but we do not see any investment coming from the Howard government. What about the Maribyrnong Aquatic Centre, which has just opened, Scienceworks, the Tenix frigate project and taking the tolls off the Westgate? We had to fight tooth and nail to stop the Liberal government closing down Williamstown and Altona train lines and, of course, we see the government pouring money into private education and not providing money that is desperately needed for the local schools in my region. The state government has put in over $66 million already just to the schools in my area, but we do not see the federal government being prepared to hand over much money in my region.

If you compare the sort of infrastructure investment Labor has made at different levels of government over a long period of time with what the Howard government is doing in withdrawing its services and support and providing a lack of leadership in terms of infrastructure, you really wonder whether the Howard government is taking our region seriously at all. We are going to have a test with last week’s announcement about Telstra’s intentions not to go ahead with rolling out its fibre to node broadband. We already have problems in my electorate, which is barely 10 kilometres from the CBD—Seaholme, Altona North, Altona Meadows—in that we cannot get decent broadband services. The government also has washed its hands of a very large—it used to be probably one of the largest—employer in my electorate, Bradmill Textiles. It was in the paper only today that the owners plan to sell off that site for housing developments. Over several years there have been concerns about what was happening at the site, particularly because they receive significant funding under the strategic investment program.

I wrote to Minister Macfarlane last year concerned about the rumours that were around and wanting to make sure that they were doing all they could to sustain the site and that the public money being put into it was being well spent. But the minister said that he did not get involved in business decisions of individual companies and just washed his hands of the issue. The warning bells were not ringing, and now we see today that that money may have been throwing good public money after bad.

But the government has a chance to fix this problem. I have another problem that involves a local business—Albright and Wilson—and this is a chance for the Howard government to take a more active approach in paying attention to my region. I have been working with this local business to ensure the future viability of their site, which employs 65 workers. Representations have been made to the treaties committee and there was a public hearing today. The company is seeking an exemption to changes to the rules of origin being proposed in an agreement between New Zealand and Australia. I urge the committee and the government to look for ways to exempt this business to ensure that the product continues to be used in New Zealand and those jobs remain in my electorate. (Time expired)