Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak about a great initiative which was launched by Andrew Heslop some time ago. It is National Get to Know Your Neighbour Day, which is Sunday, 25 March. I am asking local families in my electorate to support neighbour day. I certainly understand that families are very proud of where they live and want to have a very strong sense of community. I know that the members for a lot of electorates would feel that. To promote that day I went down to Oak Avenue, Doveton, to speak to some people. The Doveton area has a very close-knit community. It is a very vibrant and safe community. In the past Doveton has had, unjustly and unfairly, a lot of very bad PR. It is an area filled with very good working families. I could not think of a better place in which to be launching and promoting this initiative on 25 March.

We are asking people on that Sunday to say, ‘Hi’ or ‘G’day’ to their neighbours, to make a special effort to introduce themselves to older residents in their street and anyone who lives alone, to leave their mobile and home telephone numbers with those people for their use in an emergency and to agree to keep in contact. A lot of people, mainly young families, have shifted into my electorate. People tell me that, whilst other people’s intentions are very good, there is a sense of disconnection from the community. Although there are a lot of housing estates and developments in the area, they feel that they do not have a strong sense of being centred or anchored within the community. So I think this is a great initiative. It is interesting, when I have been talking to some people in my neighbourhood—I live in Endeavour Hills—in Doveton and in other areas, that I have heard of a person living just four or five doors down from a neighbour to whom they have not spoken for four years, yet the same person will drive 15 or 20 kilometres to visit a friend. That is something we need to look at, because in making our community more connected we are making it safer, stronger and more secure. I think this is a great initiative, and I certainly urge the people in Holt to get behind this national initiative on 25 March.

In the remaining time available to me, I would like to raise a couple of other issues. A number of people in Oak Avenue, Doveton, who were participating in the promotion of National Get to Know Your Neighbour Day raised with me a number of concerns. One particular concern was the price of petrol. As I said, Doveton is full of good working-class people who work hard. Our economic prosperity has been generated off the back of the work that they have put in. One thing that they would like to know is why the price of petrol keeps rising, inordinately so, on Thursday and Friday each week, sometimes to $1.30 a litre, and then drops down again to about $1.11 early in the next week. They want to know why that sort of profiteering is occurring, particularly when the price of oil is not $76 a barrel, which is what it was when petrol was over $1.40. They see a discrepancy and they want to know why some action is not being taken.

I think some action should be taken. These working people deserve to have an instrumentality that ensures oil companies do not profiteer, because—and I do not care what anyone says in this House—they are profiteering. The justifications that they put forward to me and my electorate are simply not satisfactory. I do not accept them. This community is already feeling the increased cost of living. If you looked at, for example, some of the inflation figures, you would see that food has increased by 8.6 per cent—that is a lot—and private health insurance has gone up by something like 40 per cent, I think it is 46 per cent, since 1999.

What is happening as a consequence? The people in these very good areas where people are working so hard are seeking emergency relief. For example, in November the Casey North Community Information and Support Service distributed $7,587 in relief through food vouchers, travel vouchers and assistance with the cost of medicines. In December the figure was $6,920 and in January it was $11,495. We are having the good working-class people of that area, with its veneer of economic prosperity, coming into my office looking for money for schoolbooks. Something is not right here. In an era of economic prosperity, we are having people seeking financial counselling. In fact, the Casey North Community Information and Support Service has a very long waiting list of people as a consequence of the demand. We have got to do something to deal with the situation of these people who are falling through the cracks. The government needs to spend more money to provide more facilities for people who need financial counselling—(Time expired)