Pat Farmer (Macarthur, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about a constituent of mine, Virginia Walters—a wonderful person in my community, a lovely young lady who finds herself, as a single mother through no fault of her own, trying to cope with raising four children on her own. The ages of three of her children are 17, 13 and nine. She has a young son called Michael. Michael is disabled. He is seven years old. Michael has cerebral palsy. He is also vision impaired, is totally reliant on tube feeding, has cataracts in both eyes and, finally, has neuropathy.

I wish to speak to this House about her because she is in desperate need of a motor vehicle which can allow her to transport her family around and which has wheelchair access. I raise this issue in this House because there are so many people who try so hard to make a go of things in their life, but it seems like they have bad luck on their side and they have so much difficulty trying to get the support of various government departments. Virginia is such a person, one who has fallen through the cracks of the New South Wales state government’s health system. Unfortunately, she is seemingly unable to qualify for any financial support in this regard. Consequently, she is battling on.

She has gone back to university and she is trying to study law because she wants to be able to make a difference to other people who find themselves in the same position. She walks to the university each day. She organises for carers to help her out with her family at her own expense. She does her best to try to make ends meet, to try to survive and to try to do the best for her family, but unfortunately, she cannot do it alone. I am working as hard as I possibly can to try to raise some funds for her so that we can get her a motor vehicle that has wheelchair access, but I cannot do it alone. I need the support of my constituents and of the wider circles and I need a sympathetic ear from government to look at where we fail in our policies, both in New South Wales and even federally, for these people who are trying so hard just to survive from day to day—people who do their best to try to make others’ lives a little bit better. As I mentioned earlier on, through no fault of hers Michael was born to Virginia and she is doing her best to try to make his life the best that she possibly can. But unfortunately, it is not easy. So I call on the federal government and the state governments alike to work together with the health system in New South Wales to try to improve it for people like Virginia Walters.