Roger Price (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to say that the Minister for Human Services and Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law has announced that a Medicare office will be opening in the Centrelink office at Mt Druitt. This is something that I have been very keen to see happen, and I know our endorsed candidate, Ed Husic, also was keen to see it happen. I should confess and place on the public record that I had suggested to the Minister for Human Services that he was probably one Medicare office short of being a great Minister for Human Services!

But I need to say that this comes from the tragedy of Minister Wooldridge having closed the Medicare office in May 1997. Chifley is a disadvantaged community, especially where I live at Mt Druitt. We have the highest urban Aboriginal population. Just to give you some idea of the make-up, or demographics: we have an average age of 30 years, while the national average is 37; couples with children make up 52 per cent, while the national average is 43 per cent; single-parent families make up 21.8 per cent, while the national average is 15.8 per cent; and the unemployment rate is 10.3 per cent, while the national average is 5.2 per cent.

The other point I want to make is that asking people to travel to Blacktown or to Penrith from my electorate, and particularly from Mt Druitt, imposes quite a burden on lots and lots of people. So I was absolutely devastated when they closed the Medicare office. We took up a petition, and I have never seen a petition signed as quickly as that was. We posted cards to the Prime Minister, which people signed—they were absolutely outraged.

Part of the cuts were to fund new services in rural and regional Australia. I support the provision of services for rural and regional Australia, but that should not be to the disadvantage of outer metropolitan seats. They should be funded on their merits. In fact, the Commonwealth lost over $54,899.48 at the Mt Druitt office. You would understand that the rents paid at Mt Druitt are not necessarily the highest in Sydney, yet 43 metropolitan offices were closed. If they were just paying the same amount of dead rent, that would come to $2.3 million. So I just want to say how delighted I am—(Time expired)