Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased that next week the Prime Minister and cabinet will be coming to Western Australia and that a community cabinet event will take place in my electorate of Fremantle. This will be a very welcome instalment of this Labor government’s ongoing commitment to taking cabinet to all parts of Australia and to hearing from people all over the country in an open, laid-back and responsive manner. We should all take heart from the fact that the Prime Minister and cabinet ministers in this country are both able and prepared to hear from anyone and everyone in an open public forum.

Fremantle is a highly appropriate destination for a community cabinet because it is a place that is deeply engaged on some of the big issues that confront us all. It is a community that understands the threat of climate change and the opportunities that exist in renewable energy development. Indeed, the host venue, South Fremantle Senior High School, is striving to be Australia’s first carbon-neutral school, and the City of Fremantle was the second carbon-neutral local council in Australia.

Like Western Australia as a whole, the Fremantle electorate wants to see better health and mental health services; better transport and community infrastructure; and a lasting social dividend from Australia’s mineral resource development. All in all, Fremantle is a community that wants to get involved, a community that sees the bigger picture and a community that does not approach issues by asking, ‘What’s in it for me?’

We look forward to the community cabinet event, which I am sure will be robust, informed, passionate and good-humoured—because those are Fremantle qualities, and that is what Fremantle is about.