Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in support of a number of my constituents in the suburb of Haynes in their quest to have an Australia Post post office facility established in the local area. Last week, I was presented with a petition from one of my constituents and a local business owner, Mr Robert Ricupero, in support of establishing a new post office at the recently opened Haynes Shopping Centre. Haynes is a newly developed suburb within my electorate, and to provide for the residents in the area a new shopping centre has been constructed which includes a supermarket, a pharmacy and a newsagency. This shopping centre has provided much-needed amenities and services for the area, but residents feel that they are unable to complete all of their business without a post office at the shopping centre.

The nearest Australia Post outlet is located within the town centre of Armadale and is over 3.5 kilometres away from the Haynes Shopping Centre. While this does not sound like a huge distance, the Armadale town centre has experienced rapid growth and can be extremely busy and difficult to access. Not only can parking be very difficult to find in the town centre, but the high demand for the services that the post office offers means that long waits have become the norm. In addition, the City of Armadale, within the south-east corridor of the Perth metropolitan area, is estimated to have a population growth of 55,000 to 85,000 within the next ten years.

Housing developments continue to spring up in the Haynes and Hilbert area, and there is expected to be an additional 16,000 home sites added to the area by the time the development has been completed. With this exceptional growth, it will not be possible for the Armadale post office to continue to meet the demands of the growing area. As a majority of these housing developments are occurring in the Haynes and Hilbert area to the south-west of Armadale, it would be a logical decision for Australia Post to establish an outlet at the Haynes Shopping Centre to cater for this demand.

Mr Ricupero has contacted Australia Post on a number of occasions to raise his concerns, but Australia Post has been unwilling to consider this option. Australia Post does not believe that a post office would be viable at this shopping centre due to population within the area. However, one look at the housing developments and projected growth for the area would put these false claims to rest—in other words, it would be ahead of the game. This has led Mr Ricupero to circulate a petition within his own business and in the surrounding area to gather support for the establishment of an Australia Post outlet. The petition has been eagerly supported by residents in the local area and the petition has attracted over 600 signatures. I have recently written to Senator Stephen Conroy, the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, in order to highlight this issue on behalf of Mr Ricupero and the local area, and I urge him to intervene in establishing this much-needed Australia Post outlet.