Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I am standing up for the 3,000 low-income households, 11,000 older people, 800 unemployed people, 1,700 single parent families and 12,000 people with a disability who are likely to feel the impact of the minister for social services's decision, made in secret and kept from the community, to close the Mornington Service Centre, with its Centrelink and Medicare services. No-one else is standing up for them, so I am.

There has been no consultation with the community, no consultation with the Mornington Peninsula Shire Council, who call this secret decision a 'kick in the guts', and no consultation with the staff who work there. Astoundingly, apparently there was also no consultation with the minister's fellow cabinet member the Minister for Health and member for Flinders, whose electorate the Mornington Service Centre is in. If it wasn't for the agitation of local Debbie Martin raising this matter on Facebook and with me, and me raising this matter on Friday with the minister—both ministers—and the department on behalf of constituents, we would never have even known until it was too late.

I wrote to the minister for social services on Friday on behalf of the Mornington community and my community asking for answers. We've received none. What are you doing to help vulnerable and elderly people from my electorate and the electorate of Flinders who need these services? And how many more service centres are going to close? I seek leave to table this letter.

Leave not granted.