Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to air a grievance, indeed. It's a grievance I've had with the coalition government, both at a state and federal level, for a number of years. I've worked in my electorate as a paediatrician for almost 40 years. I've cared for thousands and thousands of babies—

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That might be a slight exaggeration! Unfortunately, some of those children I care for are born with disabilities. One of the disabilities that used to be so tragic was that of profound hearing loss. When I first started my training as an paediatric registrar, the only treatment available for children with severe hearing loss was very powerful hearing aids, which weren't all that successful, and then to learn the Australian equivalent of sign language, Auslan. Thanks to the ability, foresight and hard work of a guy called Bruce Shepherd, we, in New South Wales and around Australia, developed the first early intervention programs in the world for children with severe, profound hearing loss on the basis of early intervention and early treatment. Professor Graeme Clark—you may remember his name—was the developer of the cochlear implant. He came from my electorate. He works in Melbourne now. He's in his 80s. He revolutionised the treatment of severe hearing loss in young children. Children are now having their treatment starting virtually at birth, and cochlear implants are being implanted earlier and earlier, sometimes at only a few weeks of age. With that early intervention, we now know that the outcomes for those children in terms of their speech, their learning and their development are normal. The whole process around early intervention is the gold standard in Australia.

The Shepherd Centre, named in honour of Bruce Shepherd—he passed away a couple of years ago—have a number of outreach clinics around New South Wales. They put a proposal some three or four years ago to the state and federal governments to develop a Shepherd centre of excellence in my electorate of Macarthur. They raised two-thirds of the money themselves. They bought a property. They requested from the state and federal governments only $2½ million to $3 million to build the centre. On every occasion, this government and the New South Wales state government have said no. Yet, my electorate is the fastest growing electorate in New South Wales. We have one of the highest birth rates and one of the highest number of children under 15. It is an absolute tragedy. It means that children born in my electorate have to travel long distances to start early intervention programs and receive early cochlear implants. They have to travel to the Shepherd Centre's main base in Newtown, which is in the centre of Sydney. This is a tragedy and something I don't understand: why the Prime Minister, the Minister for Health and this government will not allow funding for a Shepherd centre of excellence in my electorate.

What's so phenomenal about the project is that a Shepherd centre of excellence would provide services not just to those from my electorate of Macarthur but to those from surrounding areas—Minister Taylor's electorate of Hume, Stephen Jones's electorate in the Southern Highlands, and other surrounding electorates. It would provide a comprehensive early intervention program for many, many children around New South Wales. It's an absolute tragedy that it won't be funded by this government. I will keep pushing for it because I strongly believe that it would be a remarkable thing to have such world-class treatment in the electorate of Macarthur. I will keep pushing for it.

Honourable members: Approach the minister.

I have approached the minister, and I've approached the Prime Minister. It makes sense for this project to be located in south-western Sydney because of the population growth and the birth rate. There is a rapid growth in young children requiring support. We are also getting better at keeping very small infants alive. Children with birth weights as small as 450 or 500 grams can now be resuscitated and survive. They do have an increased risk of disability, including hearing loss, but with early intervention they can do very, very well. It's critical that we get projects like this to these areas as soon as possible.

People who live in the inner city, in the wealthier suburbs of Sydney, can access these treatments very quickly. People who live in my electorate, many of whom are disadvantaged such as single parents and Indigenous children, who have an increased risk of hearing loss, need these treatments. It is a moral issue that the government should be funding these early intervention services in my electorate. It's an indictment of the government's ability to provide services in electorates other than marginal or liberal voting electorates, and it's a tragedy.

The government also says no all the time to my electorate, which has the only disease-free, chlamydia-free koala population in an urban environment in New South Wales. I've invited the Minister for the Environment to my electorate many times. She has refused to come. As we speak, koala habitat is being bulldozed to provide more urban sprawl on the outskirts of my electorate, yet we get nothing from this government. It is a real grievance of mine, just from the point of view of the generations that are coming through, that they won't be able to see koalas in an urban environment. At two of the schools in my electorate the children have to have blinds over the windows because they get distracted by the koalas in the trees outside the schools. What a wonderful thing to have. We are going to lose it unless this government does something in combination with the New South Wales government. The New South Wales state minister for the environment, Matt Kean—again, a Liberal Party member, unlike me, but a decent guy—has come out to my electorate and would cry out for federal funding to help protect the Macarthur koalas. But it hasn't happened. I keep writing, and I will continue to keep writing, but it hasn't happened.

We've seen rort after rort in areas like sport and council grants. It is absolutely astounding to me that Hornsby Shire Council was given $75 million to provide a park in their electorate. Hornsby is a very green electorate and has lots of green space. My electorate gets nothing in council grants to do similar things. On sports rorts, Eagle Vale rugby league football club doesn't have change rooms with toilets for boys or girls. We put in application after application for proper change rooms. We get nothing. I don't want to be nasty, I don't want to abuse people and I don't want to be in conflict with anyone, but it's increasingly apparent to me that this government only funds either electorates that have sitting Liberal-National members or electorates that are marginal. They will not fund the most disadvantaged electorates in my state, and my electorate is one of them. It's an evolving tragedy and it's only going to get worse.

We have more and more developers coming into the electorate. I'm sure you've all heard about the Leppington Triangle. That's part of my electorate. The government can give an extra $30 million to developers for way-overvalued land, yet they can't give $2½ million for my Shepherd Centre. I call it my Shepherd Centre; I'm quite biased about it. I have a vested interest in it. Jim Hungerford, the CEO of the Shepherd Centre, is a friend of mine. Many years ago when I was a young doctor, even though we were politically poles apart, I worked with Bruce Shepherd. It would delight me to have that opened. I don't want any glory from it. I don't even want to be there when it opens! But it should happen. I've tried to work with the government. I wrote to the PM as soon as the election was over. I'd written to the previous PM, the previous health minister and this health minister. My electorate just sees it as another slap in the face from a government that really is only worried about the politics and not worried about the people. It's inexcusable. I'm going to make sure that everyone in my community knows about it.

I think everyone would agree that I'm generally pretty easygoing. I embrace bipartisanship, and the members opposite know that. I have been treated very well by them, I admit, since I've come to this place. I have no personal animosity towards anyone in this place. But electorates like mine require adequate funding no matter who represents them. It's only fair. It's time for a change. It's time for a change in politics. I would have thought the COVID pandemic was a time for some real change in the way health issues in particular are funded—on need, not on political pressure and who you know. I will keep working towards that. That's my real grievance with the government. I'm grateful for people listening to me. This is not something that I want to make into a huge political issue; it's an issue of fairness and morality. I thank you.