Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to begin by offering my heartfelt thanks to all of the volunteers across my electorate of Franklin for Saturday's referendum and the countless hours of work that they put in to support better outcomes for First Nations Australians. I particularly want to thank the First Nations people of Franklin, including Uncle Rodney Dillon and Jaime Currie, who so generously gave their time and shared their culture and lived experience with me and other members of parliament.

I will forever be proud that our Prime Minister kept his word to Australians and First Nations people that held out their hands to us and asked us to do this. However, Australia has decided that that is not the way forward, and I totally respect that decision. My electorate of Franklin is currently 50.04 per cent 'yes'. I will forever be proud of my electorate for that result. But our democracy only works when we respect all democratically made decisions, so our government will continue to listen and seek better outcomes for First Australians.

During this campaign, we've also been focused on cost-of-living measures. We got the Housing Australia Future Fund through the parliament, but I've also been able to go round to states together with the Prime Minister and announce new homes on the ground that will be delivered through the Social Housing Accelerator. I was in Queensland just last week, where we announced another 600 social homes in Queensland, and 80 per cent of those homes will be outside of Brisbane, in regional, rural and remote Queensland. It was terrific to be with the Queensland minister to be able to do that. We've also done things like increase Commonwealth rent assistance, which is critical to so many Australians.

We have opened urgent care clinics, including one in Hobart, with the Prime Minister, and we have another one to be opened soon. We've been hearing firsthand from constituents just how important these urgent care clinics are. I particularly want to quote an email that I got just a couple of days ago from somebody that has accessed the urgent care clinic in Hobart. One of my constituents from the eastern shore visited the urgent care clinic last Sunday. He and his daughter were given non-urgent care, and they were seen within three hours at the urgent care clinic. They would normally go to the Royal Hobart Hospital. They rang the clinic. They were told, yes, they could be and seen and, yes, they would be seen today, and in under three hours they were seen. They got the care and it didn't cost them anything other than to show their Medicare card. This is the type of health care that urgent care clinics can provide. I'm looking forward to a second clinic in Hobart opening soon. I know that in Launceston it's clinic is also doing incredibly well and seeing literally hundreds of Tasmanians who would've ended up in emergency clinics if it were not for that decision to open those urgent care clinics. It's wonderful to see them.

I was also able to briefly visit one of our TAFEs. We had our skills announcement yesterday, during the break, and, as Minister for Housing, I'm really pleased with our skills investment, particularly for small business and indeed for the construction sector.