Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to congratulate the Panmure Football Netball Club for their advocacy to get new female-friendly change rooms for their club. I was very fortunate to be at the ground on Saturday—it was a magnificent spring day, or a magnificent winter day that felt like you were in spring—when we were able to open this new facility: showers, bathrooms, changing rooms for both the visiting netballers and the home netballers. It was wonderful to see all the Panmure netballers and the visiting team from Allensford there to be able to open those new family friendly change rooms. Those change rooms came about owing to a $500,000 investment by the coalition government, and it was very pleasing to be there with Councillor Daniel Meade—a bit of a local legend with Panmure—to be able to say a few words. Once again, I re-emphasise how important the coalition knows it is to invest into our local infrastructure, particularly when it comes to investing in facilities which help grassroots female participation, whether it be in netball, cricket or AFL. Hats off again to the Panmure Football Netball Club for their perseverance and advocacy in making sure that they've now got first-class female changing rooms.

During the break I was also very pleased to welcome Senator Anne Ruston, the shadow health minister, to Wannon. Senator Ruston came with me to Ararat, where we were advocating for a new headspace facility. We met with the local hospital there—a wonderful organisation, One Red Tree, which is already doing fantastic work in the mental health space—and we began the advocacy piece that we need to make sure that we can get a headspace for Ararat because, sadly, some of the youth mental health challenges that Ararat and the community around Ararat are facing show that there is a serious need for us to get a headspace in Ararat.

I also took Senator Ruston to Hamilton, where the coalition government invested in a new headspace facility. Unfortunately, that facility is taking far too long to be finalised. I met with the assistant minister, Emma McBride, and we got all the relevant groups together to meet in Hamilton with Senator Ruston to find out why it is taking so long to get these headspace buildings up and running. We need to learn what is going wrong so that we can make sure that we can get our headspace buildings up in place so we can provide the services that we need to our local communities. Services have been provided while we are waiting for the building to open but we still need to be able to get the process quickened. It's one thing that I reach across the aisle to ask that the government do, and that is to make sure that when headspaces are announced and funded, like Hamilton was, that they then move quickly to make sure that the building is finalised and the services can be provided under the roof of that building. We were told that it would be completed by the end of this year—by November-December—and my hope is that that will be the case.

Another issue that I had to deal with over the winter break was the Victorian state government seeking to amalgamate health networks right across Victoria, including in Western Victoria. Two of the networks in Wannon that they are looking to amalgamate are primarily funded by the federal government. I wrote to the health minister to say that he should oppose any amalgamation of our local health services. Can I say to the local community: your Hands Off Our Hospital campaign was incredibly effective because the Victorian state government has pulled back from forced amalgamations. But that's not the end of the battle, because the worry is that they are going to do it in an underhanded way and they are going to seek to achieve what they need to do not by forcing amalgamations but by doing it through bureaucratic processes. (Time expired)