Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to particularly thank the member for Casey for giving me the opportunity to seek this indulgence. Yesterday at about 12.15 pm, after finishing her lunch, Joanne Lombardy, who's a frontline public servant who's served for 22 years with Medicare and Centrelink, was returning to her office a few metres from the Blacktown service centre where she works. She was wearing the distinctive Services Australia uniform which many of us are familiar with. She was a few metres from that service centre when she was viciously, violently assaulted by a person exiting the service centre. It was a completely unprovoked, unjustified attack. Bystanders intervened. Police are investigating. I've spoken to Joanne this morning. She's shocked, she's injured but she's recovering. I've spoken to her Blacktown colleagues, who serve all Australians.

Assaults on our public servants are unacceptable. We have 100,000 frontline Commonwealth public servants. Assaulting them is a crime. Being assaulted is not part of their job description. It doesn't matter what sort of day you're having or what sort of circumstances you're in, assaulting the people trying to help you cannot be excused.

The first thing I want to do in this statement on indulgence is to take the opportunity on behalf of the entire parliament and millions of Australians and say thank you to our frontline public servants. You do a great job for people who need you.

In this term, we've invested $361 million in the last budget resulting in 278 extra guards. We've had 15 service centres already upgrade security features and another 85 will be upgraded in the next two years. We've enhanced IT systems, including security alerts and information. Importantly, we've increased maximum penalties for assaults with support of the coalition. It used to be that if you assaulted a federal judge, you would get 13 years maximum. But for a Commonwealth public servant, the maximum was 10 years. It's now the same—13 years. We're on track in October to introduce a new nation-wide Commonwealth protections framework.

In closing, I want to advise the House what happened in my conversation with the modest Joanne Lombardy. She said to me, 'I love my job. This is not going to stop me.' Joanne, and your team at Blacktown and our frontline public servants, we love you, and we thank you every day for what you do for Australians.