Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to talk about some services in my electorate of Franklin today. One of the issues in the Kingborough municipality—that is the township of Kingston and Blackmans Bay, south of Hobart—for many years has been the lack of Centrelink services. The Kingborough municipality has been one of the fastest growing in my electorate for more than a decade now and it has been without Centrelink services. I have been fighting for Centrelink services since about 2008.

I was really pleased in July last year to be able to announce that Centrelink services would be co-locating in the current Medicare office in the Channel Court shopping area in Kingston. We announced then that services would start on 1 July 2011. It was fantastic that, with the work of the former minister, Minister Bowen, and the current minister, Minister Plibersek, the Minister for Human Services, the first day of operation of the Centrelink services in Kingston was actually in December last year. That has been fantastic. On 13 December last year, a Monday, I went down to the new Centrelink services in Kingston to see them in operation. It was fantastic to see one of the locals who launched a petition for me, Maureen Shegog, there on that day.

It has also been fantastic to hear the community feedback since that day. My understanding is that the services have been so popular and so useful that Centrelink have put on additional staff to deal with the number of Centrelink service requests that they are now getting in that Medicare office. The services opened six months ahead of schedule in the Kingston area, and I know that the local community are really pleased that they have been able to get them. I hope that co-locating the services in a more simplified model means that more Australians are able to access services, as they have been able to in Franklin.

These co-locations are being rolled out across the country. In the absence of the Minister for Human Services while she was on maternity leave, it was my privilege to introduce the legislation into the House for that to occur, so it is fantastic to see them actually in operation. The anecdotal evidence about the co-location of services in my electorate where they have got Medicare offices in Centrelink offices, in the Huon, and also in Hobart city, which is just outside my electorate but frequented by a lot of my electors, is that it is going extraordinarily well.

The co-location of services seems to be working for my constituents, and I only hope that as these services are rolled out around the country other members’ electorates see the benefits, as my constituents have been privileged to do six months ahead of schedule.