Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand to speak about the seniors morning tea event that I held last week at the Chelsea Heights Community Centre. Since my election to parliament in 2007, I have held morning teas for seniors in the great electorate of Isaacs on a yearly basis to coincide with the celebration of Seniors Week. This year, I organised events in Mentone, Noble Park, Carrum Downs and Chelsea Heights, and approximately 600 members of the Isaacs seniors community attended. Of this number, approximately 170 seniors attended the event at the Chelsea Heights Committee Centre.

I would like to thank Lorraine Bradford and Christine Rolfe, the coordinators of the Chelsea Heights Community Centre, for their hard work in providing a wonderful morning tea replete with home-made scones and cakes. This was the first time that I have held a morning tea at the Chelsea Heights Community Centre, and the centre did fantastic work, with many attendees commenting on the wonderful hospitality provided by the community centre's volunteers. I would also like to thank the music students from Parkdale Secondary College who provided the entertainment, with songs from the recent school production. Kiana Rud, Tabitha Kendall, Millie Clifton, Tristan van Rooyen, Ella Witchell and Ariel Wihibrata each gave amazing performances, and I am sure each of these students have big futures ahead of them. I thank this excellent school for allowing the students some time-off from their studies to perform for local seniors.

Each year at these morning teas, fearless Isaacs residents tell me, without moderation, what they think are the issues of the day. This year, the key issues that Isaacs seniors talked to me about were the government's cuts to education, their cuts to health care and their cuts to pensions. Again and again, I spoke to pensioners who were fearful about how they would make ends meet with a reduced pension. My message to seniors who are feeling neglected by this government is: Labor stand with you. We will support you and we will back you to ensure that senior Australians get the assistance they deserve to live comfortably in their retirement. Only a Labor government will deliver for senior Australians.

We built Medicare and we will fight to defend it. During our term of government we gave to Australian pensioners the largest single rise in the pension for 20 years. I hope that by the time I hold these morning teas next year, we will have a government that respects senior Australians and works to provide them with security in their retirement.