Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One area that might not receive the Prime Minister so enthusiastically is the area of Cranbourne, which I represent. The residents of Cranbourne have three issues that cause them great concern and which they have raised with me. Cranbourne is an area which is particularly sensitive to interest rate rises and petrol price rises. It is part of a growth-belt corridor in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Interestingly, even though it is in the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, the Cranbourne exchange is excluded from the metropolitan untimed local call zone. So, due to historical anomaly, Cranbourne residents and businesses pay an STD rate when calling central Melbourne. It is historical anomaly, as 70 per cent of the residents covered by the Cranbourne exchange live within a 50 kilometre radius of central Melbourne. This creates a situation where Cranbourne residents pay an STD rate when calling central Melbourne, but residents in neighbouring Berwick and Frankston, who live equidistant or further from central Melbourne, pay an untimed local call rate. This historical anomaly was created in the 1960s and never changed, in spite of massive population growth. I guess the residents of Cranbourne would be asking why they have to pay this exorbitant rate—an STD rate—when an area like Berwick does not.

This has been a campaign waged by the residents of Cranbourne for a great number of years now and yet the residents of Cranbourne continue to be told, ‘It’s going to be okay; it’s eventually going to be fixed.’ But a community as interest rate and petrol price sensitive as this one, a community that is doing it fairly tough as a consequence of interest rate and petrol price rises, really deserves some relief. I believe that, the last time I checked, the federal government was a majority owner of Telstra—although who knows these days, when you have Sol Trujillo or whoever else running the show—but one of these days the government should take responsibility for rectifying this anomaly and stop punishing the residents of Cranbourne, because they have just had enough of being discriminated against.

We have a Medicare office that the government opened last year—after 10 years of hard campaigning by the residents of Cranbourne to establish a Medicare office, in an area with a population of about 35,000 people. But they now find that it is the only Medicare office in the region that is not open on a Thursday night or a Saturday morning. They pay their taxes; they work very hard; why is it that the residents of Cranbourne have the only Medicare office in the region that does not open on a Thursday night or a Saturday morning? They rightly feel they are being discriminated against. If Mr Howard does want to come down and do something constructive, rather than doing a morning tea, how about fixing up those messes there?