Julie Collins (Franklin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Back in 2011 I had a lot of people in my electorate contact me about a lack of Centrelink and Medicare offices down in the Kingborough region of my electorate. So we organised a petition and lobbied the then Labor government to get some Centrelink services in the area. We ended up with a co-located Centrelink and Medicare office in Kingston, which, just two years later, in 2013, had to move to a larger premises, because this service was being overutilised by local residents, and the demand was much greater than the government had thought it would be.

The Kingborough area, south of Hobart, has about 35,000 residents, and the Huon area has about 15,000. There is also a small Centrelink office in the Huon area. Earlier this year I was contacted by constituents to tell me that they had heard that the Centrelink and Medicare co-located office at Kingston was being closed by the current government. Of course, I could not believe that this would be the case, given that we had started it with a petition. The community obviously wanted the service and it was in demand. Local residents were telling me there were waiting times at the centre, that people were still waiting to get the services they needed from Centrelink and Medicare at the Kingston office. So it was really unbelievable to hear that, under the current government, it was going to close after just two years of operation. I verified that this, indeed, is the case. I have written to the Minister for Human Services, Stuart Robert, about this issue. I met with him this morning. I have also written to local senators, Senator Abetz and Senator Bushby, about the imminent closure of the Centrelink office. I have also started a local community petition, which got over 1,000 signatures in just 24 hours of being live.

This is a really serious issue for the residents of Kingston, the Kingborough area and the Huon area. What it will mean is that there are no Medicare services available south of Hobart, in an area servicing 50,000 residents. They will have to travel up into Hobart to an office that is not very well located, that has no parking, that has very little disabled parking, that is nowhere near where the public transport buses terminate. For elderly and disabled people who are trying to access the services of Medicare or Centrelink, it is going to mean a lot of travel time, a lot of inconvenience, a lot of additional costs—not to mention the fact that some people will not actually go and claim the services and the refunds that they are entitled to, because it will all be too hard.

I was talking to a local resident in Cygnet just a couple of weeks ago. She said that her podiatrist does not do online refunds, so she just ducks next door to the local Medicare office at Kingston and gets her refund—of, I think, about $38. It will cost her more than $8, and half a day, to travel to Hobart to get that refund. If she were to drive, she could park at a parking metre nearby and go in—but, of course, the fine is $38.50 if she cannot get back to her car in time. This is a disgrace and should be reversed.