Zaneta Mascarenhas (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Swan is home to some amazing community organisations, and Jacaranda Community Centre is one of the best. It's one of the not-for-profit grassroots incorporated community organisations. Jacaranda started in the year 2000. The centre was started to meet the needs of the people living in the City of Belmont, which is in the heart of Swan. Eighty per cent of those people with needs are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders. Jacaranda also extend their services to Aboriginal people from the wider metropolitan Perth area. It is an example of a community led, community driven, needs based organisation which is delivering services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in need.

The team is an amazing group of really positive, passionate people that are working hard to make a positive difference in their community. They are dedicated and they have the interests of their clients at the forefront of everything that they do. They are headed up by the incredibly passionate CEO, Lyndsey Fitzgerald, and her team are committed to promoting, enhancing and maintaining the welfare and cultural needs of the people in Belmont and the surrounding areas.

Jacaranda provides a safe and exclusive space to facilitate community participation. It also provides a space for families and individuals to come together to build better lives and prosper. Services available at the centre include support to address housing and homelessness, health, legal issues, family functioning and debt, and financial counselling. Jacaranda also plays an important role in promoting and developing community partnerships and in raising the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

It's why, when the opportunity came to welcome the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services to the electorate of Swan, I made sure that we included a visit to Jacaranda. It was wonderful to have the Assistant Treasurer in the electorate. We had morning tea with staff and volunteers, and it was really great to have the opportunity to hear about some of the issues at the ground level and from the coalface. We talked about a lot of things, from the cost of living to housing, as well as the financial challenges of their clients. We got to talk about some of the things that we're doing from a federal government perspective, and this also included talking about scams.

The truth is that scammers have been on the rise, and this ranges from random text messages that are becoming increasingly clever at catching people out, to phone calls. Scams have robbed our community of billions of dollars, and, unfortunately, scammers don't discriminate. They want anyone's money and they will hit the most vulnerable people. Being the victim of a scam can put people in a really difficult situation and even into a more precarious one.

So, working with people like Jacaranda, the government have put new measures in place to combat scams. This includes the world-leading National Anti-Scam Centre. We've also produced The little black book of scams. This is a valuable resource that was snapped up by staff and clients at Jacaranda that morning.

At Jacaranda we also talked about the importance of financial counselling, and that's because there's a recognition that financial wellbeing has a fundamental impact on overall wellbeing. These are services that are made available by Jacaranda to help people who need support in managing debt and credit concerns.

The House transcript was published up to 20:00. The remainder of the transcript will be published progressively as it is completed.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER ( Mrs Archer ) took the chair at 09:29.