Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in response to the Governor-General's opening address to the 48th Parliament. In doing so, I particularly want to thank the South Australians who placed their trust in a continued Labor government. Personally, my thanks for returning me to this place.

The Labor government is a government working to deliver a better future. That is what we spent our last three years doing, and that is what we will spend this next term doing. In May this year, people in this country made a really clear decision, a clear decision to choose progress over paralysis, to choose fairness over division, to choose a government that would deliver on its promises. We saw a vote for stability, we saw a vote for opportunity and we saw a vote for a future where no-one is left behind. Australians know that we understand the pressures they are facing every single day—the cost-of-living challenges that we're all looking at, health care, housing—issues that are being addressed by this Labor government and will continue to be addressed by this Labor government. As the Governor-General said in her speech on Tuesday, the government will work to repay the trust that Australians have placed in us. That is our commitment. That is what we will do.

As we saw in the 2022 election and much more significantly in the 2025 election, the Labor caucus has expanded. With that expansion comes an expansion of the diversity of our team, a team that reflects the people across this country, a government that people can look to and see something they recognise. The backgrounds, the ages, the professions, the experiences, the cultures and the variety of different walks of life that our caucus now brings to government is what will ensure that we deliver for all Australians.

We saw just this morning my colleague Senator Walker stand up and give a very impressive first address to this chamber, talking about the importance of recognising the difference in views from young people to all ages. She also gave quite an impressive lesson on climate change to some of the older members of this chamber in terms of how the youth of our country actually view this issue. It's not the same climate wars negativity that we have experienced in here for so terribly long. Then we had another colleague, Senator Ananda-Rajah, regaling us with some excellent insights and the depth of her understanding and her knowledge into how our health system actually works, because she was a doctor in that system for 30 years. This diversity runs across the entirety of our caucus, and that brings something pretty special to this place.

We know that families across the country are doing it really tough. We know that there are pressures, including cost-of-living increases, and so the policies that we rolled out in the last term and through the election were to address those issues. One was cheaper medicines. A PBS prescription is capped at $25 a script from 1 January next year. That's the lowest it's been in 20 years. Then, for people who are on pensions or concession cards, those scripts are even cheaper, at $7.70. These are the kinds of things that make a difference every single day to how much money people have in their pockets and how they manage the pressures, many of which are global pressures, that we are facing on cost of living.

Something that's particularly important to me are our regional areas, particularly regional South Australia. It means peace of mind for a family in Whyalla or an older couple in Port Lincoln who are dealing with chronic illnesses that they won't have to make a decision between the grocery bill or the medicine bill. We are lowering those costs to help people cope and deal with the pressures right here, right now.

We've also opened 87 Medicare urgent care clinics. These are a revolutionary insert into our health system. They are making a fundamental difference. People raise it with me unprompted when I'm out talking with the community. My family had cause to use the urgent care clinic in Port Adelaide just last year, where we would have normally gone to the emergency department. It was a broken bone. But we got the same service we would have got if we had gone to the emergency department, yet we didn't have the wait time and we didn't have the anxious pressure that you often feel in a hospital setting. More than that, we were not contributing to clogging up the health system. Having people treated at the right place, at the right time and in the right manner is about resizing and rebalancing our system and making sure that people get the care that they need when they need it and where they need it.

That brings me again to our regional areas. I was delighted during the campaign to be able to announce the commitment to an urgent care clinic in Whyalla. That will take the pressure off the Whyalla hospital, meaning people in the hospital are getting the treatment they need in a more timely fashion. The people who can be treated in an urgent care clinic will get that, and then, for people with their primary care, it's taking some of the pressure off that primary care system as well. Our regional areas are really important because the services that they have access to are so often much less available and accessible than we see in our capital cities.

One of the other things that we announced, which I think is going to make a big difference and I've had some really excellent feedback from, is the 1800MEDICARE free 24/7 health advice. It doesn't matter if the closest hospital is two hours away or three hours away. It doesn't matter if your doctor has a full list and you can't see them for a week and you can't drive to an urgent care clinic. You can pick up the phone and get some advice, and that advice may well be all you need. It may also be that critical piece of advice that says, 'No, you really do need to get to a hospital,' or, 'You really do need to see that doctor.' While this is going to be a great service for everyone, as a 24/7 service, for those parents amongst us, including me, when it's the middle of the night and you're not quite sure what to do, it is the perfect solution to get that advice so you know what action to take next. So I'm delighted to see that roll out into the future, and I'm pretty confident it's going to make a fundamental difference.

The other thing with the parliament now resumed is to deliver on our commitment to cut student debt by 20 per cent, saving more than three million Australians an average of $5,500 each. This includes the over 11,000 people in the electorate of Grey, where I spend a lot of my time, who have student debt. That's not just university debt; we're talking about vocational education debt as well. This is across the board.

The education system that we're seeing grow and develop across that regional area is a delight to watch. I recently visited TAFE in Whyalla and saw some of the amazing things that are rolling out there through our fee-free TAFE. Students that have never had an opportunity to undertake the training they want now have access to it. I met—and I've spoken about this in this chamber before—a group of fee-free nursing students, one of whom told me that she had been seeking to be a nurse for many years. It had been a dream, but she could never afford it and would have to travel. Putting these services on the ground where they're needed, where people genuinely are so keen to fill the vacancies we have in these industries of need but they need support to do it—that's what this government is doing. That is what the Albanese Labor government is doing. It's providing that support, be it in early childhood, primary school, secondary school, TAFE or university.

Our university hubs across the seat of Grey are going gangbusters. They are doing such a great job bringing university education to those regions, helping those people study at home, where they want to live, not having to move to the city. The expansion of our TAFE campuses and the technical colleges, the stuff that we are doing hand in hand with the state Labor government, is showing green shoots of really excellent development for the future.

And we know that South Australia is at the heart of some of the manufacturing future of this country—the green, sustainable manufacturing future of this country. We're seeing those industries, seeing the opportunities, watching our education system grow, watching people coming through our vocational systems and knowing that they can see into the future how their workforce will be developed and delivered to them. These are the kinds of things—working on all the aspects of these developments, all of the aspects that come together to mean a strong, sustainable and productive future for our country, for our regional areas, for our towns and for our cities. It will encourage businesses to invest in these areas, knowing that those services are going to be there to support their workforce, that investing in Australia is a valuable thing to do, that they will find the workforce and that there will be health services and housing.

Our housing development is starting to pay off. We are starting to see houses on the ground. Many of my colleagues would disagree with that, but, fundamentally, if anybody would like to come and visit me in South Australia, I'd absolutely love to take you for a drive and show you the vast amount of housing development going on that is being driven by the federal government and supported through the federal and state governments working together. There are so many developments in South Australia that, when I stand here and listen to people say that there's nothing happening, I wonder where they live and what they're doing. Maybe they don't get out much. But the invitation stands. If anybody wants to come and have a look at the vast amount of development that's going on in South Australia, I would be delighted to show you, because I am so proud of what the Albanese Labor government is doing. I'm very excited for the 48th Parliament and what we will achieve in these coming years by building on the strong foundations that we started through the last term. We will continue to drive that delivery into the next term of government.

Our expanded team is ready to deliver. We're ready to deliver for all Australians, as I've said. This is about bringing our entire country together. We know that there was a choice to be made at the last election, a choice of either hatred, division and fear or an Albanese Labor government. I'm delighted that the people of Australia chose the latter, and we will repay the trust that people have placed in us. We are here to deliver on our promises. We are here to make our country stronger and fairer, to knit together our economic development with our energy transition and our protection of the environment and to be a strong economy and a strong, supportive and caring community.