Thursday, 1 September 2022

Adjournment

Regional government services

Mr WALSH (Murray Plains) (17:01): (6526) My adjournment matter tonight is for the Minister for Government Services. I ask that the minister put in place the actions that are needed to reopen state government departments in regional towns. I am constantly getting calls from constituents who try to contact their local Victorian government offices and are told they have to either send an email or send a message through that particular office’s website. These constituents do not want to deal by email or by website, because that may never be responded to. They want to talk to a human, either in person at the department offices or at least by phone.

The Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning in Swan Hill is an example of an office that is not open; it is only open for 4 hours per week on a Wednesday. To check whether that was the only office that was not being opened, we did a ring around from my office to just see what was happening. From the Tatura office we got actually no response at all; it was closed. The Seymour office we rang; technically it is open—it is just not open to the public, or at least not until 10 October. The Heathcote office was closed. The Colac office was closed. There was great excitement when we rang the Bacchus Marsh office because it is actually open 4 hours a day—so the people of Bacchus Marsh are better served than most areas. The Heywood office was closed. The Warrnambool office—where there are 33 000 residents—was closed. The Hamilton office is open 3 hours a day.

Many are saying to me, ‘Where is the word “public” in public service here in Victoria?’, because with all those offices closed and not taking phone calls there is obviously no public service in those particular communities. The question I ask the minister is: how can Victoria start recovering from the longest lockdowns in this country? How can they start recovering from the effects of those lockdowns if they cannot actually get a response from the local departments in their town? I ask the minister to make sure that these offices are open in the future and we put the ‘public’ back into public service.