Wednesday, 16 August 2023

 Tim BULL (Gippsland East) (19:06): (293) My adjournment is to the Minister for Environment, and the action I seek is for the minister to restore the opening hours of the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action offices in Bairnsdale and Orbost. To highlight the need for this I am going to outline a situation that I do not think you will even believe: my office recently received a call from a government employee on a Friday who was having trouble getting through to the DEECA office to answer a query I had raised about the lack of opening hours. She wanted to speak to a local person at the DEECA office to get an answer to a query I raised – that you cannot get a hold of anyone at the DEECA offices on a Monday or a Friday. I mean, could you possibly believe the irony of that?

My staff were very polite and very respectful, and they explained to this person who was on the other end of the line – I see the minister at the table, the Minister for Police, finding this appropriately ridiculous – that that was the very reason we wrote the letter, because the office doors of the DEECA offices are shut on Monday and Friday and staff cannot get hold of them. So just to be clear, to get this on the Hansard record nice and clearly: we raised a query about the fact you cannot get into the DEECA offices, cannot get hold of anyone on a Monday or a Friday, and someone from the minister’s office rang me to get an in because they could not get hold of anyone at the same office on a Friday. It is crazy, isn’t it? If ever the minister needed a reason to revisit these opening hours, she has got it from her own staff member, who could not get through to the office to answer my query.

Interestingly, I also had correspondence today from the minister to a letter I wrote in July 2022 about foot-and-mouth concerns. That arrived today, more than 12 months later, in my inbox, responding to the concerns I raised about foot-and-mouth. So that whole department needs a little bit of an overhaul on what is a timely response, but they can certainly start – minister at the table, the Minister for Police, if you can pass this on – with reopening those offices in Bairnsdale and Orbost so not only my constituents can get access but her own ministerial staff can get access to answer my queries.