Ms JENNY AITCHISON (Maitland) (19:30): COVID has presented so many challenges to our regional communities. On 5 August the Hunter region went into lockdown as a result of COVID-19 outbreaks. I thank every person in Maitland who has complied with the public health orders, who has been tested and who has been vaccinated, and I doubly thank those who have done it twice. I also give a special thank you to everyone who has reached out to me and my office for assistance or advice. With very few exceptions, the thousands of people who have reached out have done so with patience, kindness and understanding of the vast number of calls and requests we have had every day and to which my wonderful team and I have been responding. I say thank you to everyone for that. We have all been in this together and I am so proud to represent my community in this place.

I understand why the community has been so concerned. As regional MPs in the Hunter, we have lobbied for months to get testing facilities, vaccination pop-up clinics and clear advice for our local residents. We have had to fight to get outreach for vulnerable communities and to understand the barriers to vaccination and testing—transport, education, poverty and access. Just today I was advised that one of the most vulnerable properties in my electorate was an exposure site for five days last week. On the weekend I visited a pop-up clinic that has taken months to establish. This weekend another vaccination pop-up clinic will be established in Woodberry, which will be helpful for Madam Temporary Speaker Hornery and the people in her electorate.

It has taken so long to get Pfizer in our region because it was all being sent to Sydney. We must ensure that rural communities are protected from this virus just as much as our friends and families are in Sydney. The anger in my community over the lack of testing facilities at the start of our lockdown was well justified, with people waiting excessively long times and parents of children with disabilities waiting for up to seven hours in their car to get tested and then waiting over five days to get results back. The longest I heard of was seven days and there was no Test and Isolate payment in the Hunter. Our community, which is extremely reliant on casual and penalty overtime rates to survive and get by, was left high and dry.

I take this opportunity to thank Greg Granger from Histopath, who has provided two pop-up testing clinics in my electorate which has improved turnaround times and made such a difference to getting testing done. Other people in the Hunter who suffered during this pandemic are businesspeople who could not access funding support because websites were not updated, they were not eligible because support had not been rolled out to our regions, or because information was so confusing that they were given the wrong advice, sometimes even by their own accountants. There has been little to no leniency from Ministers in this situation. One would have thought that the lessons from the 2020 bushfires had been forgotten. People waited so long for assistance either because they were not eligible or they missed out by half a day because something had not been lodged on time.

I thank all those who have worked so hard in this pandemic—everyone from NSW Health and other healthcare providers who have worked side by side. In particular I thank Dr Craig Richards from the Lorn Surgery who, on his own, has vaccinated thousands of people in our community; he has been a juggernaut and has been incredible. I also want to thank Stephen Boyle from the Thornton Discount Drug Store and other pharmacies around our community for the work that he has done to try to assist people in getting vaccinated. Thanks also to the government workers: the police, the Service NSW staff, emergency services and the many other government workers who work anonymously and tirelessly. We might never know who they are, but they have done an amazing job to keep us all so safe and going.

Of course, the other unsung heroes have been the community services like Maitland Neighbourhood Centre, Carrie's Place domestic violence and special homelessness services, Maitland Family Support, and Hume. We have seen an outbreak of homelessness in our electorate due to this pandemic and we really need to get on top of that. I would also like to thank Michael Di Rienzo, Lauren Cruz and Liz Grist from Hunter New England Health, Sue Buckman, Paul Craven, Police Superintendent Chad Gillies and Dr David Dunne for the excellent work they have done to try to keep the Hunter Safe. I also want to personally thank Minister Hazzard and his team, particularly Ellie Statamoulos and Leonie Lamont, for the help they have provided to our team and community in helping us understand the changes, and for always answering our calls.