CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS

Mr SMALL (Forrest—Opposition Whip) (17:14): I rise today to bring to this House the voice of one of my constituents from Bunbury, and I think it's a voice that echoes the daily struggles of the many hundreds of thousands of Australians who live with chronic illness, disability and, indeed, the realities of ageing. I recently received a letter from Jenny. For decades Jenny served our community as an education assistant and a teacher helping students with special education needs.

She also spent time as a support worker, assisting adult clients with daily household tasks and with accessing essential support within the community to live as independently as possible. She has spent her life caring for others, including her sister, who recently passed away from cancer; her mother, who currently struggles with dementia and diabetes; and her father, who suffers from post-polio syndrome and cancer.

Now Jenny herself is battling long COVID chronic fatigue syndrome. Through decades of both professional and lived experience, she has a deep firsthand understanding of the everyday challenges for accessibility that Australians with chronic illness face. There are genuine concerns about the barriers to the tasks necessary for essential living.

For someone living with severe chronic fatigue, tasks that may appear simple to us, such as shopping, are a painful necessity of life. Shopping can be a chore that can completely deplete someone's limited physical and mental energy. There are no laws that mandate having at least one staffed, non-self-serve or accessible register open during supermarket operating hours.

Jenny shared with me her recent painful experience of shopping in Bunbury, which is a large regional city. On five separate occasions she found that she was unable to find a single staffed register open at the shops, which forced her, with great stress, pain and difficulty, to use a self-serve register. Major supermarkets are designed to optimise sales, but that can negatively affect neurodivergent individuals or those suffering with chronic illness.

The environment of bright lights and acoustic chaos, the visual package clutter and, of course, the throngs of people there can trigger intense physical and mental exhaustion completely unknown to those going about their business around them. While we applaud supermarkets for engaging in initiatives like quiet hours, these voluntary measures are often highly limited in scope and used in non-peak hours.

I'm not for a minute suggesting that we need to use the heavy hand of regulation, particularly when you consider small, local and independent country grocers. But doing the right thing while enjoying such a privileged position within the Australian retail landscape should be an easy ask for our major retailers when it comes to looking after Australians with such illnesses.