00:00:07:22 - 00:00:25:14 Unknown My name is Rachel. Currently, I work for a Member of the Victorian parliament. I started as an electorate officer in a Federal Member of Parliament's office, and that was about five and half six years ago. Sorry for 00:00:25:20 - 00:01:00:13 Unknown the past few years, I have been working in an electorate office to assist MPs to support the community, so members of Parliament are elected by the people and by people from a certain area. So each member of Parliament has a team or their office to assist them to carry out their duties, and part of 00:01:00:13 - 00:01:23:03 Unknown their duties is to serve and support the community. And that includes individuals of the community, but also organisations like schools, kindergartens or small business. For most members of the community. So their first point of contact with an MPs office would be a team member. 00:01:23:05 - 00:01:46:01 Unknown So an electorate officer like myself, so either by phone, by email, by letter. Well, but nowadays letters very rare, or by walking in the office. So what we would do is we always try to get your details to your name, a contact number and your residential address. 00:01:46:27 - 00:02:11:23 Unknown This is to help us to determine whether we are best placed to assist you because each MP has their own electorate, which is a fancy word for the area they are responsible for the area they look after. So we wouldn't want to get in a situation where, you know, 20 minutes into the conversation. 00:02:11:23 - 00:02:26:07 Unknown And then we realise actually, we are not best placed to help you because you are not a member of this community. And then we will have to, we would have to refer you to another MPs office. Then you will have to repeat your story. 00:02:27:08 - 00:02:54:03 Unknown So Victoria is a very proud multicultural states, and there are services in place to assist members of the community who prefer to converse in a language other than English. So sometimes you might find the electorate office has someone in-house so for like someone like me who does speak another language who might be able to assist you. 00:02:55:01 - 00:03:24:29 Unknown But if you would like to seek translation and interpretation, interpretation support. There are services available so you can either organise that yourself and ask them to ask the interpreter to meet you at the MP's office. Or you can ask the electorate office to organise an interpreter or translator for you, so you only need to, 00:03:25:00 - 00:03:55:00 Unknown you only need to bring that to the electoral office attention. As a state electorate office. What we see often are issues like housing, education, hospital, roads, public transport and consumer affairs related issues such as either housing or renting or renters rights. 00:03:56:09 - 00:04:20:21 Unknown So basically, all the services that are being delivered by state government and to from time to time are also, say, a members of the community coming to us with issues that are under the federal government's purview. For example, visa, immigration, Medicare, Centrelink or NDIS. 00:04:21:15 - 00:04:41:07 Unknown So what we would do then would be to try to identify the issues and then refer them to a federal representative to help them. What is worth bearing in mind is electorate offices are not. So we are here to serve our community. 00:04:41:19 - 00:05:07:03 Unknown And although we are not decision makers, but we can definitely help you navigate the system and at least to point you to the correct direction. I'm a firm believer in serving the community, so I believe the first and foremost duty of an elected member of Parliament is to look after the community. 00:05:07:06 - 00:05:30:21 Unknown So your local MP and the team work work for you, so feel free to come to us with your concerns, your issues and we can we can at least at least to help you navigate to the system and make you make you feel a little bit less lonely. 00:05:31:29 - 00:05:34:06 Unknown And that's what we are here to do.