Housing and Homelessness Funding

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay—Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion, Minister for Social Housing, Minister for the Status of Women, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs, Minister for Youth, Minister for Volunteers) (15:21): I seek leave to make a ministerial statement.

Leave granted.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON: On Wednesday 29 March 2017, I met with chief executives of community sector agencies to discuss the future of social housing and homelessness funding in South Australia. I called this meeting with community sector partners as a result of recent media reports that the commonwealth government wanted to make significant changes to the current National Affordable Housing Agreement (NAHA). The future status of this funding is not only a state issue: its uncertainty impacts many vulnerable South Australians.

The NAHA brings $94 million per annum to South Australia to fund private rental, social housing and homelessness services to South Australians. In addition to the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness, which is due to expire on 30 June 2018, the NAHA provides homelessness and housing services to around 22,000 homeless people each year and provides nearly 30,000 people with bond and rent assistance to afford renting in the private rental market.

South Australia should be very proud of the genuine collaboration that exists between our community sector agencies and the government. Chief executives recognised this collaboration as enabling us to deliver innovative and responsive services such as our most recent Code Blue and Code Red extreme weather responses to people sleeping rough. At the meeting, other South Australian reform and innovation was also recognised. That included the Safety First response to women and children experiencing domestic and family violence, the Ladder Foyer youth homelessness response connecting young people to education and jobs and the No Wrong Door access to services through homelessness gateways.

At our meeting, we also discussed openly the areas where we continue to strive to do better. They included our responses to Aboriginal people, a joined-up approach with mental health and drug and alcohol services, and improving our emergency accommodation response. In May, I will be chairing a national meeting with housing ministers here in Adelaide. At that meeting, I will call on the Turnbull Liberal government to rule out any changes to NAHA that will divert money from front-line homelessness services.