Emergency Accommodation

Mr TELFER (Flinders) (14:41): My question is to the Minister for Housing. Will the minister conduct an audit of the requirements placed on homeless people living in emergency accommodation? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr TELFER: It was reported as part of The Advertiser's Be Their Champion campaign that Cas Richardson, who has been living in emergency accommodation since July, has been rejected from hundreds of rental properties and the debilitating requirements are having a devastating impact on her mental health. She said:

They need to know pretty much where we are at all times of the day and if we don't do what they ask, they try to kick us out. We are living with that constant threat every single day. I feel so judged. All of our mental health has just plummeted.

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION (Taylor—Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Housing Infrastructure, Minister for Planning) (14:41): I thank the member for the question. I do thank The Advertiser for their campaign. I think their campaign does give the community a window into the sometimes very desperate circumstances that occur in the community that people obviously accessing this program experience.

We don't want to go into individual cases because I don't think that's fair to individuals and I don't think that's helpful to the policy debate. The important thing is that I got a briefing on this from the Housing Trust to satisfy myself in terms of the way we conduct the program, and obviously it crosses over two portfolios because the Alliance does the service provision bit of it but it's contracted via the Housing Trust.

I am satisfied that the mutual obligation principles that are put in place are bespoke to individuals and are necessary to keep the program running. The reason is this: we want to make sure that this is a temporary experience for people, that they access the program and then they leave for more secure accommodation, whether it be with family, into private rental, into public housing or into some other provider of emergency services. This is a temporary program. It is not designed to be a permanent solution. It is designed to be of assistance at a critical time to access housing.

We all understand the pressure on the rental market at the moment. This government is putting in place a number of builds in a number of places to make sure that we are pumping in supply of public housing and affordable rental to help ease up the rental vacancy rate as well.

Again, this is in part a matter of looking at existing government programs and they have been running under governments of all persuasions for a long time. Mutual obligation is important. It is important because we want to see these people, these individuals placed into more secure housing and, of course, it's important because we want to make sure that the resources are going into building new homes, new public homes, into building new affordable rental supply and into making sure that the whole of the community can access housing.