Emergency Accommodation

Mr TELFER (Flinders) (14:44): I have a supplementary on that if you will allow it. Has the minister visited Ms Richardson and others at their emergency accommodation or just received a briefing, as he indicated?

The SPEAKER: That is not a supplementary, it's a separate question.

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION (Taylor—Minister for Trade and Investment, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Housing Infrastructure, Minister for Planning) (14:44): As I said before, these are very tragic cases and they need to be handled carefully. All cases need to be handled carefully and they need to be handled by people who are trained to do it, trained to help people access stable housing, and access accommodation outside of this program. For that reason, it needs to be done by individuals who are trained for it, and it needs to be done with an individual's privacy in mind.

I don't think it is helpful to anybody to have ministers conducting tours in response to media campaigns, however well meaning and justified those media campaigns are. I think that it is better that we look carefully at the policy and that we consider policy, and you do that by getting briefings, and that, particularly in my portfolio, we are focused on supply. That's why we are building more public housing than has been done in decades. That's why we are pushing forward on things like Tucker Street, which is housing for over 55-year-old women who have suffered homelessness. That's why we are building in supply, because it is only supply in the end that can help individuals to access housing.