DEPARTMENT NAMES

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (15:14): My question is to the Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion. Can the minister advise the house why the word 'families' has been removed from families and communities within his portfolio titles and why 'public housing' has been removed and replaced with 'social housing'?

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion, Minister for Social Housing, Minister for Disabilities, Minister for Youth, Minister for Volunteers) (15:14): It has taken a long time to get to this question. These changes were made by machinery government changes when the current ministry was appointed, I think last October. As the honourable member may be aware, the Premier has made some wholesale changes, particularly to my agency. I think that machinery government changes impact about 30 per cent on my agency, from memory.

The thinking was, as I understand it from him, that the Premier wanted to trial a situation where one minister and one agency had control of children's issues from birth to the end of school years, and that is why the Department for Families and Communities, as it used to be (now Families), has moved over to that new portfolio of DECD.

In relation to his question about public housing now being divided between two ministers (the Hon. Patrick Conlon in the other place as Minister for Housing and me, as the Minister for Social Housing), that was to facilitate, again, another situation where one minister (and one agency) would have his or her hands on several levers to do with planning, infrastructure and development.

Minister Conlon has taken control of issues to do with redevelopment; hence, Urban Renewal—it is called Renewal SA now, I think—was set up in the first place. That is the thinking behind it; and, of course, then I am left with social housing, which basically impacts on the Housing Trust or Housing SA and the not-for-profit sector which supplies social housing to those on low and medium incomes.