Community Centres SA

The Hon. J.S. LEE (14:55): My question is to the Minister for Human Services about community partnerships. Can the minister please provide an update to the council about the importance of community centres in fostering community partnerships and how these partnerships are delivering tangible benefits to our community?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (14:55): I thank the honourable member for her question. Can I say that it was a great privilege to attend recently the annual Community Centres SA conference, which was held at the Morphettville Racecourse on 25 and 26 October, with the theme 'Partnerships with purpose'. We have over 100 community centres in South Australia, with something like 35 South Australians who visit community centres and neighbourhood houses every week, and those people benefit from the creative solutions, innovative enterprises and economic efficiencies that come from partnerships that community centres initiate and nurture.

Our community centres are a very diverse group of organisations, which are well led by Community Centres SA. This specific conference provided insight to participants from community centres, allied organisations and people at the coalface of community development about the benefits and positive experiences of partnering. It explored how delivering improved community outcomes can be achieved through purposeful partnerships with government, business and philanthropic organisations, as well as some cultural, social and commercial movements.

The sessions I was able to attend this year and also spoke at considered two significant issues: one was the role of volunteers, and the second was about innovative areas for community centres to be in partnerships. From discussions with a number of the people who were there, some of our sporting facilities and civic centres are moving towards incorporating community centres in their redevelopments. Clearly, we have sporting centres that often have a lot of people there on weekends and after hours, and community centres are often open during business hours. So for them to be co-located and share some of their facilities is a good thing and also provides greater opportunities for community members and volunteers to participate.

There was a session where the Department of Human Services and Volunteering SA led a quiz session, just to test everybody's understanding of volunteering, particularly corporate volunteering. To broadly summarise, there are a number of larger corporate organisations that have people volunteering in significant numbers amongst their employees, much less so for small businesses.

It was good to talk to people there about our particular policy, which is focused on extending the WeDo app to businesses to enable them to log the volunteer hours that people provide as a demonstration of their support to the community. They always have very novel speakers at the Community Centres annual conferences, which are very well attended and very uplifting meetings and very enjoyable. I commend them for their work in encouraging community organisations to adopt results-based accountability principles, and wish them and their work in the community all the best.