Homelessness Alliances

The Hon. I. PNEVMATIKOS (14:56): How can the minister know that a successful applicant will provide better services or better value for money when there is no measuring stick, there is no comparator, to assess that?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (14:57): In response to the honourable member's supplementary, I would say that the things that we put in the tender are much more rigorous than the existing contracts. As I have already spoken about today, as part of that there needed to be a demonstration that the organisations could work collaboratively between them as well so that if, as I have referred to already today, a particular client walks into a service there is a no wrong door approach, which means that rather than that person being sent off somewhere else, or not given a service at all, that person will be picked up straightaway by the system and they won't have to find their way to the particular office to get the help they need.

So it's through the way the tenders were structured and the outcomes that we are looking at that we believe these services will be far more effective going forward.