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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-11-28 Daily Xml
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SA Housing Authority

Mr TELFER (Flinders) (16:09): My question is to the Minister for Human Services. Is the minister aware of any changes to the reports of antisocial behaviour at properties managed by the SA Housing Authority and, if so, what is the cause of this change? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr TELFER: Media reports from earlier this year indicate that SA Housing Authority data revealed a 25 per cent increase in complaints for the 2022-23 financial year to an almost decade high of nearly 6,900 complaints.

The Hon. N.F. COOK (Hurtle Vale—Minister for Human Services) (16:10): I thank the member for the question. Certainly, it is really concerning to hear reports of antisocial behaviour, and we take them all very seriously. Often, there are different responses for different circumstances. As many members would know, a lot of these complaints or raising of concerns come through the offices of members of parliament.

The vast majority of people who live in public housing live in public housing very calmly and quietly. They get along and on with their business. In fact, I think the split is something like 60 per cent of tenants or thereabouts, half, are living in a very stable tenancy without causing too much trouble or concern for their families, their neighbours and their communities. There are certainly about a third of our tenancies that do require some additional support because they have quite a range of complex backgrounds, including medical and psychosocial challenges, disability and other challenges that life has dealt them along the way, no more than poverty and disadvantage as well.

We do know that about 10 per cent of our tenancies require quite significant additional support. I have mentioned in this place before and I will mention again that it has been made extremely difficult to provide that additional support given the cut of 20 per cent of staff that happened in four years between 2018 and 2022. What we are doing is we are changing the way we go about our business and the way we do things. We are putting in place some strategic opportunities in our team of housing support officers where they can work together to build community and build neighbourhoods in some of the neighbourhood or congregate living sites, which previously would have been referred to as maybe walk-up flats or cottage flats.

Some of those strategies that are being put in place will start to reap rewards. I will not bore the member again with my analogies of chickens and trucks and turning things around. It does take some time, obviously, to turn things around, but we are very confident in housing. Some of the changes we are making and some of the investments we are doing not just with our staffing and the culture within our department but also with the capital works that are going on and some of the upgrades, improvements and investments, the changes in the types of housing and where we are building them, are being made.

We are confident that these will set a better standard for the future for people living in public housing. I think the emphasis and the focus that is being put on the need to supply affordable and dignified housing for people who have complex challenges in the community is something that is not just happening from a state point of view. This is happening nationally. We are working really hard with the federal government as well to come up with a really solid and connected plan nationally around housing and homelessness that will see better outcomes for people into the future, a really connected way of working as a federation, as a national and state government team.

We have met as a team of housing and homelessness ministers, and that cuts across a number of other portfolios in here. Of course, we have Minister Champion, who has planning, urban development and renewal, and we have the Minister for Consumer and Business Affairs as well. We are also working together on policy that will inform that national plan, and I look forward to working on that over the next six or so months with the excellent Minister Collins from the Australian government.

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