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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-03-04 Daily Xml
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ConcessionsSA

The Hon. J.S. LEE (15:14): My question is to the Minister for Human Services.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Sit down, the Hon. Ms Lee.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! You are wasting question time. The Leader of the Opposition, enough. The Hon. Ms Lee.

The Hon. J.S. LEE: My question is to the Minister for Human Services—

The Hon. K.J. Maher interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! The Hon. Ms Lee.

The Hon. J.S. LEE: My question is to the Minister for Human Services about government concessions. Can the minister please provide an update to the council about how the Marshall Liberal government is lowering costs and improving services for low income South Australians through ConcessionsSA?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (15:15): I thank the honourable member for her question. Of course, some of her thunder has been stolen by—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK: —the Hon. Mark Parnell, who asked a question which also relates to some of these matters. I referred in my earlier response to the Hon. Mr Parnell about the Origin deal that is available to our energy concession recipients which will enable a potential combined usage reduction of up to $585 from their annual energy bill.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK: In addition, one of the—

The PRESIDENT: Minister, sit down for a moment, please. I am struggling to hear the minister give her comprehensive answer. Minister, please get to the nub of it so that we can move on.

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK: One of the new initiatives which we were very pleased to roll out, I think late last year, was our one-stop shop called Better Budgets, which provides all the information from across government in relation to all of the things that people can avail themselves of to assist them with their cost-of-living costs, including all of our concessions, in addition to things like sports vouchers and a range of other reductions which impact on household energy bills.

We were very pleased as part of all this to initiate some systems improvements as well in terms of the time it takes for people to apply for their concessions. It used to take a couple of months for them to come through but it now takes less than a week for them to be approved and then potentially applied. Better Budgets also has things like the emergency services levy and that sort of information.

The government also runs a range of programs with our non-government partners that include financial wellbeing and resilience programs, and there is a range of these. There is the Good Shepherd Microfinance program, which has been highly successful in terms of assisting people with no-interest loans. We have the Food Security Program, which many people would be familiar with, Foodbank, which provides a statewide service, and the Utilities Literacy Program.

A number of these programs come particularly through financial counsellors. When I was up in Peterborough last week the counsellors let people who come to them know about all of the state government concessions because sometimes people aren't aware of what's available to them. We are very pleased that these organisations are assisting people when they come to them for services so that they can access the range of discounts available to them through a range of concessions.

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