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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-05-14 Daily Xml
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Homelessness Services

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (14:27): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Human Services regarding housing.

Leave granted.

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN: In the middle of the COVID-19 emergency, which is putting additional pressure on homelessness services, the government provided just a one-year contract extension to those services despite a five-year commonwealth federal funding deal. In another part of the sector, groups like Shelter SA have lost funding as the government rolls their functions into larger organisations. This is happening under the Housing Advice, Advocacy and Engagement tender for which applications closed last week. The process claims to apply codesign principles, early intervention, working between sectors and capturing lived experience.

It is unclear how either of these sector reform activities include or live up to the principles the minister and her agency are claiming as the sector reference group that is central to the codesign process has not even been announced as yet. My questions to the minister are:

1. Why is the minister rushing ahead with complex sector reforms during a major emergency when these have not been designed in line with her own codesign principles as announced on 17 April?

2. Is the funding pool for this tender equivalent to the total of the previous contracts?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (14:28): I thank the honourable member for her question, much of which was factually incorrect in relation to a number of items. I can advise, as I have been asked on this particular issue before, that there was very broad widespread consultation on the homelessness reforms, I think, over a 12-month period where we consulted across the sector with the specialist homelessness services, whether they be in the youth sector, the domestic violence sector or the perhaps unfortunately termed generic sector, through to public social housing, development, industry—a range of people who have an interest in housing, whether it is in the crisis end or through to affordable purchase to deliver on a broad strategy.

We have also been informed through the Institute of Global Homelessness. A number of sector representatives and myself attended their conference in Glasgow last year. It is well known that Scotland has engaged in very significant reforms to ensure that they align their resources with where the services are needed. In South Australia we have a sector which operates very much at the crisis end. This is something that we have consistently heard from people. From those people with lived experience we know that the system is hard for them to navigate. Realistically at the end of the day the services are all about the clients. The broad consensus of the sector is that they wish us to continue with this process, so that is why we are proceeding with it.

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