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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-10-14 Daily Xml
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Homelessness Sector Reform

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE (14:32): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Human Services regarding homelessness sector reform.

Leave granted.

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE: The minister has decided that the Glasgow model for homelessness reform is best for South Australia. This model only worked overseas with increased social housing stock, and it was implemented in a place that is very geographically different to South Australia. Scotland doesn't have remote Aboriginal communities, and it doesn't have regional towns that are hundreds of—or even more than 1,000—kilometres from a major population centre.

Further, the Liberal government has not announced plans to expand social housing. Instead, it is selling SA Housing Trust land with $400,000 homes on top in competition with the private sector. My questions to the minister are:

1. How many extra public housing—and I repeat: extra public housing—properties will the minister build this year that will be available for people on the public housing waiting list and the homelessness by-name list?

2. Can the minister provide evidence or examples of how the sector reference group informed the new homelessness reform, or was it simply a tick-box process?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (14:33): I thank the honourable member for her question. They just don't get it, do they? This process and this reform has been put to us by the sector, and we are engaging with them through this process—

The Hon. K.J. Maher: By who? Who?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK: Well, I've named people before who went to Glasgow.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK: Anyway, Mr President, I shouldn't engage across the chamber—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! The minister is right, she shouldn't do that, but she also should be heard in silence. So the minister can continue.

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK: There has been no secret that this is the journey that we have been going down.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! The minister will resume her seat. The opposition has the right to ask questions and to ask supplementaries, but when they ask a question and then when the answer is being given they sit there and laugh, that does not add to the standing of this chamber. I ask that that ceases. The minister will continue.

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK: Thank you, Mr President. We have made no secret of what this process that we are going down would be. It's a funding model. If the Labor Party want to draw analogies about the geography and spread of clients, that's hardly relevant because it's all about the funding model and how services operate together. I am not about to be lectured by the Labor Party on any of these issues when they did not do any reform in the homelessness sector.

If I can just provide some statistics, we spend approximately $70 million a year on homelessness services. There are a lot of people who cycle through that service. I can't understand why anyone would think that that is a successful outcome for a particular service model. We are moving to one that we believe has a housing first approach, which will provide wraparound services. It will focus on prevention and it will provide better exit points for people who are experiencing homelessness.

I am not about to be lectured by the Labor Party on the sale of public Housing Trust properties quite frankly because, as we know through the triennial review, there are some 7,500 properties that were sold, $1 billion worth that the Labor Party disposed of, and they put the viability sales—their own Labor treasurer put this in the forward estimates in perpetuity onto the books of the Housing Trust. Quite frankly, the Housing Trust was used as an ATM by the former Labor government, and I am not going to be lectured by them when we have an organisation that is pulling its finances out of the mud because it was wrecked and torn apart and neglected by the Labor Party.

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