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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-11-17 Daily Xml
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Coronavirus, Support Payments

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI (14:40): My question is to the Minister for Human Services. How is the Marshall Liberal government supporting the financial wellbeing and resilience of vulnerable families during COVID-19?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (14:40): I thank the honourable member for her question. Indeed, the Marshall Liberal government has provided significant funding for people who are in vulnerable situations, both through our 2019-20 budget and in the recent budget, brought down by our very benevolent Treasurer, the Hon. Mr Lucas.

In this recent budget there's some $4.1 million to provide additional support. The package provides an immediate impact and includes tailored financial counselling and loans to help people to avoid permanent financial crisis, a doubling of the existing state government and DHS-administered emergency financial assistance program, a boost to existing financial resilience and wellbeing services to increase service delivery and capacity-building in the community, and funding to non-government organisations in the food relief sector. The details are that we have provided:

$650,000 to double the capacity of the Emergency Financial Assistance Program (EFAP), which is estimated to provide for an additional 750 to 1,250 EFAP recipients per month;

$350,000 for food relief activities for organisations including Foodbank, OzHarvest and SecondBite;

$750,000 to Good Shepherd Microfinance to target sole traders and small business owners impacted by COVID, which will link an expected 700 clients with up to $1.4 million in ethical credit as well as other supports, including budgeting tools;

$150,000 to Speckle, which offers small cash loans of up to $2,000 to consumers, which are a cheaper, more ethical alternative to payday lenders or traditional lending;

$1.75 million for increased financial counselling services in South Australia, which will provide multiple packages across the state for activities such as employing financial counsellors or capability staff on fixed-term contracts, partnerships with other providers to improve access and referral pathways or IT infrastructure and other service delivery system efficiencies to manage the impacts of COVID-19;

$200,000 to upgrade the Affordable SA Digital platforms, to modernise the platform and assist in ameliorating the expended surges in demand; and

$250,000 to increase the capacity of the Consumer Credit Law Service.

We know that a lot of these services are very important for people in these challenging financial times and there is a particular focus, as I have mentioned, in terms of financial counselling, and we think that is a very valuable service which is going to help provide that early intervention, and long-term benefits to people who may be financially vulnerable.

We are acutely aware of the fact that people may have reduced hours of employment and as well as people who were traditionally thought of as vulnerable, there is now a different cohort that we have been referring to internally as 'the COVID vulnerable' and, for that reason, the COVID boost was provided to people who were on JobSeeker payments to particularly assist them.

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