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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-08-25 Daily Xml
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Homelessness

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (14:27): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Human Services regarding homelessness.

Leave granted.

The Hon. K.J. MAHER: In this place yesterday, when the minister was asked 'what role does your chief executive have in relation to the design, awarding or monitoring of contracts for the Homelessness Alliances model?' the minister replied, and I quote—and this isn't a difficult quote to remember, having said it just yesterday—'none.' Nada, nothing, none, and yet we now find out that our minister's chief executive is chairing a task force to investigate alleged antisocial and violent behaviour linked to homelessness in the Parklands.

My question is, given the minister's chief executive has no involvement whatsoever in the area of homelessness, even the monitoring of the new alliance system, how, in the minister's opinion, is that chief executive—with no involvement in the area—the best person to chair this task force?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (14:28): The honourable member has put together a few strange—I will try not to reflect on the thought processes that take place in the Labor Party, although I must say that sometimes I come in here and wonder what substances the question time devisers in the Labor Party have been working on, and all of their respective members swallow the Kool-Aid in asking them.

In relation to these matters, the Homelessness Alliance contracts were determined within SAHA by a group in there, which included procurement people with experience and understanding. Those alliance contracts are solely within—have been within SAHA. They have been executed and they are monitored by the South Australian Housing Authority.

In terms of the Department of Human Services and their involvement with the task force, that's a separate issue. The honourable member has been a minister, so I am surprised that he tries to put such simplistic concepts as one agency having sole responsibility for a certain policy area. I have clearly, in response to his first question, outlined a range of agencies that are involved in the task force, which includes SAHA. So I don't quite understand why he's asking a question about why a particular department, which actually used to be together with the Housing Authority under Labor, and I might just remind them that Housing SA was a part of the old DCSI, so there clearly are a lot of aligned issues in that space.

Another area of public policy that comes to mind is domestic and family violence. The domestic and family violence alliance, which is one of the five executed contracts, rests within SAHA. There is obviously a lot of domestic and family violence policy work that takes place through the Office for Women within DHS. There are always crossovers in these areas, and we commend our agencies for working together, rather than in silos.

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