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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-10-15 Daily Xml
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Housing Crisis

The Hon. C. BONAROS (15:07): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Attorney a question about the effect of the housing crisis on South Australian prisoners eligible for release.

Leave granted.

The Hon. C. BONAROS: The housing crisis at state and country levels has been well documented amid a lack of affordable housing and soaring rental rates. A report released in April this year found that zero per cent of properties for rent in South Australia over a highlighted weekend in March were affordable for some on Youth Allowance or JobSeeker.

As reported by ABC News just last week, Chair of the SA Parole Board, Ms Frances Nelson KC, has pointed to the housing crisis also hindering the release of prisoners from our state's prisons. Ms Nelson states that stable accommodation is absolutely critical in terms of reducing recidivism. She also cites examples such as one prisoner who should have been released in May but still cannot be housed in accommodation outside of prison, and the fact that the women's prison has some 47 per cent of its population there on remand—and a large proportion of them because they don't have somewhere else to live. This is coming at considerable cost to taxpayers, given that it costs about $100,000 to $130,000 per year to house a person in prison. My questions to the Attorney are:

1. What is the government doing to address the housing crisis as it relates to individuals leaving prison?

2. What, if any, proportion of existing or new public housing has been allocated specifically to individuals who are exiting prison?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector) (15:09): I thank the honourable member for her question. The matter she refers to is of course in the portfolio area of the minister for corrections; however, it does touch on broader justice issues which, of course, interests me greatly as Attorney-General. I have corresponded with the Chair of the Parole Board when there have been questions raised and sought information from the minister for corrections.

The honourable member referred in part of the explanation of the question to the issue of housing as it pertains to prisoners who are on remand, so I will address that first—that is at the start of the system. There are people who are in our prisons on remand, and a very substantial portion, and it's even higher for Aboriginal prisoners—it might even now be a majority of Aboriginal prisoners who are on remand for a variety of reasons, but certainly one reason is a lack of suitable accommodation to be bailed to.

It is something that we have started tackling and at the last couple of budgets, through the department for corrections, there has been substantial investment into suitable accommodation for those who are on remand and not afforded bail for that very reason. So there has been significant investment that has already been made and those programs will continue to roll out and provide not just that accommodation but also therapeutic programs to some of those prisoners who are on bail.

The honourable member also referred to the other end of the system: people who are coming out of prison, often on parole but sometimes those who are not on parole but have served their sentence, finding suitable accommodation, which is always a problem but is absolutely exacerbated by the lack of rental accommodation that we are seeing in the system at the moment. It's not just this but in so many facets of those needing accommodation, particularly those who are marginalised in society needing accommodation, this is often disproportionally affecting the most.

I think I received correspondence about a particular aspect of this and I just can't remember the name of the organisation but I believe, as I understand it, there was physical accommodation found for that organisation to run for people coming out on parole and the correspondence I received I think it was last week from the Parole Board was about the possibility of recurrent funding to support that physical accommodation. Certainly, that is something I will be talking to my colleague the minister for corrections about.

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