Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to talk about tremendous organisations that provide much-needed assistance to the residents in my electorate. The first organisation is the Cranbourne Information and Support Service. This fantastic service covers the area from Hampton Park to Cranbourne. It has a catchment area of roughly 100,000 people. It provides emergency relief funding and also financial counselling to people in need, although the financial counselling for people in need of that service is massively underfunded. There is a financial counsellor at the Cranbourne Information and Support Service working four days a week to service 100,000 people, and there are waiting periods of about four to six weeks for an appointment.

People seeking emergency relief and financial counselling, interestingly, are not just coming from what normally is categorised as the underprivileged but are people who have mortgages. People who are seeking emergency relief are basically coming in due to multiple debts due to mortgages, credit cards, utilities and phone credit cards. They are noticing and experiencing now a massive spike of people coming in between November and January, as people seek help for the cost of education. They have created a new program through fundraising for those particular families, called ‘back to school expenses’. They are finding that education is one of the biggest imposts on a family outside of the mortgage and the rent. People are struggling to pay for books, school shoes, fees, formal and informal fees, elective subjects, swimming lessons, camps and calculators.

Seventy per cent of people who are coming into the Cranbourne Information and Support Service have never sought help before and they are struggling with the costs. We are seeing more and more people coming in for emergency relief who have mortgages.

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