Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. The extra money that is going to be made available for financial counselling is a very welcome addition in this budget—a doubling of the budget, in fact. He is right that many of the financial counselling services that are scattered through the suburbs and country towns have been finding it very difficult to keep up with demand at a time when a lot of families and other Australians are under very significant financial pressure. We know that the more we can provide advice to people before they get themselves at the most desperate point the better. I am very pleased to be joined by my colleague the Minister for Housing. One of the services Centrelink provides is called the home advice service. This also helps families when they find themselves getting into financial difficulty. Centrelink can provide a range of different services for families to help them through those difficulties.

The member asks how this money is going to be distributed. I am in the process of writing to financial counselling services, particularly smaller ones that have just a small allocation, and trying to lift their capacity so that they can conduct their service in an ongoing and more productive way. We are trying to provide some money to them in a way that really lifts their capacity. Then we will provide some money for new services as well. Right now—actually, as soon as I get back to the office—we are in the process of helping to lift those financial counselling services. Some of them only have money for three days a week. We know those sorts of people are under very serious stress, trying to provide services to a lot of people. We will be getting those letters out very shortly.

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