Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Nick Xenophon Team) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to publicly recognise the huge contribution that volunteers make to my Mayo community, to South Australia and indeed to Australia. Volunteers are the backbone of community organisations, from sporting clubs to Meals on Wheels, from surf lifesaving to the Red Cross and beyond. Volunteers provide hours of their valuable time and labour, and it is their contribution that my community so greatly appreciates. I also wish to recognise the great work of the peak organisation for volunteers in South Australia, Volunteering SA, and in particular CEO Evelyn O'Loughlin, who tirelessly advocates for and supports volunteers in my home state.

In 2014 South Australia had the second highest volunteering rates in Australia, with almost two-fifths of South Australians having volunteered in the previous 12 months and nearly half of those volunteering for more than 10 years. According to the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index, my electorate of Mayo is the happiest electorate in Australia, and I believe much of that is because of our high rate of volunteering and our connection to our community. According to the ABS stats, people volunteer because they want to help others and because it brings a sense of personal satisfaction. Volunteering strengthens person-to-person bonds in our communities and strengthens our individual and collective wellbeing.

Volunteering Australia estimates that the annual contribution of volunteering to our national economic and social wellbeing is $290 billion. That is more than what mining, retail and agriculture put together contribute to our community. Support for volunteering does not just happen by itself. It requires active and targeted investment. Community based organisations, known as volunteering support services, find, place, train and manage volunteers to make sure that their work is effective, professional and safe. As we have seen, volunteering is not a low-value activity by any metric. Even a small but significant investment by government creates a huge multiplier effect for the Australian community.

Under the budget, federal funding support for volunteering services will now only be available for people who are deemed disadvantaged or for projects specifically targeting disadvantaged people. This means that the arts, sports, recreational bodies, the environment, education, heritage groups and emergency services will no longer qualify for support to manage volunteering. In South Australia 10 out of the 12 of funded services that support volunteering are set to close. They will cease to operate. This includes services provided by Southern Volunteering, which operates in the Southern Vales, the Fleurieu and the Kangaroo Island regions. Southern Volunteering will cease to operate—and they have been receiving funding since 1984—if the federal government does not change what it has put in the budget. They only receive $120,000 a year from the federal budget, and they provide their services tremendously well. Volunteering Australia's CEO, Adrienne Picone, has expressed grave concern that this year's budget has completely overlooked the volunteering sector. It is a short-sighted decision by government. Successive federal governments have reduced volunteering grant funding. It was $21 million in 2008. In 2014 it was reduced to $10 million.

Proposed changes are going to mean that dedicated support from the federal government for volunteers will be substantially less than it was before. The decrease in funding to the sector will also reduce the ability of jobseekers to meet their mutual obligation requirements through participation in volunteering activities, and that fails to acknowledge the role volunteering plays in providing potential pathways to employment. We know there is a clear link between volunteering and employment, and with the mantra of 'jobs and growth' I really expected better from this federal government. I am disappointed in the government's short-sightedness and I urge the government to reinstate their funding for volunteer management. This is going to affect regional South Australia far more than metropolitan South Australia—the Riverland, Port Lincoln, the Limestone Coast. I do hope the member for Grey and the member for Barker come out and publicly condemn these decisions made by government.

To the thousands of volunteers in Mayo, the ones on the gate on a Saturday morning when it is freezing cold and the ones who are there for the football, the ones who are in the canteen, the ones who are delivering meals to our elderly, the ones who are at working bees on a Sunday afternoon: I am absolutely indebted to you for your generosity. We all are. To you, I humbly say thank you.

See this speech in context