House debates
Thursday, 21 February 2019
Constituency Statements
Playford Community Fund Inc.
10:17 am
Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing and Science) Share this | Hansard source
Well, I'm talking about a fund that helps people and you're making jokes about it. It's really funny, isn't it? Helping poor people, and you've cut their funding, and you find it funny. It's a big joke!
I make a plea to the government to take this seriously, to actually talk to the fund, to restore their funding, to look at the service area and to try to do some good work for a change rather than treating this all like a big joke, a big game. It's not a game. This is about people who literally face the grinding hardship of poverty. They face unemployment. They face very dire budgeting situations. They have their services cut off. They face homelessness.
The Playford Community Fund is really the last line of defence for many in the community. I urge the government not to treat it as a joke or a laughing matter but rather to help this fund to continue its good work that it has been doing since 1964.
Gill Caunce
Posted on 22 Feb 2019 12:08 pm
Emergency Relief is essentially a federal government responsibility. Governments have outsourced that responsibility to not-for-profit organizations, then they cut off essential funding so that 100% volunteer organizations cannot operate properly. We have this problem in our community of Gawler too. As much as local people try to help, they cannot meet the shortfall in the budget. Thank you, Nick, for highlighting this issue in our electorate, and I will be voting for a more humane government in the upcoming election.