Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Young Frankston man Jack Knight was 18 when a family breakdown left him homeless. As he told ABC News during the election campaign, he spent a couple of nights on a friend's couch before he ended up sleeping in a garage. It was very cold, he said, and he was wandering around Frankston because he didn't know what to do next. He came across a youth hangout, and someone offered him a sausage in bread. He said to them, 'I just have nowhere to go.' A support worker helped him into transitional housing and then into a share house. Jack is now a terrific social worker in Frankston. He started studying youth work and, as a case manager, helps other young people facing homelessness. He's a story of success. But, unfortunately, that success is unattainable for too many young people in my area.

According to Youth2 Alliance, which is a group of local organisations that help young people in trouble, over the last two years 390 people aged between 15 and 25 in the Frankston-Mornington Peninsula region needed emergency housing. But there was nowhere to send them. We know that, in addition to a lack of emergency and transitional housing in my area, particularly for young people, the increase in rents has become a significant crisis. Frankston house rents rose 12.5 per cent, to a median $450 per week, over the past year, and in Frankston North, one of the most disadvantaged areas in my community, rents rose 10.1 per cent. Young people like Jack when he was in that situation can't get into those private rentals.

During the election campaign, the Youth2 Alliance asked all of the candidates for Dunkley to sign a pledge—and I did so—because in the Frankston and Mornington Peninsula regions there was an increase of 50 percent in the rate of young people aged 15 to 25 requesting assistance with securing crisis housing over the COVID time. Frankston and Mornington Peninsula are two of the six worst local government areas in Victoria, with homeless residents sleeping rough every night. There are no local crisis accommodation options for young people, so they're forced to travel up to 2½ hours on a one-way journey on public transport to somewhere like Highett or Dandenong, or sometimes even further, to find somewhere to sleep.

During the election campaign, Andrew Bruun, YSAS CEO and Chair of the Youth2 Alliance, asked us to pledge to play a role in addressing the social parity issue faced by young people and families living in my community without secure housing. We were asked to commit to advocating for youth-specific crisis accommodation in Frankston and the Mornington Peninsula region and to commit to working actively with local community service organisations, lived-experience advocates like Jack and local and state governments to end youth homelessness in Frankston and the Mornington Peninsula. In this, National Homelessness Week, it seems an appropriate time for me to repeat that pledge in Australia's Parliament. It is something that I am committed to and, with this Albanese Labor government, I am confident that we will make great strides to solving. I don't know how many speeches I gave in this parliament over the last term calling on the previous government to support these calls for youth crisis accommodation in my area. They weren't answered, but I will not give up.

I can't be there on Wednesday, but the Salvation Army is holding an 'end youth homelessness' rally, asking people to come and make a plan—that's the theme of homelessness week: make a plan—share ideas and grab a sausage at the White Street Mall on Wednesday. I wish them all the best of luck and hope that people in my community go, because this is something that we need everyone to buy into and work together on. Council, state government, federal government, services and our local community need to work together to solve this issue.

I'm really pleased that housing and homelessness has been elevated to cabinet in the government that I'm now a part of. We have a plan through the Housing Australia Future Fund. Importantly, we have a plan to work with state and local councils for all levels of government to come together to do what we can to pull all the levers to end homelessness. It's the least our constituents deserve.

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