Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

A hot cup of tea, a snack, a warm jacket against the winter chill or some company is what the Avalon Centre, in Malvern East, provides to vulnerable people in our community on a walk-in basis. It has a homey feel about it because the Avalon Centre is a home belonging to Deborah Holmes. Deb is a force of nature who founded the Avalon Centre 37 years ago. On the day I visited, an army of volunteers were busy sorting and folding clothes and loading them into a van for distribution, while Deb buzzed about between her home office, the kitchen and a lounge room filled with boxes for sorting.

The Avalon Centre is more than for drop-ins. Ahead of its time, it has funded social housing in Melbourne, modelled on Finland's Housing First strategy. Deb's own fact-finding mission to Finland years ago became a reality. It reverses the conventional thinking that expects people to first get a job and free themselves of their associated health problems before they then find a house. Instead, Housing First assumes that you provide a house with no preconditions and that then helps to stabilise people. In fact, that is indeed what has happened. This strategy has allowed people to settle down, making it easier to then secure work or take care of their physical and mental health.

How were these homes bought without government support? By crowdfunding. So trusted is Deb in the community, and held in such high regard, that people with deep and not-so-deep pockets have purchased up to 10 homes for people on the margins. Their vision is to meet the unmet needs of our society and provide support for those who have been forgotten, overlooked or left behind. So impressed was I at this quiet community collaboration, that Deb provided her perspective directly to our Minister for Housing, Julie Collins, at my recent Higgins Housing Roundtable.

People like Deb are the doers, the innovators and the never say diers, who roll up their sleeves when the going gets tough. Rather than turning away, they turn up. It is fitting, then, that I pay tribute to Deb and her supporters on a truly historic day for our nation. Passage of the Housing Australia Future Fund is a nod to Deb and her crew, to our community and to our country, as an enduring commitment to invest in the things that matter.

Deputy Speaker Payne, I also draw your attention and the community's attention to the work we're doing around vaping. Vaping has become a scourge in our community. It has undermined all the gains we made as a Labor government many decades ago around tobacco control. Just yesterday we announced tougher legislation that is coming to stamp out this behaviour.

See this speech in context