Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I rise to talk about the issue of homelessness and to acknowledge a group of extraordinary people in my electorate who have committed their working lives or their volunteer hours to working with a group of incredibly disadvantaged human beings. I am going to acknowledge them not by speaking of them but by speaking for them.

As honourable members would know, the Rudd Labor government have put the issue of homelessness at the top of our priorities. My colleague the Minister for Housing, the member for Sydney, issued a green paper in May of this year titled Which way home? A new approach to homelessness. In Parramatta, the issue of homelessness is a very real one, with the second largest population of people sleeping rough outside the Sydney CBD. In fact, around 500 people sleep rough each night around the streets of Parramatta.

There are a number of very valuable local organisations in my electorate that are working with the homeless and those at risk of homelessness. On Friday many of those organisations met at a forum at the Parramatta Mission on Macquarie Street—one of those sterling organisations that do such extraordinary work with the disadvantaged in our community. Attendees included: the Parramatta Mission, the Street Level Christian Community, Anglicare, the New South Wales Department of Housing, Global Care, Barnardos Australia, the Salvation Army, Western Housing for Youth, Bonnie Women’s Refuge, the Catholic Diocese of Parramatta, Hillsong City Care, the New South Wales Aboriginal Housing Office and the Christian City Church Prospect. There were 27 extraordinary people in all who attended, many of whom have been attending other forums and will be submitting written proposals of their own by the end of this week in response to the green paper. They are working for people in great need and you will not find a group of people more committed to an issue than they are.

Overwhelmingly, the message they gave was that homelessness is not just about accommodation, that the solution to homelessness is about providing security and stability, which of course includes accommodation but goes much further than that to include living skills, working skills and health. They sought greater emphasis on the collection of data—in particular, on people living in boarding houses—so that as policy is developed we can consider the range of people living on the edge and at risk of homelessness as well as those who have already moved into crisis accommodation. They also sought greater coordination between government departments. They pointed out that many of the people who move into crisis accommodation services and put such pressure on supported accommodation can actually be seen moving into that area in advance—for example, people moving out of prisons and back into society, people moving out of mental health facilities and in some cases state wards. The crisis accommodation services are carrying the load in those areas when really as a government and government departments we should be able to predict the movement of some of those people into crisis circumstances.

They also seek greater cooperation and participation by government departments in identifying people at risk earlier, including organisations such as Centrelink, which can quite easily identify people at risk earlier. They also talked about the need for an alert service for people under threat of eviction. They raised a number of ways for us as a society to identify people at risk early. They did, I have to say, make these points without any criticism at all of the departments or the people who work in crisis accommodation. They were really incredibly generous towards their fellow workers in that regard, pointing out that what has happened over many years is an increase in people with complex needs who end up in crisis accommodation. As those services take on more and more people with serious needs, they become more and more stretched and become unable to cope.

They made the same remark about public housing, which is now moving into the realm of crisis accommodation rather than remaining with the original idea of public housing, which is to provide long-term, stable accommodation for people of lesser means. As you would expect, they also called for great funding and pointed out that, while there is a greater need for early intervention—and the government has been talking a great deal about that—in the short and medium term early intervention will not impact on the need for the crisis services which are provided today. There will always be people in supported accommodation who will need those services. (Time expired)