Steve Martin (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

It was interesting that Senator O'Neill mentioned women becoming homeless. Back in 1998 there were 100,000 people in Australia sleeping rough—transient; between different people's places, on their couches; sleeping under bridges—and the age group covered anywhere between six years of age right up to about 95 years of age.

Today the Deputy Prime Minister, Michael McCormack, and the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, assisted the efforts of young people to attack the scourge of homelessness in this country. They did so by donating one of their own personal coats to a group called Enormity, which bases itself in Ulverstone in Tasmania. At the time, these young people were the age of about 15, and one of their friends became homeless. They borrowed a coat and provided it to this young person, who was sleeping in doorways with no possessions, no money and no food. They thought they would provide that person with protection from the winter elements and some warmth. That's what they thought they could do. But in questioning these young people about whether there were any more homeless people that they knew out there, they said they did know of more. So they set about creating a public appeal for the donation of winter coats. Today the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister donated the 99,999th coat and the 100,000th coat to a young adult, Mr Jack Crawford, who was a member of Enormity six years ago. This marks 20 years of hard work by these young people who went out in the winter elements and collected coats from people who were kind enough to donate their own winter coat to help those who were homeless and in need. They came in all sizes and all shapes. We even had members of the public going to local stores and actually buying new coats and donating them to help the homeless. We even had visitors—