Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Hughes for her question. Clearly many Australians have found themselves in very, very challenging circumstances as a result of the COVID pandemic and many of those people may need access to financial tools now or in the future to assist them to make stable and safe financial decisions going forward. To make sure that people get the advice they need we have made available an additional $20 million to scale up the capacity of our existing financial counselling services in Australia. Of that, we've provided $6 million to Financial Counselling Australia. We did this most particularly because we wanted to make sure that they had the ability to train more interns through their financial counselling traineeship so they could get out on the ground and start assisting Australians who need them. This has allowed us to fast-track the time frame in which we are able to get these students accredited. So far I'm pleased to say that 70 agencies have agreed to employ these students to make sure that they are able to get the hands-on experience they need to get their qualifications. Increasing the workforce capacity of the sector means that we as a country are in a position to respond to what we expect to be an increased demand.

I'd also like to take the opportunity to remind all Australians that the supports that have been put in place are there to assist Australians to make sure that when they go through the difficult times that clearly many Australians are going to have to go through over coming months the resources are there and confidential, free advice is available to them. So I would recommend that anybody who finds themselves in difficult financial circumstances contact a financial adviser and get the advice they need to assist them in their negotiations. (Time expired)