Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Today I am reading a speech from Dana, a young person from my state, South Australia. This is part of the Raise Our Voice in Parliament campaign, which amplifies the voices of young people and their visions for the future. Dana would like to say the following:

My name is Dana, and I am 13 years old.

I stand here today and say that we should build homes for homeless people.

This will make sure they have a place to keep warm and not sleep on the side of the road or on the footpath.

Instead, every person has the right to have shelter and stay safe, so I say every single person deserves a home once and for all.

In the meantime, the government has something called a code blue, when it's way too cold for homeless people to sleep on the side of road or on the footpath.

Instead, they can go to a hotel to keep warm, but these spots can be limited.

What I'm trying to say is that no one should be living in streets anymore, not now—not anytime!

So, I say no more homeless people should live on the streets!

I think of the homeless people that sleep on the footpath in winter, they might also get hypothermia if they don't act fast.

Change a homeless person's life by giving them the chance to live somewhere, by doing that you're a hero and the homeless people, and wider communities, will be so grateful for you doing that and for giving each homeless people a home.

We need to act fast before the cold winters hit again next year!

Thank you, Parliament, for hearing and understanding my voice!

Thanks, Dana, for your wonderful and compassionate speech. The Greens echo Dana's concerns, and I certainly share them. We're determined to end Australia's shameful housing and homelessness crisis. We have to end the growing number of tents in Adelaide in our own parklands. Every time I go through the parklands there are more and more people living in homelessness. In a wealthy country like ours, it's unacceptable, just as Dana says, for over 120,000 people to be homeless on census night. (Time expired)