Ms ROSOL question to PREMIER, Mr ROCKLIFF
[10.27 a.m.]
Yesterday was Youth Homelessness Matters Day. Nearly 40 per cent of Tasmania’s homeless are under the age of 25. Last year over 1400 young people sought help at specialist homelessness services, but large numbers of them were turned away due to lack of availability. In February, more than 1100 applicants for social housing were unaccompanied young people. For years, the Youth Network of Tasmania have called for a dedicated plan to end youth homelessness and for proper funding of services. Will you commit to immediately developing a plan to address youth homelessness? Will you provide an injection of funding to youth homelessness services?
ANSWER
Honourable Speaker, I thank the honourable member for Bass very much for the question. Some $50 million a year supports the delivery of specialist homelessness services across our state, providing appropriate housing services. It obviously remains a core priority of our minister and our government when it comes to the Tasmanian Housing Strategy.
Homes Tasmania coordinates the provision of several housing and homelessness services tailored for young people, including: crisis and traditional accommodation alone or accompanied; brokered emergency accommodation accompanied; youth to independence supported accommodation alone; backyard units to support young people to remain safely with their families, accompanied; family violence rapid rehousing; and social housing and rental assistance.
Young people can access 10 of the 20 homeless shelters in Tasmania unaccompanied and eight shelters when accompanied by a parent or guardian. Two shelters provide services to children and young people under the age of 16. Most children experiencing homelessness are accompanied by a parent or carer, and their needs are met by existing homelessness and housing service providers operating across Tasmania.
We recognise lack of employment as a key factor impacting youth homelessness, and the Tasmanian Government’s Youth Jobs Strategy aims to support young Tasmanians into meaningful employment, training or further education. We introduced the Regional Jobs Hub, and they play a key role in tackling the employment related barriers that can prevent young people from finding stable housing.
To the nub of your question, I’m happy to engage with the honourable member around a broader strategy, if that’s what you called it. We are investing, I believe, significantly in this really important area of need. However, if the honourable member would like to use the forms of the House to gain the will of the House in terms of strategy, I’ll encourage her to do that, but I will keep an open mind on her objectives.
Supplementary Question
Ms ROSOL – The Premier referred to all of the services that are currently available. Thank you for outlining those. I think it’s clear that they’re not sufficient. Just following on from that, are you able to outline how this will be progressed – these plans around youth housing and continued things – under the planned changes to reform and moving towards Building Tasmania?
Mr ROCKLIFF – We want to ensure that, firstly, Building Tasmania focuses on building more homes and therefore more supply, which eases pressure on homelessness more broadly. That’s been our focus, as a government. We want to, if you like, turbo-boost that, with aligning those responsibilities to those very clear objectives. We have other incentives of which are clear in terms of ensuring Tasmanians have greater access or opportunity of home ownership through the affordable housing scheme, stamp duty relief, first home builders, et cetera.
When it comes to Building Tasmania, we want to ensure that the responsibilities of the social side of those matters also align with Building Tasmania in a similar structure, to ensure that the objectives of building homes is supported by the social need as well.
The SPEAKER – The Honourable Premier’s time has expired.
