Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It'd be difficult to overstate how important the contribution of volunteers is to communities across Australia, and I thank the member for Parramatta for bringing this motion. These include charities, soup kitchens, school working bees, school class aides and driving people to appointments in my electorate. There's a great program that helps young people get their driving hours up to get their licence if they don't have access to a car. There are environment land care groups and English language lessons and conversation classes.

I remember talking to my mum when she was dying. I nursed her for 10 months at home when she was dying from cancer. One of her funnier regrets, I remember, was when she said she was never going to live to fulfil her dream of being an op-shop lady. She died just as she turned 70. She'd moved house and she had already scouted out the op-shops around the corner. She loved an op-shop. She'd come back and say, 'Look, I saved $10.' I think I said, 'I think you wasted $6, Mum, but there you go.'

Six million Australians volunteer every year across Australia. That's a $200 billion contribution to the Australian economy. Unfortunately with COVID we have seen two-thirds of volunteers cut their hours and, in particular, many older volunteers have not returned.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

Sitting suspended from 11:51 to 12:07

I recently visited South East Volunteers. They're a wonderful organisation in south-east Melbourne serving about six councils, including the City of Greater Dandenong and the City of Casey in any electorate. Most importantly, their core service is place based volunteering. That involves face-to-face conversations between a volunteer, or a potential volunteer, and a worker from the service. It's human-to-human interaction. I saw this firsthand when I visited the Narre Warren office with May, the coordinator there, who's there a day or two a week, and the CEO, Ann Burgess. They get to know volunteers. They assess their suitability, their interests and the things they might be good at and they match them with local organisations. It's local people and local organisations. In particular, this face-to-face service is critical for people who might have difficulties with English or who may actually just be shy. Many volunteers are shy. They might be introverted and need that extra help. Or they might not be confident with a computer.

This is why it's so shocking that, in this budget, the Liberal government are cutting nationally all funding to place based volunteer services from 30 June this year. They tried this a couple of years ago. We had a debate about it in this very chamber. Afterwards, Liberal MPs said, 'I didn't know we were doing this.' Magically, behind the scenes, they backed off until after the election—but they're back and at it again. They're cutting all of the funding nationally to place based volunteer services and they're replacing it with a website in Canberra. There will be no more core funding to support local people to be matched to local organisations in this country. This will mean that numerous small local volunteering services, where this is pretty much the only funding they get, will close, especially in regional areas. They will be replaced with a website in Canberra. This website idea was tried over 10 years ago. It failed—it didn't work—which is why we went back to place based services. The government have learnt nothing.

If people say, 'We haven't heard of this. Where did this come from?' it's because the government are trying to sneak it through. They're buying off the peak bodies with one year of transitional funding. Volunteering Victoria is getting a year of transitional funding. The government will dole a bit of that out to try and shut people up until after the election, but services cannot use this transitional funding for core work. It can now only be used for the three so-called priority groups: First Nations people, people with a disability and new migrants. In my part of Melbourne, my part of Australia, that's pretty much their main bread and butter. Last year they helped new migrants from 102 different countries. That's what they already do, but they're not going to get this money anymore. The government's going to be putting it out in a tender. We don't know how this tender will work, but you can bet your bottom dollar, based on this government's track record, that local services won't get a look-in. I bet the job networks will be lining up those private providers to put in the tender and get this money—or one big charity the government favours or a private company.

Every time the government has done so-called reform of local services, whether it's emergency relief funding, where, under Tony Abbott, they cut every dollar to local emergency relief services, they have scrapped translation services for people who don't speak English, and now they're attacking volunteering. They come after the small local organisations and hand it out to two or three or four big national groups with a big logo, and it doesn't land in local communities. So I condemn the government for this charade of cutting all funding to local volunteering services nationally.

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