Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Next week is Homelessness Week. It's a week during which everyone is encouraged to pause and reflect on our attitudes towards, and raise awareness of, people experiencing homelessness. Homelessness is often an unexpected difficulty caused by a multitude of reasons, and it often affects those who never thought it could happen to them. While there are common misconceptions about homelessness, the government's own data demonstrates that rough sleepers represent only seven per cent of people experiencing homelessness. The data fails to account for the majority of those who are hidden away from the public eye, taking refuge on friends' couches or in a shelter or in a car or living in a crowded dwelling. On the night of the 2016 census, more than 116,000 people were counted as being homeless in Australia, up by 14 per cent from the previous census in 2011, and this growing trend is cause for concern.

I recently met with Rebecca Callahan, a coordinator at Barwon South West Homelessness Network. This network of agencies in the Barwon and south-western region of Victoria works collaboratively in an integrated system that provides support and accommodation to people experiencing, or at risk of, homelessness in our region. They do important work by helping to ensure that the most vulnerable in our community have the dignity of a safe place to sleep at night, because, unfortunately, Geelong is not immune to the horrors of the homelessness epidemic. I'm alarmed but not surprised that, in the City of Greater Geelong, the number of people experiencing homelessness grew from 630 to 750 between 2011 and 2016—an increase of 120 people. The causes are complex; there's no single trigger. But we know that family and domestic violence and housing instability are the most common reasons that people sought homelessness assistance during the 2015-16 year.

Despite the good work of many organisations, such as the Barwon South West Homelessness Network in Geelong, while the number of people facing homelessness increases, the government needs to demonstrate leadership to take real action on combating this issue. Instead, what we've seen from those opposite is funding cuts to services seeking to make a contribution. In my community, local support service Diversitat is facing cuts this December to its emergency support services, which go towards helping Geelong's most disadvantaged. Diversitat is doing critical work to reduce the number of people experiencing homelessness and helping those at risk by providing emergency food parcels. They should be supported in providing services for communities and not be forced by this federal government to spend their time fighting for funding.

The government needs to show leadership and act. Instead, what we've seen from the Assistant Minister for Community Housing, Homelessness and Community Services is a suggestion that we need to focus on the positives of homelessness. I say to the minister: there are no positives. There are now more homeless people across the country and in Geelong than ever before. I therefore call on the government to immediately renew the emergency funding to Diversitat so that they can continue to provide the much-needed services to the Geelong region to support the most vulnerable in our community.