Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Regional Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to recognise the critical role that our Neighbourhood Houses play right across Victoria in our communities. There are several Neighbourhood Houses across Gippsland, and they all offer quite different experiences, depending on what the locals need. Across Victoria, there are 400 Neighbourhood Houses, and of those about 47 per cent are actually located in regional communities, which reflects the need in our regional areas. In fact, 200,000 Victorians visit a Neighbourhood House in an average week, and throughout the year that's about 10 million visits across the state. Unfortunately, with the impact of the rising cost of living, we have seen an increase need for services provided by our Neighbourhood Houses network right across the state.

Every Neighbourhood House is quite different and will provide quite different services and activities based on the needs of the individual communities, anything from prepared social meals at a discounted price to foodbanks to emergency relief—particularly in Gippsland we've had a need for Neighbourhood Houses to be involved in emergency relief efforts—to responding to local issues.

Today, I particularly want to acknowledge the role of the Bairnsdale Neighbourhood House, which has the moto 'the heart of our community'. Certainly the Bairnsdale Neighbourhood House lives up to that moto. I visited the house last week and had the opportunity to catch up with the chief executive officer, Leanne Jennings, and learn a little bit more about the work she's doing to support around 650 locals who visit the Neighbourhood House in Bairnsdale every week. The incredible efforts of volunteers on top of the work of Leanne Jennings means that there are about 110 individual East Gippslanders who make a contribution over a fortnight period to the operation of that Neighbourhood House.

Leanne and her team are industrious, are innovative and are resourceful, but they can't pull $6 million from nowhere, and they need about $6 million to completely redevelop their facilities. Sadly, as much as the facilities are in great demand and they've tried their best over a period of decades to maintain them to a reasonable standard, they really are in a state of disrepair and are failing to comply with the ongoing health and safety requirements that a facility like that needs to meet. I will be working with the Neighbourhood House and with the local and state governments to try and find ways to resource that Neighbourhood House for a complete redevelopment.

When you think about it, the Bairnsdale Neighbourhood House has about a $260,000 a year income but makes a $5.6 million contribution to the local community. They leverage off that small amount of income to make an incredible contribution to the community. There is no way, there is not a hope, that a state or federal government could ever replace that contribution of the Neighbourhood House if they had to pay for it. The effort of the staff members and the volunteers' performance on top of that makes an incredible contribution to out community. The Bairnsdale Neighbourhood House has been able to raise some money through grants and donations, including a $500,000 donation from a highly respected businessman, John Dahlsen. But the challenge is there from all levels of government to work together to find that capital funding for a major redevelopment of Bairnsdale Neighbourhood House.