FEDERAL LABOR WELCOMES VICTORIAN PLAN TO TACKLE HOMELESSNESS AND ROUGH SLEEPING

Federal Labor welcomes the announcement today of the Victorian Government’s new Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Plan.

 

The Action Plan includes the development of six supportive housing teams to tackle chronic homelessness, an additional 106 accommodation units and onsite support to provide rapid rehousing and additional $4.5 million for therapeutic services to improve health and housing outcomes for vulnerable people.

 

The Action Plan comes on top of an additional $799 million invested in housing and homelessness and $2.1 billion invested in social housing by the Andrews Government.

 

Today’s announcement, along with previous funding commitments by the Victorian Labor Government exposes the absolute paucity of the Turnbull Government’s commitment to solving the housing and homelessness crisis.

 

Turnbull’s Liberals have made only cursory attempts to reach agreement with the States and Territories on new housing and homelessness agreements due to commence on July 1.

 

Instead of working co-operatively with the States and Territories to solve the housing and homelessness crisis, the Turnbull government has thrown its toys out of the cot and picked a fight with them by introducing legislation, without any consultation, that actually puts funding at risk.

 

It is a rare achievement for any Federal Government to unite all of the States and Territories against it, but that is what the Turnbull Government has managed to do with its ham-fisted approach to housing and homelessness funding.

 

While it lectures the States and Territories on the need for new housing and homelessness strategies, Turnbull’s Liberals have no credible housing affordability and homelessness strategy of its own.

 

It announced a grab bag of unrelated, cobbled-together measures in last year’s Budget, none of which will make any difference to housing affordability or the rate of homelessness and rough-sleeping.

 

The Turnbull Government is hopeless at working co-operatively with the States and Territories on all of the major policy issues that require a national approach. Housing and homelessness is no exception.

 

Labor understands that the best housing and homelessness strategies require co-operation and effective policy implementation across all levels of government.

 

Labor’s record in office was one of effective, co-operative federalism and concrete policy on housing and homelessness.

 

As a government out of ideas and out of time, The Turnbull Government would rather pick a fight with the States and Territories instead of working together to solve the serious social and economic problems associated with homelessness and the crisis in social housing.