E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP
LOUISE MILLER-FROST, MEMBER FOR BOOTHY: Hi, I'm Louise Miller-Frost, I'm the federal member for Boothby, and it is wonderful to be here at Salvation Army at Marion with the Minister for Social Services, Tanya Plibersek, and Stuart Foster, who is the General Manager for Salvos. Salvos here and across the country do an amazing job, having worked in the homelessness and emergency assistance area, I know how important it is to have these one stop shops, and what we're talking about today, the announcement we're making today around the five volunteers is such an important thing. No one thinks it will ever happen to them, but we know that the human experience is that sometimes things go wrong, sometimes you do have disaster, and often people have no idea what services are out there, or how to access them. So, if you have a phone library, you can call and find out not only immediate assistance now, perhaps a food basket, perhaps a voucher, but also referrals into services, government, non-government, within Salvos, and in the other agencies. It's so important for people to be able to just have someone human help them, so they make a phone call, they speak to a real human being who has empathy and who has some solutions to talk to them about how they can move away from the disaster that's happening. And our aim with all of these services, as always, is that sure things happen to people, but we want you to be able to rebuild your life and move on, and hopefully never return into this situation again. So it's wonderful to be here. We've heard all about a number of the services that Salvos run across the country, but also just here locally, including food security, community meals, low interest loans, financial counselling, all sorts of peer groups, and it's about that community. It's about people being able to come in, see somebody personally, or talk to them over the phone, and actually get the help and the empathy that they really need at their moment of crisis. And I'd love to hand over to my dear colleague, the Minister.
TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES: Thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to be here with Louise Miller-Frost, the Member for Boothby. Louise, coming into the federal parliament, had a lot of experience, as she said, working in the area, and she's brought that experience with her into the parliament, where she advocates so strongly for Australians who are doing it tough for better supports and better services right across Australia, but particularly here in her community in Boothby that she knows so well and loves so well. It's always also a real pleasure to be here with Stuart Foster from the Salvos. Stewart does an amazing job as a leader, a leader of an organisation that has a really special place in the hearts of Australians. As so many Australians know, that in a time of crisis, which none of us, of course, want to experience, but at that day, that moment that you're having the hardest time of your life, you can turn to the Salvos, and I really want to thank you, Stuart, on behalf of your organisation for all of the work that your staff do, but also all of the amazing work that your many, many volunteers do as well, and we've met some of those beautiful volunteers here today too.
I'm very pleased today to be able to announce an additional $2.5 million of funding for the Salvos Phone Assistance Line here in South Australia. The Phone Assistance Line does fantastic work. People at their moment of crisis can ring up, they can get support immediately, financial assistance, a voucher sent out to them, or to be picked up, but the really other important thing about the Phone Assistance Line is people get that immediate assistance, but they get connected to those longer term services, which help them turn their lives around. To financial counselling, to employment services, to language support, if they need to learn English, a whole range of other services that the Salvos provide right here in Marion and across the country. This $2.5 million announcement today comes because we know that Australians are doing it tough. They are asking for more assistance, and as a government, we want to help provide that additional assistance.
The Phone Assistance Line is getting around 1,000 calls a day, right across Australia. And right here, at the Marion branch of the Phone Assistance Line has helped about 4,500 people since October last year. So, that is 4,500 people and families that are getting the immediate help they need and connection to services that will help them in the long term. Around Australia, the federal government supports the Salvos with just over $15 million a year, but that is a fraction of the work that the Salvation Army do across Australia. They, of course, also rely on donations from the public, and when you come into a centre like this in Marion, and see the amazing work they're doing, Australians who I know regularly donate to the Salvation Army can be very proud of what they've done to support other Australians in need as well. Maybe Stuart, you want to say a few words.
STUART FOSTER, SALVATION ARMY: Thank you, Minister. Stuart Foster, General Manager for Community Services for Salvation Army in Australia. I just want to acknowledge the Minister and Department of Social Services for the additional support that the Minister has announced today. The extra funding that we are receiving will help ensure that we provide services to South Australians, South Australians who really are facing the worst day of their life, potentially when they ring and talk to one of our assessors. It's so important, and we want to thank the Minister for making that additional funding available to us. Salvation Army has a network of national assessors right across Australia. One of the things we like to make sure is that we have a local response in each state, so that people will understand that when you're ringing, they're talking to a South Australian, they're talking to someone who actually knows the service system in South Australia as well, and that's a really important thing for us to be able to assure our communities that we are responsive, that we are able to listen and we're able to help them wherever we can in terms of the resources that we have available. Of course, we also acknowledge that not just the Salvation Army, but it's also the rest of the community sector as well that comes together to ensure that people that are in need receive that assistance. Really want to acknowledge too that the $15 million that DSS put into the Salvation Army that we have because we have that funding we're able to leverage that and, as the Minister said, having fundraising behind us as well, we're able to put an additional $14 million nationally into our doorways program across Australia, and again, that strengthens and provides casework on the ground support. Our core centres like Marion, here where we are today, they also kick in as well, so through their money that they raise, they actually provide us additional emergency relief funding that we're able to dip into and use, but not only that, they provide the volunteers in our local settings that are so valuable for what we do, we can't function without our volunteers, but also they do local responses like food banks and food parcels and those sorts of immediate need responses as well, so we're grateful to our government, we're grateful to our community for the work and the support. Thank you from the Salvation Army.
JOURNALIST: Just, how important, I guess, what difference will this $2 million make to the services you offer here?
FOSTER: As I said earlier, the services that we have in South Australia, they wouldn't be able to function without that extra funding that the minister has announced today, that we would not be able to have people locally here on the ground to be able to answer calls and to be able to respond to those local needs.
JOURNALIST: And how much of a difference would you say the phone services made in this local community?
FOSTER: The Phone Assistance Line has this superpower, I think, in that because anyone anywhere in Australia or anyone in South Australia can call our Salvos assistance line and they can get assistance, no matter where they are. So, we have options that we can, where people can't make it to a centre, but we're actually able to mail out vouchers, so they have that. But also, they can actually come into a centre, like Marion here today, and find a whole range of other things that Salvation Army provides that they can access and that can make a big difference in their lives, so we're talking about big impact for people.
JOURNALIST: How long have these services been available at this centre?
FOSTER: The Salvation Army has been running the doorways model that we have implemented here in South Australia and across Australia since 2019 so we've been responding locally many years before that, but the way that we have it organised now, that's a very recent, recent change.
JOURNALIST: In terms of the $2 million, is that on top of the $15 million that is already provided for these services?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yes, so that $2.5 million is funding over the next few years, additional funding for South Australia. The $15 million dollars is the annual funding amount for the whole country each year, it's just over $15 million.
JOURNALIST: Was the $2.5 million included in the budget?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: The $2.5 million is money that I had from a reserve fund that I kept for emergency financial counselling and emergency support. When we announced funding in the middle of last year for financial wellbeing and counselling, we increased funding by 25% right across Australia, and in fact we doubled funding for food relief and funded new organisations like Good360 that provide things like toothpaste and toiletries to people as well. And we kept a little bit of that funding back, because we know that needs grow. You can have a weather event in an area or you might have some other localised surge in demand, and what we heard from the Salvos is that in South Australia and Tasmania they were seeing some real demand on top of what they normally experienced. We wanted to make sure that we could keep services here on the ground in South Australia, meeting the needs of the South Australian community. So it's additional funding on top of what's previously been announced.
JOURNALIST: Will similar commitments be made in other states?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Of course, we've made a number of similar commitments for other organisations in different parts of Australia.
JOURNALIST: I think you might have touched on this, but why South Australia specifically?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, South Australia has strong demand and they have an excellent existing service, and we wanted to make sure that this service in South Australia was able to continue to deliver the high quality service that South Australians deserve. Obviously Louise Miller-Frost has been very clear with me in Canberra as well that she sees a strong need in her local community. We firmly believe that services like emergency relief and financial counselling are really important for families, but we also want to make sure that we're doing a whole range of other things to support families. We've seen the minimum wage increase by more than $12,000 since we came into government. We've seen pensions like the age pension increased by about $5,500 since we came to government, and unemployment benefits up by about $4,300, Commonwealth Rent Assistance up by around $1,900 a year. We've got tax cuts coming, we've got cheaper child care. Very importantly, we're seeing more visits to the doctor bulk billed, so people aren't reaching into their pocket when they need to see a GP, and cutting the cost of medicines, we've seen Australians save hundreds of dollars or more, depending on their health, on their medicines every year. We know that people are feeling a lot of pressure, and so financial counselling, emergency assistance support like this, higher wages, lower taxes, and more cost of living supports right across health and education, a whole range of different areas. All of that is designed to take a bit of that pressure off families, because we know that they're feeling it, and things need to change. Things need to change to make it a bit easier on families.
JOURNALIST: Just on another matter, a Senate committee into the Government's NDIS changes will delay handing down its report until Friday. If you could speak to why that decision was made?
MINISTER PLIBERSEK: It's really a matter for the Health and Disability Minister, and I'm sure that he's very available to answer any questions about the inquiry. What I would say about the changes to the NDIS is that we need to make changes to what is a fantastic program in order to protect it for generations to come. I know what a difference the NDIS has made. It's made a huge difference to the lives of millions of Australians, that they are able to participate in the economy with work, they're able to participate in society in ways that previously were impossible under the old system we had. We know the NDIS changes lives and saves lives, but the way that it's been growing has been too fast. In order to protect the program for future generations, we need to make sure that it's going to be affordable and sustainable for future generations, and that means if you've got people like service providers that are having a bit of a lend of the program, we need to bring that back under control. Thank you very much.