Press conference - Adelaide, South Australia

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
PRESS CONFERENCE
ADELAIDE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA
THURSDAY, 20 JUNE 2024

SUBJECT: Veterans' Acute Housing Program Announcement

MEMBER FOR BOOTHBY, LOUISE MILLER-FROST: I'm Louise Miller-Frost, I'm the member for Boothby, and we're here in Boothby at the Andrew Russell Veteran Living Centre, which is a fantastic service for veterans from all of the Defence Forces who are experiencing homelessness. This is a real wraparound service, it's homelessness, it's housing, but it's absolutely all of those wraparound services that make the difference to enabling people to move out of homelessness permanently, to rebuild their lives and to go on to live rewarding, fulfilling lives in the community. I'm really thrilled to welcome here today the Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, Matt Keogh, and of course we have Nathan Klinge from RSL Care. So I'll hand over to the Minister for an announcement.

MINISTER FOR VETERANS’ AFFAIRS AND DEFENCE PERSONNEL, MATT KEOGH: Matt Keogh, Minister for Veterans’ Affairs and Defence Personnel, and Louise, thank you so much, it's great to be here in your community, and Nathan for having us here. We are a Government, the Albanese Labor Government has been committed to supporting those that are homeless or at risk of homelessness, and that's all part of why in the budget that we handed down earlier this year, and of course during the two years we've been in Government, we are now funding $32 billion towards housing programs. And at the last election we made a commitment to establish the Housing Australia Future Fund. Part of that commitment was that we would be spending $30 million to support veterans experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness, and not just by providing housing but also providing wraparound supports to support those veterans to get back on their feet. And today I'm very proud to be announcing that we're opening up the grant opportunities for that money to start flowing into the ex-service organisations and housing sector to support those veterans. The $30 million will be delivered in two streams with $24 million available to build housing to support our veterans and a further $6 million will be available to provide those wraparound services. And we're expecting that we will see not just housing providers, but importantly ex-service organisations and those organisations with experience in supporting veterans coming forward to expand their offerings and making sure that they're able to provide that wraparound support for our veteran community. We've got some really good examples of these models around Australia. We're here at the Andrew Russell Veteran Living Centre. We've also got places like Vasey Care in Victoria, the RAAFA in Western Australia. So many services, but we want to see those expand and provide that Government support, not just for the bricks and mortar, but for those critical wraparound services that can connect our veterans to the many services that are already out there, many funded by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs already, but that veterans have difficulty connecting to. So services like this one here, Andrew Russell Living Centre, provide that reset for a veteran that finds themselves experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness to not just have a place to stay, but to have that security of place so that they can then be connected to other services to support, whether that's in mental health, whether that's in rehabilitation, whether that's in connecting them back into income support, employment programs, making sure that they can get all of that together so that they can then move back into mainstream housing support and get their life back in order. And that's one of the great things that we see in our veteran community. They can operate quite differently to where we see other experiences of homelessness. We don't need to see long-term support, but we do need to see that intense wraparound support services with them. So the announcement today is opening up the funding streams for this $30 million that we committed at the election to provide veteran-supported housing where we've got not just housing, but wraparound services. We look forward to seeing the different players in the sector coming together and assessing what they want to put forward. We're prioritising those that can leverage philanthropic investment, investment from other organisations like service organisations and the community housing sector so that we can get the best bang for buck and the best footprint of support and services around the country. And we look forward to being able to start allocating that funding to programs, to these services by the end of the year. Thank you.

CEO, RSL CARE SA, NATHAN KLINGE: Nathan Klinge, Chief Executive Officer of RSL Care South Australia. We're delighted with the announcement the Minister has made today in terms of the commitment from the Government towards supporting homeless services and the provision of accommodation services for homeless veterans nationally. Australian Defence Force personnel serve our community. They do that well and often for extended periods and lots of time overseas, lots of time away from home. When their service ends, they return back to the community. For a lot of our ADF personnel, they have great experiences post service and make great contributions to our border community. But some do struggle and some can find themselves through a whole range of complex situations on the homeless or housing instability spectrum. The challenge we find with homeless veterans is that the homeless veterans can often exist in between the cracks, between existing state-based services, which respond very much to local issues within each state by state community. And at the federal level where we have the Department of Veterans’ Affairs that very much looks after the health and wellbeing aspects of veterans, but not necessarily the housing outcomes. So we have found that there has existed a gap where veterans have fallen between at times the cracks of those services. So the announcement that the Minister has made today, we're delighted to see what is really a targeted approach. Some real genuine resources being put behind what is a complicated problem. But is one that is not without solutions. We know that a housing approach with the appropriate wraparound services, veteran specific services, can have a really positive outcome in terms of our homeless veteran community. Programs like the Andrew Russell Veteran Living Program that we have here. We've been able to show, to the tune of around 90% of our residents that come through the program that then go on to have long-term stable housing outcomes. I think it's fair to say that the Australian community, there's a lot of housing challenges broadly across the community generally at the moment, but I think it's fair to say that none of us want to see our veterans homeless. So again, we thank the Government for their commitment today. We look forward to seeing that commitment roll out across the country and seeing the impact that it can have on the homeless spectrum.

JOURNALIST: Nathan, in terms of South Australia, the numbers for South Australia, do you have an idea of how many veterans are currently homeless in SA at the moment or how many potential - what are the scopes of it?

NATHAN KLINGE: Quantifying the size and scale of the problem for homeless veterans is actually quite a challenging one because homeless veterans do tend to fall between the cracks a little bit in terms of the normal homeless service pathways. So it's a different community to count inside a community that's difficult to count. Certainly what we found through our program here at Andrew Russell Veteran Living is in total we've had 216 veterans who've come through the program seeking support and through what is an intervention-based model, we've provided over 25,000 nights of accommodation to those veterans while our program manager and the relevant wraparound services work together to find those long-term stable solutions. So from a numbers perspective, the size of the problem is not one that we can't attack. With the announcement that the Minister's made today, as part of the broader Housing Australia Future Fund, I'm confident that that amount will have a very real impact, positive impact in terms of how as a nation we respond to the issue of homeless veterans nationally.

JOURNALIST: What about expanding this out? Obviously the Andrew Russell program is running, but the opportunity now to expand it out for others now to come aboard and apply for funding. You said before that we don't want to see veterans homeless and how important is that to look after the ones that have gone off to defend the country to come back and make sure that they don't slip through the cracks?

NATHAN KLINGE: There's a great opportunity with the announcement today that the Minister's made about the funding to go towards addressing the issue of veteran homelessness. There are a number of services nationally that are doing some really great work. There's a number of community housing providers who have a good level of agency connection with the veteran community and there's a number of ex-service organisations like the Andrew Russell Veteran Living Program who have the ex-service connections but need a bit more support in providing the bricks and mortar housing. As a result of the announcement of the $30 million fund today, we can really direct that money very quickly towards outcomes that will see a very rapid improvement in the quality of services, the amount of services, the number of services that are available because we do have organisations that have the relevant connections and the credibility to deliver those services quite quickly. What we have found across the country is homelessness services in local communities need local solutions. What works in Adelaide will be a different experience in Townsville or Brisbane or Perth or Tasmania. So the importance of this program is that we do anchor off those existing sort of infrastructures that are there but really direct that specialised veteran component so that we can deliver those services the veteran needs, those local solutions locally, but really what is part of a national response.

JOURNALIST: Thank you.

MINISTER KEOGH: I’m just going to add something.

JOURNALIST: Yeah, sure.

MINISTER KEOGH: When we look at veteran homelessness, the points being made that it's difficult to count those numbers because often those accessing mainstream services are not identifying themselves as a veteran but we know on census night back in 2021, over 1,500 veterans identified themselves as homeless. We see that veterans can often be up to three times more likely to experience a period of homelessness. So the problem is a real problem and this funding will go a long way to assisting veterans, not just in getting access to a home, but having the stability that that provides so they can get access to services, be supported in accessing those services in a coordinated way so they can get back on their feet.

JOURNALIST: Do you think it comes down to a little bit of pride, I was speaking with Duncan before, it's sometimes a little bit of that pride that I don't want to reach out for help because it feels they may feel like they've failed the mission?

MINISTER KEOGH: Certainly we receive feedback from veterans and from service providers that they won't necessarily put their hands up to access, particularly a mainstream service. And it's where we provide services that are targeted to veterans that are delivered in a culturally appropriate way for the veteran community that they are more likely to feel that they will be welcomed there, that they will be understood and therefore go and seek those services when they're needed. So that's a really important part about having this $30 million commitment that's about providing housing and services specifically for our veteran community.

JOURNALIST: How overdue is this money going towards returned service men and women?

MINISTER KEOGH: Well certainly we have seen that this has been a growing area of need even when we were in an opposition meeting with service providers, meeting with ex-service organisations, people saying to us that it was important that we saw the Government getting involved in providing support for veterans experiencing homelessness and being able to properly connect them to services. So we're very pleased to have been able to make that commitment at the last election and now be delivering that funding through the Housing Australia Future Fund, $30 million for housing and the wraparound services.

JOURNALIST: Will this be the link that pulls a lot more veterans out of the cracks?

MINISTER KEOGH: I think one of the things we've come to see is that coordinated service provision for veterans is really important. Unfortunately too many veterans fall through the cracks, don't know how to access the services that they need. That's been a crucial part of why we've been rolling out Veterans’ and Families’ Hubs all across the country, especially in areas where we see high concentrations of veterans and families and the Hubs have been about coordinating service. Being a way that a veteran who doesn't know where a service is or what sort of service they really need but know they need help can access that through a Hub that will then connect them to what they need and have services available through those Hubs. One of the things now those Hubs will be able to do is connect those veterans that are experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness, they'll be able to connect them to a housing provider that is appropriately designed to support our veteran community as well and that's what this funding will be enabling.

JOURNALIST: Perfect. Excellent.

JOURNALIST: Thank you very much.

JOURNALIST: Wonderful.

END

Open Arms – Veterans & Families Counselling provides 24/7 free confidential crisis support for current and ex-serving ADF personnel and their families on 1800 011 046 or the Open Arms website. Safe Zone Support provides anonymous counselling on 1800 142 072. Defence All-Hours Support Line provides support for ADF personnel on 1800 628 036 or the Defence Health Portal. Defence Member and Family Helpline provides support for Defence families on 1800 624 608