PM: Well, Tanya and I are here today to talk about one thing, and that's homelessness. We've just heard from the Choir of Hard Knocks and they are part and parcel of how the nation, through its community sector is responding to homelessness.
Today we see the human face of homelessness and disadvantage. Tanya and I have been to a number of centres around the country in recent months and we've seen the real challenges on the ground. And it's something that you can either push to one side and sweep under the carpet or you can say, actually, this is just dead wrong. We need to do something about it.
Tanya and I are quite passionate about doing something about it. We don't believe it's something which a country as wealthy as ours in the 21st Century can just ignore.
It's dead wrong that in a country as wealthy as ours, we have 100,000 people who are classified as homeless. It's dead wrong that a country such as ours and as wealthy as ours, 10,000 of those homeless people are children. It's dead wrong that in a country as wealthy as ours that on any given night some 14,000 people are sleeping rough. It's just dead wrong.
We shouldn't be allowing this to happen. A lot of people say, well, you know, you can't fix it, you can't do anything about it, its just part and parcel of things. Well, I don't buy that. I don't think you can fix the whole thing, but let me tell you we can do a hell of a lot better than we're doing right now.
Before the election we talked a lot about housing and housing policy and part of that was how we deal with the challenge of crisis accommodation. In our engagement with the homelessness sector then, the big demand put to us as a matter of urgency was to provide funding to build more crisis accommodation. We've allocated 150 million dollars to do that and that will be unfolded and implemented. But you know the problem is much bigger than that and that's why you will see in this document we put together today, Homelessness: A New Approach, our approach to dealing with this challenge comprehensively in the year ahead.
You see, if you're looking at the dimensions of this, 100,000 people, 14,000 people sleeping rough, it's not something you just throw bits and pieces at. You've actually got to come up with an integrated solution to the overall challenge of homelessness. Mental health, mental illness is a big factor at work in this overall challenge. Family break up, relationship break up is a big factor in the overall homelessness challenge. Domestic violence is a big factor in the homelessness challenge. The absence of proper employment opportunities and training opportunities is a big factor in the homelessness challenge.
It's not just a question of saying, here's a building, put all the homeless people in it. It doesn't work that way. It's saying, here are a group of our fellow Australians who need actually, a hand up. We can do that effectively by making sure we get the overall policy analysis right and then go forward with an integrated solution for the future.
So the first white paper to be commissioned by this new government of Australia will be a white paper on homelessness. And we are commissioning, Tanya and I, Tony Nicholson, the executive director of the Brotherhood of St Laurence to chair the group which will put together much of this white paper for us. The reason we've decided to do this is because we want a complete analysis and a complete policy response across all levels of government, because we want this to work in the future.
I've said to many of you before, in the election campaign and since, I'm not interested in being the Prime Minister of Australia for the sake of being here. Frankly, I'm just not. I want to be here in order to make a difference and this is one area where we as a nation can make a difference, if we get it right.
So rather than go off half-cocked and throw something at it next week or the week after, we're going to be engaged now in a six month process or slightly longer, with this white paper being finalised in August of this year, which will involve extensive, extensive consultation across the entire homelessness sector, all those factors which are influencing homelessness and what we must do about it.
And I conclude on this before throwing to Tanya for further comment. Those figures that I gave you before, 100,000, 14,000 sleeping rough, 10,000 children: they all come from the old Census data. It's already five or six years old. The earliest evidence from the new Census data is that it's getting worse.
So here we have a situation where as the country gets wealthier, homelessness gets worse. Something needs to be done. I do not want to live in a country where we simply discard people. I don't want to live in a country where we accept people begging on the streets is somehow acceptable in the Australian way of life. I don't want to live in a country where, like many I visit around the world, it's acceptable for people to be sleeping rough every night. We're not like that. This is the Australia Day weekend, Australia is not like that and we intend to make a difference.
TANYA PLIBERSEK: Thank you very much Prime Minister. Some of you probably wouldn't know that during the election as, probably the busiest time of Kevin Rudd's life, he was taking time out, more than once, very quietly in the evenings to visit homelessness shelters around the country. I visited a couple with him, I went to one in my own electorate of Surry Hills where late on a Sunday night after a very busy week, what he did was sit there for an hour and three quarters, listening to the stories of the people who were living in the Mission Australia home in Surry Hills. Not because there were cameras there, not because it would make a good story, but because from day one, this Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has had a serious commitment to substantially reducing homelessness in this country.
It's not as simple as putting roofs over the heads of those people that appear on the homelessness data. It is a more complex problem than that. What we need to do is vastly improve our homelessness prevention services. If we can stop people becoming homeless in the first place, everyone benefits. Secondly, we need to expand and improve our crisis services.
Crisis services need to be more than a roof over a person's head for a night. Those services need to provide wrap around support for people. Whether it's education, employment, mental health services, dental services, health services, pathways back into society so that people don't return to homelessness.
The third thing we need to do is provide exit points from those crisis services. We actually have people staying in some crisis services much longer than they need to because there is simply no where for them to go.
Private rental accommodation is scarce and expensive. The previous government watched for ten years while rental vacancy rates dropped and dropped and the frank truth is, there are many people who cannot find a place to go when they leave crisis services and many of them return to homelessness.
The fourth thing we need to do is prevent the cycle of homelessness. We have an intergenerational cycle of homelessness, where homeless children are more at risk of becoming homeless teenagers and then homeless adults. We can stop that with appropriate support when kids are still young - making sure that they stay engaged at school so that they don't grow up not knowing how to read and write properly.
We also need to stop the cycle of homeless that sees people repeatedly using services. We know at the moment that only about ten per cent of people who leave homelessness services leave with a job. I think we can improve that rate quite dramatically but there aren't simple solutions. If the solutions were simple, someone would have fixed this already.
That's why we're getting one of the most skilled and dedicated workers on homelessness, Tony Nicholson to chair the steering committee that will deliver a white paper on homelessness.
This is historic. This will set the direction for homelessness policy for decades to come and it's aimed at seriously reducing, ending homelessness for many homeless Australians.
We know that in the United States and in the United Kingdom, they've made serious inroads into reducing the number of rough sleepers by taking an approach that gives all of those supports, that moves people on from homelessness back into society. I believe we can do that here, with this methodical, planned approach and with the commitment that this Prime Minister has shown.
As well as this white paper, we have committed today to an extra $2.8 million to RecLink the organisation behind this fantastic, Choir of Hard Knocks. We've committed in the past to a nation Rental Affordability Scheme to begin to make a dent on this problem of unaffordable rentals. That's 50,000 new rental properties for low to middle income earners.
And as I have said, we've got the white paper, and our crisis accommodation program - 600 new crisis homes in a place to call home. I am very excited by the potential we have here to make a dent, a serious dent on homelessness in Australia.
JOURNALIST: How much of this would normally have been the province of state governments?
PM: Well look, you know I said a lot last year about ending the blame game. This is about doing that in the case of homelessness. State and Territory Government's have responsibilities through public housing programs and their funding assistance to various community housing projects, but the Commonwealth State Housing Agreement is that, it's a partnership between the Commonwealth and the States.
But you know, we have actually got to stand back from this and say, it's in part the physicality of having enough accommodation, but it's everything related to that as well, so that you don't have this recurring cycle of homelessness.
If we get both those things right, enough stock - rental and community housing - for homelessness and for people who are challenged in terms of housing affordability, and at the same time are dealing with the things which enable people to get back on their own feet, with marvellous programs like we see here, I think we may be able to achieve some steps forward.
JOURNALIST: This will take a lot of resources, a lot more than 150 000 million dollars I imagine. What sort of resources are you prepared to put into solving this issue?
PM: Well, I am rather, ‘get the policy right first'. I actually like to get to the guts of it first. I have been criticised in the past for believing in evidence based policy, but I actually think it's not a bad way to go. With this big problem - I think no one would disagree that it is a problem - there is a very large sector out there, a lot of good people involved. I am into the business as you have heard me say in speeches in recent days, of actually harvesting the nation's talents and ideas and energy and out there in the community sector, and those in the private financial sector, who have a commitment to making a difference with homelessness, I think we can actually harness the best brains in the country - get the analysis right, get the policy right - and this government will then get in there, putting it should to the wheel, when it comes to the public finance necessary to make it work.
JOURNALIST: (Inaudible) Will your apology also include any form of compensation?
PM: What we've said before, and haven't changed our position at all - the key thing is to build a bridge with Indigenous Australia through an apology, through saying sorry, because that bridge is a pathway to respect, restoring respect. And then, once we cross that bridge, what we want to do then is to make sure through our policy of closing the gap between Indigenous and non Indigenous Australia that we the government, get in behind education programs, health programs and whole range of other programs to make sure that that gap is closed.
Having said that, I have always said that for us, we can do that in the absence of any compensation arrangement. Of course, we believe that the key thing when it comes to life expectancy and infant mortality rates in indigenous people, that is a huge and immediate challenge. I would rather get all that right than sort of start hairing off in other directions.
JOURNALIST: What do you say to those of the stolen generation who would like you to, as part of your apology, implement the full recommendations of the Bringing Them Home report?
PM: I think the key thing is to build a bridge of respect between Indigenous and non Indigenous Australia. Rather than sweep that to one side - get it right. But having got that far and recognised the enormous contribution of indigenous Australia to our identity, then to address head on the huge gaps which exist in health and in education and in life expectancy outcomes. And you can do that effectively, nationwide through a combined effort, right across governments. That's where my efforts lie. That's what I am committed to and as I said before, I have said this many times before the election and I have certainly said it since, that's where our emphasis lies. And there's nothing different in what I am saying now on the question of compensation to what I have said on multiple occasions prior to that.
JOURNALIST: How much of a priority is it for you to say sorry compared to an issue say, of homelessness?
PM: Well listen, I think lets not sort of start constructing totem polls of who is further up and who is not. There are a whole bunch of social needs in Australia. Getting effective reconciliation right is one. Dealing with this huge challenge of homelessness is another. I want to achieve real, measurable changes in Australia. And these are two areas where I believe we can do it.
And on homelessness, can I say this. Every one of you, out there in journalism land, looking at me right now, every one of you has an equal risk of becoming homeless yourselves. As I have gone around with Tanya and spoken to individuals in homeless shelters around the country, I am stunned by the life stories of people, in terms of what they were doing when they hit the brick wall - through factors way beyond their control, often - and having to pick themselves up again. So that's why I am dead set serious about getting this one right. And guess what, it can happen to each and every one of us.
JOURNALIST:(Inaudible - Adam Gilchrist retiring
PM: Gilly's decision to retire is a huge loss to cricket and to Australia. I rang Gilly just before coming here to talk to you guys and as his Prime Minister, said, Gilly, you need to reconsider, he told me wasn't'.
But he is a fantastic player on the field. Anyone who can register an average of nearly 50 and have the world record when it comes to catches as a keeper. This is an outstanding piece of talent. But the Gilly story doesn't stop there. Fantastic cricketer, fantastic human being. His work in the charitable sector is right out there.
And so I said to him on the phone before, that apart from what he is focussing on right now, which is the game, that we'd like to engage him further in the future given his outstanding work so far in reaching out to people who need help. He is a first class human being, a great loss to Australian cricket.
JOURNALIST: (Inaudible)
PM: As has been the case ever since that report came down and prior to it, any individual can of course initiate their own actions through the courts of the land. That's open to any Australian citizen, including those (inaudible) former subjects of the Bringing Them Home report. I am not standing in the road of that, people can pursue their own legitimate legal remedy.
What I am saying as the new government of Australia is, here are two big priorities for the nation.
One is, lets achieve some effective reconciliation. Let's say sorry, let's get that right, let's build some respect. Then, let's do something real about closing the gap.
And every one of the indigenous communities I travel to around the country over the years - let me tell you - we have actually got to act. It's a disgrace. We need to fix this. We need to deal with it. And that's where my priority lies, in closing the gap. That means new approaches to fixing the problems in indigenous health, indigenous education, protection of children, some of which are on trial currently in the Northern Territory intervention. Thanks very much - ah very last one, then I have got to zip, because I will get into strife, I'm due at home, ten minutes ago.
JOURNALIST: (Inaudible) once and for all have a national system that really drives productivity across all sectors
PM: Well the key request I have got from the business community, all throughout 2007 is, they want a national system for the private economy. And pardon me for being old fashioned but my commitment to them in the election period was to do that. And I said consistently in the period last year that when it came to the public sector, that could be handled elsewhere. We actually take seriously what we said and we mean what we said and we intend to do that.
ends