[Greens-Media] NSW Budget: Some welcome initiatives but inadequate investment to prevent community crisis points

[David Mallard]

Jan Barham MLC, Greens NSW spokesperson on Housing and Homelessness, Family and Community Services has warned that the latest NSW Budget continues to fall short in preventing key pressures on communities across the state.

"The NSW Government has again failed to adequately invest in addressing the key challenges in our society, including pervasive housing stress and alarming rates of risk to children and young people, to promote wellbeing and improve the long-term social and economic outlook," Ms Barham said.

"Ahead of the Budget the Government announced $560 million in new funding for community services over four years, including $170 million on efforts to reduce the number of children entering care.

"While this appears to be a long-overdue step toward investing in prevention and family preservation, the budget papers show that overall funding for targeted earlier intervention isn't increasing. The sad reality remains that the major budget increase in supporting vulnerable children comes from the 1,100 more children and young people than expected entering out of home care.

"Until there is a genuine boost to genuine early intervention services, including universal supports and targeted interventions for families with risk factors for abuse and neglect, we won't see the cycle broken. The Government can invest now to prevent the crisis or face continued growth in demand for crisis interventions.

"Fewer households were supported in social housing in 15/16 than forecast, revised down from 142,000 to 140,700 households. Even fewer households are expected to be supported in social housing in 2016/17, despite the waiting list for social housing being higher than it has ever been sitting at 60,000 households." 

"The budget for maintenance and repair of Aboriginal Housing dwellings has been cut, down from $28.4 million in 2015/16 to $15 million in 16/17. Considering the huge improvements made to people's lives and health from repairing rundown homes, this is disappointing and could cost the health budget in the long run." 

"These cuts come as stamp duty revenues of $8.88 billion have smashed forecasts, highlighting how the NSW Government continues to rely on speculative investment in property to balance its budgets, which only makes housing more unaffordable", said Ms Barham. 

For further comment, please contact Jan Barham directly on 0447 853 891