Tuesday, 5 April 2022

Gippsland East electorate housing support

Mr T BULL (Gippsland East) (19:05): (6308) My adjournment tonight is to the Minister for Housing, and the action I am seeking is for him to overturn the decision to make the Bairnsdale and Sale offices of the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing available for appointment-only services. We have situations arise from time to time, as I am sure all members of this chamber will agree, when people who are seeking housing support need urgent attention for their own peace of mind, and they often need urgent attention in relation to the outcomes that they are seeking. To have to book to see a departmental representative is simply not good enough. These people are public servants. Public servants are there to serve the public, and they should be accessible.

This comes at a time when our Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning offices have been closed for an extraordinary length of time post the bushfires and the COVID period in East Gippsland. They are now thankfully back open, only for us to be greeted by the news that at these offices you can only get in now if you make an appointment. We do not know why this change in service delivery has occurred. We do not know how long urgent housing cases and issues will have to wait before they can see someone. We should be making our departmental reps more accessible, not less accessible, and I would encourage the minister to overturn these decisions and allow people to walk in when they need service and, when they need their issues addressed, to be able to see somebody from that department.