Wednesday, 9 March 2022

 Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (09:50): I was very pleased to attend Her Place on Monday, and this was part of International Women’s Day. Her Place is actually a museum. It is in the old Menzies building. It is down on Clarendon Street, and it is a beautiful little hidden gem. But I was there to look at solutions for women’s homelessness, and we know that particularly older women are the fastest growing cohort of people experiencing homelessness. We know that COVID hit women harder than our male colleagues, and that was in employment and that was in earning capacity, but it was also in homelessness. We know that family violence is the leading cause of homelessness in our state.

The conference on Monday at Her Place was actually about solutions, and we heard from some really terrific people: Jocelyn Bignold from McAuley Community Services for Women, who is also part of the Women’s Housing Alliance; and Robert Pradolin from Housing All Australians, who talked about the fact that while the government are investing in their big spend there is more that needs to be done and everybody needs to be involved, and that is the private sector as well. We saw some great social enterprise initiatives—Shared Lives Australia and a whole range of them. But my question is to the government: where is the response to the homelessness report? We have been waiting months for it.