Page 3910 - Week 12 - Thursday, 29 October 2015
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Public Accounts—Standing Committee
Report 16
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (5.19): I present the following report:
Public Accounts—Standing Committee—Report 16—Review of Auditor-General’s Report No. 4 of 2013: National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness, dated October 2015, together with a copy of the extracts of the relevant minutes of proceedings.
I move:
That the report be noted.
This was a very important audit from the Auditor-General on some of the programs in the national partnership agreement on homelessness. I thank my colleagues for their work on this report—Ms Porter, Mr Lawder and Ms Fitzharris. Ms Berry was there for a bit of it, as was Dr Bourke. The report was delivered in their time, though the work did not get done until after they had gone. But they certainly were there when it arrived. I particularly offer thanks to the secretariat—to Dr Andrea Cullen; Dr Brian Lloyd, who assisted; Ms Kate Harkins; and Mr Greg Hall—for their assistance in putting together this report.
I do not think there is anyone in this place who doubts the importance of having a roof over your head. The social determinants of health talk about the key factors of having a job and having a home. For those that cannot afford a home and then cannot afford to rent, the spectre of homelessness must be a dreadful way to spend a single day, let alone any period longer than that.
The committee has deliberated. We have come up with 10 recommendations. Let me go to some of the key recommendations. Rec 1 is:
The Committee recommends that the ACT Government should design and implement a homelessness framework which provides for:
• evidence-based design and development of indicators;
• consistent standards in measuring against those indicators;
• their use among government and non-government agencies engaged in delivering programs;
• the integration of these indicators from program inception; and
• measurement against these indicators from the time of program rollout.
One of the later recommendations talks about not changing the way you measure things later on. It is recommendation 2; it says do not change the parameters part way. Recommendation 3 recommends:
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