Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2025-2026
Dr WEBSTER (Mallee) (10:59): This morning I am so glad to be here to ask questions of Minister Plibersek. Unfortunately, I don't see her in the chamber. I want to ask her questions about the department's decisions and her decisions to cut funding for emergency relief.
These decisions are having devastating effects on small grassroots volunteer run organisations in my electorate who have been providing high-quality emergency relief to Wimmera locals for a collective total of 82 years. Ultimately, these funding cuts will have devastating impacts on vulnerable people in my electorate of Mallee in their hour of need. In July of this year, the Minister for Social Services published a media release.
It stated: The Albanese Labor Government is boosting food relief and financial wellbeing support funding by 25 per cent to help ease cost-of-living pressures for half a million Australians. The minister reported that funding specifically for food relief had been doubled. Two charities in the electorate of Mallee, the Horsham Christian Emergency Food Centre, CEFC, and the Stawell Interchurch Council via the Cottage, have been providing emergency food relief supported by Department of Social Services funding.
But the funding that sustains their essential charitable work ceased abruptly as of September. They had just a week or two of notice. The Horsham CEFC received $82,000 in the DSS grant in the 2024-25 financial year.
In the same year, the Stawell ICC received a total of $48,500 indirectly from DSS via their funding partner Uniting Vic.Tas. Horsham CEFC also received funding via Uniting Vic.Tas in the 2024-25 financial year. Funding to Uniting Vic.Tas has also been dramatically cut by 80 per cent, resulting in the defunding of the Stawell Cottage and creating even more uncertainty for the Horsham CEFC.
During the 2024-25 financial year, with the assistance of DSS funding, Horsham CEFC provided 3,000 client contacts and a total of $527,912 in client support with the small amount of funding they received from the government. They have been providing essential emergency assistance to people in need for the past 27 years. They are the major provider of food relief and other support in the Wimmera region.
In the 2024-25 financial year, the Stawell ICC assisted 292 households and 661 individuals, 209 of whom were living with a disability, 147 of whom were 17 years old or younger and 132 of whom were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. Their total spend on groceries and food vouchers was $63,834—considerably larger than their government funding. The Stawell ICC has provided emergency food relief in Stawell and the surrounding regions since 1970—55 years—and is the only provider of non-perishable food in the local area.
The Horsham CEFC and Stawell ICC have been kept in the dark about the Albanese government's decision-making process. No alternative funding has been provided to serve the entire community of Horsham and Stawell. Vulnerable people in these rural towns cannot easily access another service in the next suburb; there is no next suburb.
Public transport options are few and far between. People who are destitute simply can't put fuel in their car and drive 50 kilometres to get a food package. Both of these local Mallee organisations have reported an increasing need for emergency food services over the last few years.
The Horsham CEFC has met record demand in the 2023-24 and 2024-25 financial years. On Friday 3 October, an email was sent from Simon Pearlman, Funding Arrangement Manager for the Community Grants Hub Victoria—it was sent just last week—to the Horsham CEFC, advising them that surge funding of $45,600 had been approved for the 2025-26 financial year. While this is— (Time expired)