Media Release
Senator Jan McLucas
Shadow Minister for Mental Health
Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness
Tony Abbott will make savage cuts to the $4.5 billion NRAS program while he stubbornly presses ahead with his rolled gold $5.5 billion paid parental leave scheme that will pay $75,000 for millionaires to have a baby.
Tony Abbott's priorities are seriously twisted.
The NRAS has dramatically increased the stock of desperately needed affordable housing right across the country.
Under NRAS, more than 14,000 dwellings have been completed and more than 24,000 additional homes are in the pipeline across the country.
State and territory leaders, including five Liberal leaders, support the NRAS program because they know it works.
The housing and community sector overwhelmingly support the scheme, and have been urging the Government to spare it from savage cuts in this year's Budget.
Speaking at a press conference in Canberra on 27 March, Carmel Rosier from the Community Housing Federation described the NRAS as "amazingly successful".
Adrian Pisarki from the National Shelter remarked that the NRAS was a "critical element of building supply".
Today's reports come after the Abbott Government's recent announcement of a $44 million cut to homelessness – cuts to some of our most vulnerable community members including men and women experiencing or at risk of homelessness and women and children escaping violence.
This is a Government that for months now has been paving the way to make cuts to services for people with disability, cuts to people with mental illness, cuts to young people, cuts to people who are unemployed.
This is a Government that has been paving the way to delay the rollout of the National Disability Insurance Scheme. And that this week confirmed that cuts to the Age Pension are firmly on their agenda.
Tony Abbott's priorities are all wrong.
ENDS
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