Enough Waiting: Urgent Support Needed for Homeless Veterans
Vasey RSL Care has spent close to two years advocating at the highest levels of government to co-fund its innovative response to veteran homelessness – and its causes – through The V Centre Veteran Empowerment Program.
In the ex-service community, one veteran takes their own life every 5 days. This is simply not acceptable, and if The V Centre can save even one life, it is investment well spent.
Early federal government encouragement to submit a budget proposal to fund The V Centre resulted in nothing. A second budget proposal also falling on deaf ears. Subsequently, the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) was proposed as the funding solution. On 11 September last year, Minister for Veterans Affairs, The Hon Matt Keogh MP stated in Parliament that Vasey RSL Care, “also want to be able to come forward and apply for funds from government, but we can’t enable that right now, because the Housing Australia Future Fund is being blocked by the coalition and the Greens”.
Kate Thwaites MP, Local Federal Member for Jagajaga in Parliament on 12 September last year “(The HAFF) will also mean more homes for veterans at risk of homelessness and for services like Vasey RSL Care, which is doing brilliant work at the V Centre just next to Heidelberg Repat supporting veterans and their families but which could do even more with the right support from this fund.”
Vasey RSL Care supported the Government in its efforts to pass the legislation by engaging with the opposition and cross bench. However, once passed, The V Centre was told it is no longer eligible for funding as it has already begun operation.
“We cannot sit around waiting for funding,” says Janna Voloshin, Chief Executive Officer at Vasey RSL Care. “We went ahead and opened The V Centre ‘on a shoestring’ in February this year because veterans who are at their breaking point are not in a position to wait.”
“Enough is enough,” says Janna. “Last month, the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide handed down its final report and recommendations. We are fully supportive of the recommendations: in particular, Recommendation 88a – ‘improving outcomes for veterans who are experiencing homelessness, including a long-term investment framework that supports capital and operational expenditure for veteran-specific housing and the provision of wraparound services’. We are here – we are doing this – we are saving lives. But we can’t go on doing it without government support.”
Six months into The V Centre’s operation, its effectiveness is evident: program participants speak to the transformative impact of their time at The V Centre with many noting that it has saved their lives. See some of their stories in this moving 4-minute video.
“We are not here to play politics; we are here to ensure that the government demonstrates genuine commitment to our veterans—who are the backbone of this nation”, says Ms Voloshin.
“Imagine losing a mate every five days: I find it shocking that the Government won’t support this initiative,” says Chris Gray, Vasey RSL Care General Manager Veteran Services.
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2 comments
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John C
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New England Cocky
Return to home pageI can’t think of even one country that has properly taken care of it’s war veterans. Sending young men out to kill on behalf of their country, or in our case other country’s interests, then treat them like they never mattered in the first place. I for one despise everything about the military and can’t even start to understand why anybody would want to be a part of it. Track records going back hundreds of years show that soldiers are just cannot fodder for the old wealthy and powerful megalomanics, who make sure their own children are well and truly protected from harm, while using the poor masses as pawn chess pieces on a map of the world they are busily dividing up to see who gets the best bits. I long for a future where we all get along and fight for a common cause, our species’ future before we destroy ourselves and our only home.
“I may be a dreamer but I’m not the only one…”
Prime Minister Bob Menzies committed my generation to the United States imperialist war in Vietnam. Bob Menzies had resigned his Australian Army Commission on the first day of WWI, spent too much of early WWII pandering to Churchill as Australia troops fought the Germans to a standstill in North Africa, to be properly chucked out of office on the decision of an INDEPENDENT MP.
When we read the Menzies Army Record we wondered why his thinking was imperialistic? Was it his penchant for sucking up to the most dysfunctional family in Europe in the quest for rewards of public honours?? Was it guilt for bailing out of the Army in 1914 when the war fervour was rampant ….. and he stayed behind???
If the military contract signed by these now homeless veterans included medical & housing entitlements, then successive governments have failed abysmally to honour their contract with these persons. Certainly during the intervening 60 years successive waves of politicians have looked after their pay& conditions much better than those of the veterans.