MEMBER FOR BEAN DAVID SMITH: Good morning, everyone. My name is David Smith, the Federal Member for Bean. I remember what this place used to look like. So growing up in Woden, the grimness of the bus interchange, the old police station, and this whole environment has transformed and it’s really exciting to be here with my colleague, Minister King, and with ACT Ministers, Deputy Chief Minister Yvette Berry and Minister Michael Pettersson, as well as some giants of the community sector here, with Anne Kirwan from Marymead and Trav McLeod from the Brotherhood of St. Laurence. So very exciting opening of what I think is a great Labor initiative where we marry education and opportunity, with the formal opening of the Woden Youth Foyer today. It’s a formal opening, so I know that we’ve already got tenants in here. It’s already acting and delivering on social justice aims. But welcome to everyone here.

And I’ll pass over to my colleague, Minister King.

MINISTER FOR INFRASTRUCTURE, TRANSPORT, REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT CATHERINE KING: Thanks very much, Dave. Thanks very much. Well, this is a terrific day to be here at the CIT Youth Foyer, a great combination between TAFE tertiary education and providing opportunities for young people to be housed safely, to learn skills, and to really set themselves up for a life of success. I too, remember this precinct well. I had my first public service job over in the Department of Health at the Woden campus. So I know the area well, and just want to commend the ACT Government for the great job they’ve done in really transforming this precinct, really bringing it to life, and making sure that it’s got great opportunities for education, for housing, for jobs, for commercial opportunities, as well as for hospitality as well, which is really what these announcements are about, when we want to see precincts come to life.

This project has come about because of a 2022 election commitment the Albanese then Opposition made alongside our ACT Labor team to contribute $10 million to this project. We know that youth foyers really do work. They provide that educational opportunity where they’re co-located with education precincts but more importantly for young people who are experiencing or are at risk of homelessness. You might have young people who’ve been in state or territory care for the vast majority of their lives, and they hit 18 and then they’re really pretty much trying to support them through to their next phase of life. But also young people who have been either disconnected with education or are homeless for a range of reasons, being able to provide that support so that we know they can get their qualifications here at CIT, can be supported through that pathway, can learn those life skills that you need to have, to provide that opportunity for a life of success. We know education is key to that, but being able to support people through.

And so, I really do want to commend the Youth Foyer team, but particularly, now that we’ve got the operators here who will talk – Anne will talk briefly about that. Great to be able to celebrate the terrific work that’s been done here in Canberra to make this into a precinct that young people will want to live in, want to learn in, and want to very much be part of.

I’m delighted to have partnered with the ACT Government. Minister Berry is here with us, who’ll speak shortly. But this really is about delivery. We made the 2022 election commitment. ACT Labor stood up. This is what our Labor Senators, our Labor MPs here in Canberra are able to do, being part of the Albanese Labor Government, making those commitments in the lead up to the election. And now, here we are in 2026, open, operating, young people be able to have their lives really transformed by what is a very important project.

I’m going to hand over to Minister Berry, and she’ll have a few words to say. Thanks, Minister.

DEPUTY ACT CHIEF MINSTER YVETTE BERRY: Thanks very much, Catherine. Welcome everybody today to the Youth Foyer at Woden. It’s a very exciting day where we’ve reached this milestone where we’re able to invite people in to be able to see what we’re delivering here in the ACT through these important initiatives, but also in partnership with the Federal Labor Government. Two Labor Governments working together to deliver really strong outcomes for young people in our community.

Young people experiencing homelessness are often invisible. They’re couch-surfing. They’re living in often dangerous situations or potentially rough sleeping on the street and then having to navigate their way through an education system and a world that’s created by adults for adults, and not for them. So adding homelessness services like this one, which provides a safe roof over their head, but also supports them to navigate their lives, to get through some of the complexities that they’ve had to live with over their very early years, and then get them on to a really stable start so that they have a really great and happy life, just like the rest of us.

An additional 20 spaces here in this building that young people are now calling their home, which adds to the 150 services that we already have available here in the ACT, another 170. We know there’s more to do in homelessness, and particularly with addressing youth homelessness, and so organisations like Marymead CatholicCare and the Brotherhood of St. Laurence, working with those organisations so that we can support young people where they are with a safe roof, but also getting on with their lives and really paving a way to a safe and happy life and a successful life on whatever they choose to be.

Excited to- young people are already here, living in these homes, and looking forward to hopefully meeting them one day and hearing about their journeys and on their pathways to success. I think my job now is to hand you over to Marymead CatholicCare. Anne Kirwan.

MARYMEAD CATHOLIC CARE CEO ANNE KIRWAN: Thanks. Hi, everybody. So look, today is a really exciting day for our organisation. We’re able to let everybody know that the service is open and that we are providing safe and secure accommodation for young people aged 16 to 24 who may be experiencing insecure or unsafe housing or who may be at risk of homelessness. We are accepting referrals, and we are able to provide safe, secure accommodation for those young people to continue their education journey, to access education, employment, training. 

This is a partnership model. So we have here our partners from The Foyer Foundation. We have the Brotherhood of St. Laurence. We have CIT. We have Marymead CatholicCare. And of course, we have the ACT Government and the Commonwealth Government. And look, we’re incredibly appreciative to the Commonwealth and the ACT Government for the funding around the infrastructure build to deliver such an incredible facility for our young people. But we also appreciate the ACT Government for funding the wraparound supports, because in the end, this isn’t just about a building. This is about providing support to young people so that they can access the services they need, learn independent living skills, and then be able to move out of this service into independent living.

It will be able to provide accommodation to up to 20 young people at any time. This is one of 10 education-first youth foyers in Australia. And the vision, of course, is to deliver more because this is an evidence-based model that is proven to get incredible outcomes for the young people who access the services. We’re going to have three rooms available for young parents who will move in with children, which is incredibly exciting and an opportunity again. You can see that that would be a significant barrier for a young person accessing education if they have unsafe housing with a young child.

So, this is great news for us. We are open. We’re accepting referrals through our website or through FIRST Canberra, and we look forward to more and more young people moving into the service and working together with all our incredible partners as we move forward and start delivering this service. Thank you very much.

JOURNALIST: You said that we have 20 spaces available here. How does the waitlist work and how much demand are you seeing on this service?

ANNE KIRWAN: Well, look, we know that 25 per cent of the homeless population are young people, so we know there is significant demand for safe, secure accommodation. The way the waitlist is working is we’re just staggering our referrals at the moment. We’re fully staffed now. We’ve got young people already living here and so we’re just taking referrals as they come through. So we’ve got more interviews this week and then we’ll be staggering them as they go.

JOURNALIST: How do you, I guess, triage them in terms of risk and that kind of thing?

ANNE KIRWAN: Well, young people fill out an application form in terms of their interest in accessing the service and then we do an interview. So it’s about – there’s eligibility criteria but there’s also what the goals and the interests of the young person are in terms of moving into the service. They participate in getting a certificate in independent living skills so they also need to participate in that aspect of it. So this is more than housing. This is housing with wraparound supports as well as a program to support a young person to move into independence and hopefully access and complete some form of training, education or employment.

JOURNALIST: Is this meant to be somewhere they can live for the entirety of their degree or is the aim for them to do this Developing Independence certificate and then move out and complete their studies while living independently?

ANNE KIRWAN: Every young person’s situation is different and so we’ll be working with every young person around what their needs are. It’s not permanent housing; it is transitional accommodation. So the vision is young people come in, stabilise and then eventually they can move into independence. Now that might be they stay and complete their studies with us or it could be this is a stepping stone into the completion of long-term training.

JOURNALIST: Why does there need to be a formalised certificate about being an independent person? Why formal rather than informal?

ANNE KIRWAN: Well, it’s part of the partnership with the Brotherhood of St. Laurence. They’ve developed a training package which is about teaching independent living skills and what we want is the young people coming into the service, when they move out they have the skills to live independently so they’re not reliant on wraparound supports for the rest of their life. A lot of young people come here with particular challenges that may or may not have related to what’s going on in the family home, and what we want is for them to leave in a better situation.

JOURNALIST: What are some of those skills that – I can imagine anyone who has not experienced their lives would kind of feel a bit bewildered about why do you need to learn to be an adult, but what skills are we trying to teach these people?

ANNE KIRWAN: So I’m happy to hand that over to Mark.

JOURNALIST: How many more of these, I guess, do we need in Canberra? Like, I guess, what is the demand like locally? Like, what is your ideal situation?

ANNE KIRWAN: Oh, you asked the right question. Where’s Minister Berry? So look we know that- you know, we talk nationally, we’re experiencing a housing crisis. We know that the ability for anybody to access affordable housing is challenging at the moment in the country. We already have one existing foyer, which is our place in Braddon. This is the second, and we would love additional foyers. Obviously, what we need is the funding for the infrastructure build and then funding for the background support. So it’s not just as easy as just flicking a switch, but we certainly are encouraging the ACT Government to work with us and the Foyer Foundation to deliver additional foyers because we know they work, they’re successful, you’ve got great providers who are experienced in delivering these models. And we know that the young people need additional supports.

JOURNALIST: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe there were some delays with this one, with actually getting people inside this facility here. Can you explain what was behind that?

YVETTE BERRY: Yeah, the procurement for this did take a little bit longer than I would have expected, and so Housing ACT will work on making sure that doesn’t happen again, because we want people in homes as soon we can. There’s a range of different partnerships that we need to work through to make sure that the place is safe, particularly for young people, and so when a building’s finished, they also need to go through a whole process of identifying and resolving defects and making sure that it’s safe. This is a unique building. It’s the first purpose-built foyer in the ACT. And so making sure it’s right and specific for young people, and in this case their families, was the priority for us. All of that does take some time. The procurement process, as I said, did take longer than I would have expected and would have wanted for this project. We don’t want that to happen again, and Housing ACT are working on making sure that doesn’t.

JOURNALIST: There’s a delicate balance between obviously doing correct and appropriate procurement but also getting timely services out there. When you say you want to work with procurement about improving the process, what exactly could be the areas that could be tightened up?

YVETTE BERRY: Well, I think in this case it was a procurement process combined with a defect period that was going through making sure that the building was safe. So there was a combination of things that were happening at the same time, working with a range of different services on the completion of this building and then a procurement process as well. Having that all line up was a bit different for this one because of all that other work that was going on, but I’m confident that we’ve learnt from what happened here so that in future situations that might occur on a process like this one, that we get it right and there are the sort of delays that we saw on this one.

JOURNALIST: Barnardos has raised funding concerns about the Braddon facility and funding continuing beyond September. I guess with this new facility opening and issues there, what sort of long-term guarantees can these employers have in Canberra?

YVETTE BERRY: Well, procurement is done and contracts are arranged with various providers, in this case Marymead CatholicCare, which is excellent, and we’re excited that they will partner in this work here in the foyer in Woden. The Braddon foyer will go through contract arrangements like any other contract in the ACT, making sure that they’re providing the services that we need and that it’s funded through the ACT Government. All organisations that go through these sign-ups to contracts knowing that at some point along the way the government might decide that there needs to be a procurement process to see what’s out in the market, to see if there’s other providers that can deliver a service that’s expected by the ACT community. So that will happen.

I’ve spoken with Barnardos’ CEO. A new CEO has joined the Barnardos organisation and we’ve committed to work closely together on what happens going forward with the foyer in Braddon. But whatever happens it will always be a homelessness service for young people with wraparound supports.

JOURNALIST: And we’ve heard just before we would like some more of these coming around, I suppose. Are you hearing those concerns, I suppose, more directly? And also, is there any other plans?

YVETTE BERRY: Homelessness is devastating for anyone and we’re seeing a significant crisis all across the country. The numbers are going up every day. I’ve not seen- the increase in numbers in my time as Minister for Housing and Homelessness in the last decade, the last five years, they’ve just- it’s quite extraordinary to see the numbers going up. And then young people, 25 per cent of people experiencing or living in homelessness, those are the challenging spaces and it needs to be, as Anne Kirwan said, it needs to be much more than just a roof over these people’s heads. They need the supports to help them lead happy and successful lives. So it’s more than just bricks and mortar. It’s making sure that those wraparound supports go with it as well. This is our first purpose-built one in the ACT, so we’ll learn some things from this. We already have, and we want to continue to work with organisations like the Brotherhood of St. Laurence and the Foyer organisations, as well as Marymead CatholicCare going forward, to make sure that we’ve got the model right, the size right - what else can we do for youth homelessness in the- you know, to impact and support young people who are experiencing homelessness in the ACT through models like this one? But there might be other models or approaches that might work differently for young people. Everybody’s different, and so everybody needs that sort of bespoke approach. The Foyer model does a really good job at making sure that each individual has their individual needs met.

JOURNALIST: The Prime Minister seems to be changing the timeline a bit on when he wants universal childcare to be delivered. Will it be a commitment at the next election?

CATHERINE KING: Well, the first thing is, we’ve got to- you know, we’re focused at the moment, we’ve got a Budget to deliver in the very near future. We have invested substantially in early childhood education – billions of dollars in making sure that it is an attractive place for people to work, and that it is actually affordable for people. So, that question’s directly for Minister Clare, who has responsibility for that, and Senator Jess Walsh, who’s also got responsibilities for that.

But I would say that it has been a focus on childcare, childcare wages, making sure we’ve got the workforce quality standards, really working with the sector to ensure that children, right the way across the board, have access to early childhood education. Because we know that that makes a huge difference in life outcomes for young people.

JOURNALIST: Is there a date you’re working towards that?

CATHERINE KING: Again, that’s a question for Minister Clare.

JOURNALIST: Does it remain a priority of the Government?

CATHERINE KING: Of course it does. You’ve heard the Prime Minister talk about it for a long period of time now. We do believe really firmly that everybody, every young child, every family, should have access to early childhood education. It’s why we’ve put the reforms in place that we did, while we’ve invested billions of dollars. But to the questions in terms of timing has really a matter for the Minister.

JOURNALIST: Does housing need to take priority?

CATHERINE KING: Everything, of course. You know, we always – certainly as an Infrastructure Minister, I want to build everything all at once. And I think the $45 billion we’ve invested in housing, the opportunities for organisations like the Youth Foyer Foundation to apply through the Housing Australia Future Fund, and the mechanisms that we’ve established to build more Foyers across the country. What we’ve seen is these are great partnerships between the not-for-profit sector, state and territory governments and the Commonwealth.

And having that $45 billion investment in housing, and the concentrated effort that we are making in building more homes, whether they are social and affordable homes, whether they are homes in the in the homelessness space, but working with state and territory governments to ensure that in organisations or facilities like this, the wraparound services are also provided.

Because we don’t want to just build buildings for young people who may be struggling with a range of issues, we want to be able to support them into adulthood and make sure that their lives are a success.

JOURNALIST: Just in terms of public service cuts. We’ve heard every portfolio has found savings, some as a result of voluntary redundancies. Do we have any numbers around how many…

CATHERINE KING: No. Again, that’d be Minister for Finance, Katy Gallagher, a question for there. But, no. Each and every budget we have been investing in making sure that we have right public servants doing the right work for the Government to make sure that we are actually delivering all the commitments we made – whether it is in the housing space, the childcare space, or in my portfolio in the Infrastructure and Transport space as well. We really value the huge work that our public servants do – I certainly do within my department. 

But we also know we were left with a Budget that was- with a public service sector that was really hollowed out. And that investment that we’ve made in bringing public servants in, ensuring that they are also then working on the priorities that the Government has, that work is always ongoing. Each and every Budget.

JOURNALIST: And just on the Canberra Stadium. It has been a big topic of conversation here in the ACT. What’s the Federal Government’s position on how much longer can we wait for a new stadium?

CATHERINE KING: Well, the first thing is, we’re already investing over $100 million here as part of the National Capital Investment Framework in the aquatic centre that is currently underway; investigating the new convention centre. They are all investments that have been made because of the Albanese Labor Government, because of the work of the Labor team here in Canberra, both at the federal level and at the territory level.

Those investments would not be being made without the great work of Senator Gallagher and also David Smith behind me here as well, as well as Alicia Payne and Andy Leigh as well. They are because of- you know, we have those great Labor MPs and Senators that that work has happened now.

Now, we’ve also invested $10 million in a Bruce Precinct master plan. That work is underway, and that is really part of what is the future of a future of Bruce Stadium, what is the future of that stadium, but also the precinct as a whole. I want to see that precinct really activated. We’ve invested over $200 million in the Australian Institute of Sport to really improve its facilities in its capabilities, and the Bruce Precinct has to be part of that story as well. I want to see that come to life, and that master planning work is very much a focus of my portfolio as we go forward on making any decisions.

But we do that in partnership with the ACT Government. Canberra doesn’t build – the Commonwealth doesn’t build a stadium on its own. It has to do that in partnership with the territory government who owns the facilities, runs the facilities. So we work very closely with the ACT Government on what their needs are, what they want through that Bruce Precinct master planning work.

JOURNALIST: What’s the Federal Government’s perspective on how long can we stay like this, though?

CATHERINE KING: Well, again you know, our view very firmly is we work in partnership with the ACT Government. You know, the Commonwealth is an interested co-investor in a range of infrastructure projects – whether it be roads, whether it be the huge investment here in light rail, and whether it be in things like we announced recently - the investment in the new precinct around the Canberra station and the work that we’re – I know the ACT Government and the New South Wales Government have been trying to do to look at investments in improving the rail infrastructure. We are a very interested co-investor, but we work closely with the ACT government about what their priorities are.

JOURNALIST: You could argue that there’s no Bruce Precinct without a new stadium. Shouldn’t that be coming first before lining everything else up?

CATHERINE KING: No. We should be master planning the precinct – that’s what you do. Because if you go out and make wild promises – which we often see from independents, frankly, wild promises that can never, ever be delivered, or we end up with proposals that are incredibly costly, costly beyond the means of any government to be able to actually fund, and we don’t actually deliver. You have to do the master planning first. That’s why we put the $10 million into the Bruce Precinct master plan.

You’ve got to do these things properly, not just go out – it’s easy to go out and make my comments and say, this is what we want – harder to actually deliver, and that’s what this Government’s been focused on - making sure we actually know and understand the priorities of the ACT Government. We work in close collaboration with them; they’re great Labor colleagues. And then actually delivering on those. That’s why we’ve got the $100 million investment in delivering on the Aquatic Centre but also looking at the convention centre – they are real – were real priorities for the ACT Government, important projects for the territory. And the Bruce Precinct master plan is also part of that.

JOURNALIST: You talked about, I guess, the timelines. You know, we’re under – the process is kind of underway. Do you have any, you know, updated timelines?

CATHERINE KING: I haven’t received the master plan yet, but that’ll be before me shortly. And then again, big investments, things like stadiums, rail, all of those things, they’re subject to budget processes. So that’s- you know, and they always have been. They have to be done properly, and they have to be done within means and within the budgets, both of the ACT Government and the Commonwealth Government.

JOURNALIST: Within your department, how many voluntary redundancies did you…

CATHERINE KING: I’m not aware of that. That’s a matter of the Secretary of my department, not myself.

JOURNALIST: Thank you. 

CATHERINE KING: Thank you.