Kevin Andrews Oh f**k they say he’s even further right than Abbott. He has $20 mill and can’t give it away. 100,000 marriage counseling vouchers for de facto couples in the hope they might get married. $200 a pop and he has off loaded only 4000. How Catholic of him he and his wife get done as R&R every now and then. My partner and I have been in a de facto relationship for 43 years. I wonder what the counselor would have to say to us. The majority of our friends have been serially married maybe he should find takers amongst them. But know it’s only for de factos. He apparently has been trying the wedding fairs and nobody stops. Because their in love Kevin. Sounds as if he  will get rid of them in 2016 in the LNP election showbag

In December 2013, as Social Services Minister, Andrews introduced to the House of Representatives a bill repealing almost all of the gambling harm-minimisation measures passed by the Gillard Labor government in November 2012. a straight capitulation to the power of the pokies lobby,”.

Australian Hotels Association are on of the top donars to the liberal party.

We currently hear from our Social Services minister:Mr Andrews has already revealed the government is looking at changes that would see more people under the age of 40 on the DSP checked to see whether they could work and temporary payments for potentially impermanent conditions to prevent the number of those in the system from ballooning to one million.Under Mr Andrews’ mooted change, disability pensioners who were assessed by their family doctors – before Labor tightened the system in 2011 – would be re-examined by medical experts at the Department of Human Services.

 ” nation’s welfare system is “unsustainable” and large, urgent changes must be made to the disability pension and the general unemployment benefit.”

Andrews is pushing the idea that pensioners suffering “episodic” illnesses such as depression should be given monthly or quarterly medical certificates rather than getting two-year “set and forget” pensions. This idea, he said, was particularly important given there were now more disability pensioners suffering from psychological conditions. However Mr Andrews was able to find $20 million for marriage guidance counseling vouchers. This of course has nothing to do with the fact that he and his wife are/were involved in the marriage counseling business.

On August 4^th, Minister for Social Services Kevin Andrews launched 2014 Homeless Persons Week

 “We have made a good start with all states and territories signing the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness, which will allow us to start working collaboratively to achieve a lasting legacy of helping all Australians find appropriate housing.”

What Mr Andrews fails to point out is that the states and territories already had a signed deal with the previous government and he had to be dragged kicking and screaming to renew that commitment, but in so doing, he cut $44 million that was to be spent on capital works or 10,000 houses.

Kevin Andrew’s media release:

“In the year ahead we will review housing and homelessness policies and programmes to examine ways to improve housing supply and affordability.  This review will feed into the Government’s White Papers on Reform of the Federation and on taxation.”

Urgent has been yet again replaced by investigative committees and exhaustive consultaion to look into the matter.

When talking about the importance of education in breaking the cycle of homelessness, Tony Abbott made much of his decision to spend $30 million on truancy officers to keep aboriginal kids in school.  He did not mention that his government cut $1.6 million in funding in November for a school bus service that transported students from town camps to five schools in Alice Springs. The plan is to punish the parents for their children’s inability to get to school.

Add to this the cuts to legal aid and family violence programs, the closure of many refuges, and the withdrawal of any support for young people for half the year, and it is clear that this government has no concern about a growing problem and are instead exacerbating the situation of our most vulnerable citizens.It appears Andrews is reflecting on how to abrogate any federal responsibility by passing the buck to the states.

With the crisis in youth unemployment, and the government’s focus on “earn or learn”, they also made the inexplicable decision to cut funding to the Youth Connections program which provides funding to local youth services to support young people at risk of disengaging from education and work. This has been regarded as an extremely successful program. Youth Connections fills a critical gap in services and with youth unemployment at crisis levels in some areas, it’s just not the time to be cutting a program like this.”The average cost of putting a young person through a Youth Connections program is just over $2000.  Youth Connections works, it’s cost effective and it makes absolutely no sense when the Government’s talking about reducing unemployment to cut the very programs that help unemployed young people into the training they need or into the jobs that they can stick to.

I believe he  thinks  he is doing extremely well as the Minister for Homelessness as  those figures are showing a marked rise. I can picture Kevin and Eric doing high fives in the corridors of parliament celebrating the rises in their respective graphs