Jeremy Rockliff,Minister for Community Services and Development
The Tasmanian Liberal Government wants all Tasmanians to thrive and be strong and resilient through cohesive, inclusive and supportive communities, while recognising that there are people across the state who need our support.
Food relief provides a critical opportunity to connect Tasmanians to services that address the circumstances that lead to food insecurity, and in addition to our $3 million commitment to emergency food relief, our Food Security Strategy will encourage further collaboration across Government and the community sector to help meet demand for food relief and increase food security.
Informed by our data mapping work in 2020, and through consultation with groups representing the food relief sector including TasCOSS and the Tasmanian School Canteen Association, our Food Security Strategy sets out our direction for implementing PESRAC's Interim and Final Reports and our commitment to deliver a strategy within our first 100 days.
The health, safety and wellbeing of Tasmanians is our number one priority as we continue to face the challenges of COVID-19, and we are committed to supporting the community organisations that support our communities as outlined in our 100 day commitments.
This includes commencement of work on developing our new Active Ageing Strategy, working alongside Council on the Ageing Tasmania (COTA) to draft a project plan in preparation for the strategy to be released in 2022.
We have also delivered on working with the Neighbourhood Houses Network (NHT) to deliver additional supports across the network, with the NHT Board endorsing the project plan for the Neighbourhood Community Care Advisor Pilot 2021-2023, and we have updated our agreement with NHT to provide a $400,000 boost to strengthen governance and resources and training.
Our volunteer workforce continues to be key in delivering supports and services by community organisations, and we are working with Volunteering Tasmania to develop a new Youth Volunteer Army for Tasmania, convening a meeting across relevant agencies to help ensure better succession planning.
It is through working with the community sector, with initiatives like these, that we will help secure Tasmania's future.
Tasmania's Food Relief to Food Resilience (Food Security) 2021- 24 is available at https://www.communities.tas.gov.au/csr/policy/Policy_Work/food-relief-to-food-resilience-tasmanian-food-security-strategy-2021-2021
