In a trainwreck interview with ABC’s Piia Wirsu on ABC Northern Tasmania Drive radio yesterday afternoon, Labor’s housing spokesperson Alison Standen revealed that fellow Labor candidate Janie Finlay has made an embarrassing unauthorised policy announcement.

On 21 April, Ms Finlay announced* that if elected Labor would contribute $10,000 to developing a crowd funding app to help raise funds for youth housing.

However, when asked about it a day later on air Ms Standen, the relevant shadow Minister, indicated she was unaware of the policy. Further, she poured cold water on the idea, saying it had not been a recommendation of her Parliamentary Inquiry into housing.

Ms Finlay has been trying to distance herself from the shambolic Labor campaign, in a desperate attempt to keep her election hopes alive in Bass, and it now appears she is completely freelancing.

Her actions in going rogue lays bare the ongoing divisions inside the Labor campaign.

It is clear that a vote for Labor is a vote for chaos and dysfunction.

*Press Release 21 April 2021

Youth Housing App

Janie Finlay, Bass ALP candidate

Crowd funding to overcome the housing crisis facing young people was a totally new idea and might engage the community in resolving a major social problem, Tailrace Community Church Pastor Sharon O’Neill said.

“Working on the basis that it takes a community to raise a child, a crowd funding app would place back in the local community the need to overcome one of the community’s greatest problems – young people housing,” Pastor O’Neill said.

With crowd funding, and contributions as little as $5 a week, a resource of thousands of dollars could be built to acquire the housing necessary to give security to homeless young people.

Bass Labor candidate Janie Finlay said that it was exciting to see community groups use new technologies and growing community connectiveness to attempt to eradicate one of our community’s most confronting issues, our young people living without a safe place to call home.

“Youth homelessness is an unacceptable condition of Tasmanian society and, in government, Labor would contribute $10,000 to developing this innovative crowd funding app,” Ms Finlay said.

Pastor O’Neill added, “Through social media we can keep crowd funding contributors up-to-date with developments in the program and tell the stories of homeless young people and their needs.”

“We know of students as young as Grade 9 who have run away from home and couch-surfed or slept rough.

“Once young people get into this dilemma, they find it difficult to break out of the poverty trap.

“We hope that with the innovation of a crowd funding app we could get homeless young people into an independent lifestyle and develop into contributing citizens,” Pastor O’Neill said.

Ms Finlay said, “A crowd funding app enables the local community to take the initiative in the homelessness dilemma facing some of our young people, make meaningful contributions for a solution to a problem, and then see potentially lost members of society become positive contributors to our community’s future development.”