Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Minister for Workforce Participation) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Deakin for his question and for his commitment to helping drive down Australia’s numbers of unemployed. Australia’s dole queues have halved since 1996, as our Prime Minister has just reminded us. The Howard government has created nearly two million jobs. There has never been such an amazing time, a great opportunity for our long-term unemployed to find a job—often, for them, the first job. Our long-term unemployed are amongst the most disadvantaged in Australia’s society.

Our new Welfare to Work initiative is of course giving job seekers an extra hand up, but one of the things we have found is that employers are tending to reject some half of their applicants for a job vacancy on the basis that they do not have relevant work experience or, in many cases, that they have no work experience at all. That is where our Welfare to Work program comes into it. We are now requiring each project in our Welfare to Work and Work for the Dole programs to have relevant, local workplace skill deficits reflected in the program itself. As we know, there are a lot of job shortages in hospitality, tourism, retail, manufacturing and services, just to name a few of these areas.

Let me give you some examples of how Work for the Dole is now giving people locally relevant skills and work experience. For example, in Dandenong, in the electorate of Bruce, the Red Cross is having teams of our Work for the Dole people help to make their Christmas cakes and bakery products, giving them a great deal of experience in becoming hospitality and cooking employees of the future. In Ingleburn, in Sydney, in the electorate of the member for Werriwa, the aged care facility is benefiting from Work for the Dole participants learning about that industry sector, helping with the care of the aged and being able to walk out of that six- or 12-months experience with a resume or a CV which is rich in information about how they are skilled and ready to work in the aged care sector. In the electorates of Lalor, Blaxland and Groom, in Laverton, Bankstown and Toowoomba, we have a lot of metal fabrication and welding being taught to our Work for the Dole participants, who are making trailers and outdoor furniture. They can then, on their resumes, explain a six- or 12-month work experience and walk into jobs in metal fabrication—another area of skills deficit across much of Australia. Finally, in Solomon, up in the Northern Territory, carpentry is being undertaken and taught to Work for the Dole participants. They are producing toys and furniture for Christmas for giving to the most needy.

So here is one of our most successful employment services programs, one that is now nine years old and that has helped over half a million of our long-term unemployed Australians, some of our most disadvantaged, into work. I want to congratulate the Howard government for this initiative. It was resisted and rejected. It is in fact doing an enormous amount of work in the electorates of the opposition, helping some of the most disadvantaged into a job, to share in this country’s prosperity.

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