Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Phase 2 of the productivity places; sorry. You are absolutely right; the productivity places come in two types. There are productivity places for people who are outside the labour market and productivity places for people who are within the labour market and seeking to upskill. Those productivity places are going to be delivered in partnership with state and territory governments. We are entering those agreements now. The member for Boothby would probably have seen that I have made some public announcements about an agreement, for example, with Western Australia. He should anticipate there being further agreements struck with states and territories which will be announced at the time.

I suspect the member for Boothby would also be aware that the specific purpose payment for vocational education and training is due for renewal in December this year. That is being worked on through the new COAG processes. The Prime Minister had a Council of Australian Governments meeting in December, which kicked off a major round of work and reform aimed at ending the blame game and the cycle of inefficiency, waste and lost opportunities that hallmarked Commonwealth-state relations under the Howard government. That was no more so than in the skills area, where the Howard government’s inability to deal with state and territory governments in a fair way meant we saw no renewal or renovation of our vocational education and training system, thereby playing a role in the generation of the skills crisis. We will be working on the renewal of that agreement through COAG processes and it will be announced before the end of the year.

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