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

I am very glad the Leader of the Opposition asked me about the Productivity Places Program because it enables me to explain three things about it—three vital aspects of this program. There is the stream that the Leader of the Opposition has referred to, which is the stream supporting job seekers, and obviously that stream is very important during the days of the global recession. It is not easy during a global recession, as unemployment in this country rises, to assist into work people who have been unemployed, particularly the long-term unemployed. This is a program that has delivered training to more than 100,000 Australians. Just over 30,000 have completed their training and, of those referred by employment services providers, we have seen people get jobs. I think that kind of support for training of job seekers during a global recession is vitally important.

Importantly, the Productivity Places Program has been sufficiently flexible through our structural adjustment places to support people in jobs in companies that are bearing the brunt of the global recession. To take just one example of that—the example of Holden: I think that everyone would be aware that the global financial crisis and global recession have borne down on the car industry. People would be aware of the circumstances faced by General Motors in the United States. Our structural adjustment places through the Productivity Places Program have been able to partner with a business like Holden so that they could strike short-time working arrangements and we could provide training places so people stay in a job and upskill during the days of a global recession that is bringing powerful force to bear on that business. If we had not had that flexible response through the Productivity Places Program, if we had not had the kind of cooperative workplace relations necessary to strike that sort of arrangement, what we could have seen is large-scale redundancies. We know from statistics that for people who lose their jobs during an economic downturn it can be a long, long way back.

The third stream of the Productivity Places Program is to assist with upskilling people in the current workforce. We are committed to broadening and deepening the skills of Australian working people. This is a program that has responded flexibly to difficult circumstances.

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