Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] I acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land and pay my respects to elders past and present. I thank the member for Werriwa for presenting the report today. I want to pay tribute to her and to other committee colleagues, including the members for Newcastle, Longman, Curtin, and to the deputy chair, the member Lingiari. We will miss him in the next parliament. His generosity and knowledge and his contribution, giving as he has done all his working life to the benefit of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, are things of which he should be justly proud.

One of Australia's most important economic and social policy goals is to improve the economic participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Having a job or running a business can be life changing. Witnesses told the committee that owning a business gives people greater freedom, choice and independence. It can provide pride, a purpose, a legacy and a sense of achievement. Many of those sentiments are also true of having a job. Indigenous businesses have grown in number from 13,700 in 2011 to over 17,000 today across a very wide of industries. Some of the business success stories—like Kulbardi, an office supplies business; Voyages, a tourism company; Manapan, a furniture company; and the Eather Group, a construction and logistics firm—are profiled in the report.

Indigenous businesses have an employment rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people 60 per cent higher than other businesses. The government's Indigenous Procurement Policy, introduced in 2015, is playing a significant role in that growth and success. The IPP's purpose is to drive economic develop and employment. The IPP sets a target of three per cent by volume and one per cent by value of all Commonwealth procurement contracts for Indigenous businesses. The policies are $4.3 billion in contract value today. The IPP has been a great success, with many federal departments repeatedly smashing their targets by volume and value. As the IPP becomes an established part of the culture of Commonwealth agencies, it's important to ensure the policy continues to serve its purpose of driving economic development and employment for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The committee has made recommendations about whether Indigenous ownership by itself should be the qualification for participation in the IPP and whether some evidence of employment and skills transfer, the use of company profits and the ability to attract work from the broader commercial marketplace should also be taken into account. The committee recognises that there are further opportunities for growth in Indigenous business through the expansion of Indigenous business hubs, more training and support around the tendering process and further increases in Indigenous business opportunities through free trade agreements and foreign direct investment. We also recommend removing legislative and other barriers that prevent Indigenous Business Australia from expanding its operations and lending to more customers.

We've heard many life-changing employment success stories, like that of Woolworths deli manager Lisa Hohoi, who told the committee:

I was surrounded, mentored and influenced by positive leaders at Woolworths that gave me the courage and vision of success by believing and seeing my potential that I couldn't even see in myself … They pushed me to own my success. I can now say proudly that I'm a department manager leading a diverse team with 18 team members, two of which have come out of the same pathways program for Indigenous people here at Woolworths.

Unfortunately, there's still a significant gap between the employment rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and other Australians. The government has two major employment services programs: jobactive and CDP. In addition, vocational training and employment centres work with those programs to match, mentor and place longer term unemployed Indigenous jobseekers. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up around 10 per cent of jobseekers on jobactive and 82 per cent of participants in CDP.

The government is changing its employment services policy for all Australian jobseekers, with a new employment services model to commence in July 2022 and a new remote jobs program to replace CDP in 2023. The committee have made some observations, which we believe may help feed into those new programs. The committee would like to see a national Indigenous jobactive provider and greater collaboration and integration between jobactive and VTEC, with payments ensuring there are more incentives to place people into long-term jobs. There should also be better alignment with jobactive and CDP activity requirements. There should be more community leadership in the design of activities under CDP and a focus not on welfare but on part-time work for part-time pay, given the realities of the thin labour markets in remote Australia. There should also be a focus on the development of locally generated entrepreneurial activity. We've made recommendations about the importance of training for real jobs delivered on country, transport to work and the vital importance of mentoring. A recurrent theme in evidence was the difficulty of placing jobseekers with police records. More needs to be done to better place these jobseekers and encourage employers to take them on.

In examining these policies, we wanted to consider their effect on people in urban, regional and remote settings. On behalf of the committee I want to thank everyone who made submissions and gave evidence. I also want to take the opportunity to acknowledge the secretariat, and Annette McHugh, from my office, who did so much work on this report. I commend the report to the House.

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