Dave Tollner (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Minister for Workforce Participation. Would the minister update the House on how Work for the Dole is helping to prepare job seekers for employment around Australia? Would the minister also outline examples of some of the most innovative projects?

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

I thank the honourable member for Solomon for his question. He was celebrating with a lot of us last night in the Great Hall because one of his constituents, Mr Warren Suradi, was a finalist in the Prime Minister’s Work for the Dole Achievement Awards. As one of the great participants—an outstanding participant—Mr Suradi had been involved with a team of fellow work-for-the-dolees in building greenhouses and a market garden in an Indigenous community in the Northern Territory. We strongly commend all of last night’s finalists and particularly Mr Suradi.

Work for the Dole is now nine years old and it is an extraordinary program. It began with some controversy. Some felt that it was not appropriate that the long-term unemployed were asked to work in their communities to meet a mutual obligation and, therefore, to have a sense of greater contribution, given that they were being supported by that same community. We have statistics now which show that some 80 per cent of people who complete a Work for the Dole program say that it has improved their self-esteem and improved their capacity to find a job and, indeed, their sense of wanting to go back and find work. In fact, over 42 per cent of those who finish a Work for the Dole program within three months are in a job or are doing work related training. However, it is not just the individual who has had such an extraordinary benefit through Work for the Dole. There have been nearly half a million Work for the Dole participants in these last nine years. No doubt these half a million who have moved on to work as a result of the program have helped bring down the unemployment statistics in Australia to some of the lowest rates in 30 years.

We know, for example, that the 29,000 projects that these Work for the Dole teams have worked on in communities right across Australia—from metropolitan areas to rural areas—have helped build community. They have given back where someone could not have been employed on a salary. It was not work that was in any way supplanting a paid workforce; it was work that built back—for example, gardens and toys for preschools. There has been a lot of natural resource development work and cultural and heritage protection. Just one project, for example—the Work for the Dole team in Ulverstone, Tasmania—has built a safe area for dementia sufferers in the Mount St Vincent Nursing Home. In Shoalhaven, the member for Gilmore’s area, the Scrap Shop at Bomaderry has recycled materials and, while the Work for the Dole trainees or participants have been doing this work, they have also been training in retail and business through a TAFE course.

Let me tell you that, after nine years, the Work for the Dole program has proved itself to be among the most outstanding in our suite of programs that help Australia’s unemployed; it has helped to bring down our unemployment statistics to their lowest level in 30 years. I thank all of the members of the opposition who attended the Prime Minister’s awards last night in the Great Hall, celebrating the outstanding work of our Work for the Dole participants, the CWCs and the sponsors. In this day and age, we should commend the courage of our long-term unemployed who are getting a better life through participating in community work that is meaningful for them and meaningful for their families and the places they come from.

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I ask that further questions be placed on the Notice Paper.