Barry Wakelin (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, I present the committee’s report, incorporating a minority report, entitled Indigenous Australians at work: successful initiatives in Indigenous employment, together with the minutes of proceedings.

Ordered that the report be made a parliamentary paper.

On 14 March 2005 the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, Senator the Hon. Amanda Vanstone, asked the committee to inquire into and report on Indigenous employment. The committee was asked to focus on positive factors and examples amongst Indigenous communities and individuals which have improved employment outcomes in both the public and private sectors. By taking a positive approach to Indigenous matters, it was considered that employment was an area where progress could be demonstrated. At a time of strong economic performance at the national level, and with workforce shortages a growing reality, the opportunities for further development of Indigenous employment appear to be significant.

Over the past two years we were fortunate to share the views of and better understand the outcomes for many individuals, companies and the wider community in this vital human activity. The central role of work and the workplace in most Australians’ lives is something that we perhaps take for granted—but the lessons of the past two years remind all of us that the variation in workforce participation by Indigenous people is very much a result of a complex set of factors which results in some achieving significant success and others having a more limited result. The above is very much a two-way street, with some employers leading the way and with many employees open to opportunities and both able to achieve improved results. Indigenous participation in the mainstream Australian economy will be enhanced by more enlightened policies in welfare, education and employment. Our inquiry attempted to seek out the committed employers and employees and understand their views and what motivated them to achieve. Those experiences are documented from that perspective.

Labour force participation rates for Indigenous people remain below the levels for non-Indigenous Australians, although there have been some improvements in recent years. As Australia faces skills shortages in many industries, employers are now more aware of the Indigenous employment potential and more positions are being offered.

The recurring theme of many people who presented before the committee was the overwhelming impact of welfare policies as a deterrent to sustainable employment. The need for government policies to strike a better balance between the incentives for work and the incentives to be distracted by welfare is vital.

While the whole-of-government approach is relatively new and there has been a steep learning curve, with a great deal more to be learnt, the committee believes that there has been a genuine attempt by bureaucracies to improve service delivery. The committee fully appreciates the challenges in moving to the whole-of-government approach. It believes that real inroads can only be achieved through partnerships and it welcomes the enhanced involvement of the corporate sector and Indigenous communities.

The committee has also made a number of recommendations regarding affirmative action by government in construction and maintenance programs and tender requirements; support for small business; the provision of microfinance; funding for mentoring and education; and in encouraging the implementation of best practice models of Indigenous employment in both the public and private sectors.

I would like to thank all those who, in writing or in person, were able to provide to the committee their views on positive examples of Indigenous employment. The committee appreciated both the quality and quantity of evidence received from a range of groups and individuals in relation to this wide-ranging inquiry.

I acknowledge and thank my fellow committee members for their commitment to and participation in this inquiry. I would also like to thank the staff of the committee secretariat for their work on the inquiry. The committee is pleased to have had the opportunity to contribute to this nationally important issue. I commend the report to the House.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the contribution from the chairman of the committee and the work of the committee and all its members. It is with regret, though, that I have to say that I am here to present, on behalf of the members for Fremantle, Canberra and Kingsford Smith, and for my own part, a dissenting report. In what may be a precedent in committee reporting, the Labor members of the ATSIA committee were not prepared to endorse the majority report of this inquiry into Indigenous employment. This was not because of any fundamental disagreement with the few recommendations it proposed—although we do not agree with all of them—but because of the report’s failure to come to grips with the gravity of the problem or to suggest policy settings and programs which have any real prospect of increasing employment.

We argued that the chairman’s draft report, as initially presented to us and still largely unmodified in the final draft, needed a major revision. In fact, much of the report is little more than a catalogue of case studies. Those could have formed the starting point for sound deductions about future directions for effective policy development. Instead, they are simply presented without coherent analysis.

The majority report appears to accept untested assertions about various programs and public relations assertions from the private sector as if they are as persuasive as carefully constructed evaluations. Government department and agency claims about the effectiveness of various policy settings are often accepted without question, rather than being subjected to reasonable critical scrutiny and analysis. The purpose of the report, after all, was to try and find out what really worked. Our constructive suggestions along these lines and our request for a major revision of the report so that we could achieve unanimity were initially accepted but later refused, on what we believed to be rather spurious grounds—in other words, in this case, spuriously imposed deadlines that prevented such revision.

After almost three years of hearings, including the evidence of many witnesses, 137 submissions, and travel to every corner of the continent, the conclusions are disappointingly shallow. We argue that the findings and recommendations presented to us in the draft report, and accepted by government members, fall so far short of what is needed as to constitute an insult to the many people who spoke to us.

Sadly, given the resources at our disposal and our truncated reporting time line, the Labor members are not in a position to write a comprehensive report which would fully address these problems. But we can point to areas where a future government should act. We touched on those areas. We talked about evaluation. We asked: what has been successful in generating new opportunities for Indigenous people? What maintains employment for those already in the workforce? What improves labour market readiness? And what helps people over the obvious obstacles that Indigenous people face?

We talked about the Indigenous employment strategy. We asked whether it really has delivered measurable benefits and outcomes to Indigenous people. We focused on the CDEP, and I would say that this report needs to be read against the backdrop of the federal government’s intervention in the Northern Territory and, indeed, its proposal—now writ into policy—to stop CDEP operating altogether in communities in the Northern Territory, despite the ample evidence that this committee received about its success as an employment vehicle for Aboriginal people. This has not been taken into account by the government and has not been reflected properly in the report. But we saw, time after time, the opportunities created by CDEP, where people were in meaningful employment. They were participating in commerce, in shops; they were working in schools and in brick factories; they were working in a range of programs, doing the whole gamut of community activities—you name it, they were involved in it. Yet, now, 8,000 such individuals in the Northern Territory have been sacked summarily by this government and have been moved onto Work for the Dole programs or training programs. They will not have meaningful employment. That, of course, is a shame.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for statements on this report has expired. Does the member for Grey wish to move a motion in connection with the report to enable it to be debated on a future occasion?

Yes. I move:

That the House take note of the report.

In accordance with standing order 39, the debate is adjourned. The resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for a later hour this day.