Mark Coulton (Parkes, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I rise to speak about the Indigenous Police Recruiting Our Way Delivery program, otherwise known as IPROWD. On Tuesday last week I had the pleasure of meeting the students from the current IPROWD programs in Dubbo, Newcastle and the Illawarra here in Parliament House. A group of about 70 of these young recruits came to Parliament House and met with the Prime Minister, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, the Assistant Minister for Employment and Mr Ken Wyatt, who we all know is the first Aboriginal man to be elected to the House of Representatives. I would like to thank those people for taking the time to meet with the IPROWD group, because I do know that they were very pleased to be able to speak to the Prime Minister and senior ministers about the program.

The IPROWD program is a specialist training program that assists Aboriginal people to gain entry into the New South Wales Police Academy at Goulburn. It is a program that is co-funded between the Australian government, TAFE New South Wales, the New South Wales Police Force and Charles Sturt University all working together in a partnership that offers the IPROWD training program at a range of locations across New South Wales. It was really interesting to hear some of the stories from these students who are undertaking the program. Some of these students did not finish high school. One IPROWD participant I spoke to—not in this program but the one before—had seven children and in her early 40s decided that she wanted to join the police force not only to be a role model for her children but also to help her own community.

The ultimate aim of this program is for students to join the NSW Police Force; not everyone does—many of the students go on to do other things—but what it does do is give them opportunities to improve their level of education, their physical fitness and their preparedness to go on and do other things.

Overall, these students see the IPROWD program as an invaluable opportunity to establish a meaningful career for themselves with secure long-term employment, something that some of them only ever considered to be a dream. I was very pleased to find in this group a couple of young ladies from my electorate from the town of Goodooga, way up on the Queensland border, who had come down to undertake the IPROWD program to join the police force so that they can be role models for their community. I would like to acknowledge Peter Gibbs, the coordinator; councillor Rod Towney; Troy Grant, the Deputy Premier of New South Wales; and NSW Police Assistant Commissioner (Ret) Steve Bradshaw for their work in instigating this program.