Mark Arbib (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Social Housing and Homelessness) Share this | Hansard source

Yes, this Thursday is National Close the Gap Day and I would encourage all Australians to get actively involved in the campaign. I also note that today is Harmony Day—the orange ribbons we are wearing celebrate our cultural diversity. I think it is very important to recognise our Indigenous culture arising, as it does, from one of the world’s oldest civilisations.

There is a great deal of progress being made in Indigenous employment. The vast majority of the work being undertaken is through the Job Network—through Job Services Australia. Two years ago, Job Services Australia was reformed. It was reformed to put the emphasis on disadvantaged job seekers. The financial incentives were moved to the back end to ensure that those in streams 3 and 4 of Job Services Australia were getting the support they needed to get them into employment—80 per cent of those in streams 3 and 4 are Indigenous. The good news is we are starting to see results. Compared to non-Indigenous job seekers, four per cent fewer Indigenous job seekers have returned to the employment services system 13 weeks after being placed into jobs. This is a significant improvement and it shows that the job services network is working for Indigenous job seekers.

But it is not just through the Job Network that we are doing this work; it is also through the IEP—the Indigenous Employment Program. So far 40,000 employment and training places have been created since the IEP was reformed in July 2009. It is going towards businesses that are really seeing results. Look at Linfox—they committed over a year ago to putting 500 Indigenous people into employment and they have already hit 100 Indigenous workers, with another 12 being trained right now. Ngarda Civil and Mining, a company in Western Australia, are right now training and employing 184 Indigenous workers in the Pilbara. These are the results— (Time expired)