Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Williams for that question. Across the country, we are starting to see a transformation about how we engage our First Australians in employment. For too long, it has been considered a bit hard—across governments, I have to say. Forty-six per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians of working age are in work—only 46 per cent. That is 30 percentage points below the non-Indigenous rate. Unfortunately, the participation rate has widened by almost seven percentage points since 2008, so by 2018 we need to get another 188,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders into jobs, just to reach parity with the remainder of Australia.

What we have done is focus on delivering real jobs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians—not a job that is endlessly in training and not a job that someone only holds for a couple of weeks. We have reformed employment programs in the bush and we will be making some announcements and bringing some legislation to this place in that regard. I would like to acknowledge the efforts of the member for Blair and the member for Lingiari in assisting in the formulation of that policy. We are partnering with the largest employers to increase their Indigenous workforce, to increase the number of Indigenous workers in the real economy. We are changing the way that government does business to require that Indigenous businesses get access to opportunities. This is already yielding results. Since September 2013, despite significant headwinds in the economy, job programs in my portfolio have resulted in 33,700 employment placements for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. We take this issue very, very seriously, because we recognise that when you get a job you get confidence and independence and then you have access to the opportunities that the rest of Australia take for granted.