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

We are pulling every lever in our control to get more Indigenous people to work. It is a fact that an Indigenous business is now 100 times more likely to employ an Indigenous person than a non-Indigenous business is. I can remember looking at Canada and the United States, when I was in opposition, and I knew that they had built a successful indigenous middle-class there, principally through the investments of government particularly around procurement. We were $6.2 million in 2012-13 and I said we wanted a simple target of three per cent, and we have now gone from $6.2 million, that those opposite were languishing on, to $284.2 million in 12 months. As I said today, Indigenous procurement is connecting Indigenous businesses, and we will be working with the states and territories on the private sector to extend these excellent policies. (Time expired)