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

Under the coalition government the economy is going gangbusters. Now it is creating record numbers of jobs and opportunities for all Australians. For the benefit of those opposite, the recent ABS figures unquestionably indicated that the economy we've created has translated to well over 400,000 jobs this year. That's very positive news.

We know that many Indigenous jobseekers face some unique barriers to employment. We are ensuring we have programs in place to get more First Australians off the misery of passive welfare and into work. Over the last 12 months my programs—Indigenous-specific programs—have resulted in 7,000 jobs for Indigenous jobseekers. Mainstream employment has a result of 35,564 jobs. That means that of the 400,000 jobs being created across the economy some 10 per cent have gone to Indigenous people despite them only making up three per cent of the population and 0.7 per cent of the labour force. That is a fantastic result and unsurprising out of the 1,100 jobs created every day.

The reason we have been successful is we actually understand an economy. We understand how that works. We put the VTEC into place—an initiative that for the first time broke the back of training for training's sake. A jobseeker is only trained up if they are guaranteed a specific job at the end. All of that nonsense and gammon about training for training's sake has now ended. That is because we only pay on results. This includes some 1,452 jobs in Senator Smith's home state of Western Australia. That trajectory is going to grow in the years to come thanks to the policies of this government.