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

Last week I had the great privilege of announcing the first in-prison VTEC service in the senator's home state of Western Australia. VTEC, the Vocational Training and Employment Centres program, has broken the cycle of training for training's sake and the churn that's plagued previous governments' employment programs. Under the VTEC program, we have stopped paying providers for just having a bit of a crack and we are paying providers on a 26-week outcome. We know that, if people are there for 26 weeks, 82 per cent of them will be there two years later. That's a fundamental change. Unfortunately, many sneered at this new model. Former Indigenous affairs spokesman Mr Neumann said a model that paid on a 26-week outcome just wouldn't work and that we wouldn't get 5,000 jobs. Well, he was right—we got 9,000 jobs! It has been such a success that we are moving the program into the most difficult places, which are prisons. So we've started working in the Acacia Prison in Perth. This is going to break the cycle of recidivism— (Time expired)