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

Not only do our Indigenous business policies help create small business opportunities but we're also getting more Indigenous jobseekers off the misery of welfare into the dignity of work. In the thousand new Indigenous businesses winning over a billion dollars worth of contracts in the IPP, they've got an Indigenous workforce, unsurprisingly, of over 50 per cent. Given that Indigenous Australians are three per cent of the population, you expect the average workforce to be around that. But they are at 50 per cent. That means that the more we back Indigenous small business, the more Indigenous jobseekers we're getting into work who are actually contributing to their own lives and their own economy. As we support all Australian small businesses with a more competitive tax rate so they can keep more of their own money, that applies equally to Indigenous businesses. It gets more small-business activity and even more jobseekers into work. That's what we believe on this side of this chamber—more runs on the board.