John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Senator Scullion. Can the minister update the Senate on how the government is delivering on its commitment to support more Indigenous Australians into work, including through the successful Vocational, Training & Employment Centres program?

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

First of all, I thank Senator Williams for the question and particularly thank him for helping me engage with many of his Indigenous communities in New South Wales. It was very important that we had a clear agenda. We said, 'We want to get kids into school, we want to get adults into work and we want to have safe communities.' So, quite clearly, placing Indigenous employment front and centre on our agenda was very important.

And I would like to say to those on the other side—and I know they may be bracing themselves, but in fact this is a bit of a compliment—that whilst their programs were completely messy, with the churn of change and training for training's sake, they were starting off a reform. You get it wrong in reform, so what we have done is taken those things that did work—we all know what worked and what did not work—and we have built on them.

I think it is very important to recognise that getting into a job simply is the best form of welfare—or to move away from welfare. We all know that in anyone's life actually being able to say to someone, 'I have a job; I am independent; I am doing well,' is just so very important.

The other notion about why it was that we went away from training for training's sake—apart from the obvious issues—is that communities and individuals were saying: 'This just isn't working for us. We're getting trained, and we might be getting trained in good things, but for the things we are getting trained in there aren't any actual jobs. They might come past but they're not actually in the context of the employment space, which is just so very important.'

So we said that not only would we move away from training for training's sake but we would provide 5,000 jobs, and that is exactly what we did. They were not training jobs; they were 5,000 jobs. I had the great pleasure of being in Sydney and announcing those 5,000 jobs. Now, 70 per cent of those jobs that we announced with the Prime Minister, importantly, were those B- and C-class—those people having the most difficulty getting into jobs. This is a remarkable success. I commend this process to those opposite— (Time expired)

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Williams, a supplementary question.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr President. Can the minister advise how the government's reforms to Indigenous employment programs have ended the cycle of training for training's sake and supported real employment for Indigenous jobseekers?

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

We started off by establishing vocational training and employment—we called them VTECs. I have to say that in this game—those who have been ministers on the other side would recognise this—we normally grab other people's ideas and rename them. We actually did not even go to that extent in this policy: we simply took GenerationOne, Twiggy Forrest's idea, and we maintained his version of the name! But it does work, and it works very well.

The idea is: if you ever want to get someone into a job, do not start with training; start with the job! So we made all the focus about talking to employers and ensuring that those employers are locked in. 'Let's have a plumber'—the plumber needs a place to go to every day. He needs a broken pipe to attend to at a workplace with an employer, and that is the secret of VTEC.

To say that we have now broken that cycle—I am able to declare today that that cycle of training for training's sake is now over. (Time expired)

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Williams, a further supplementary question.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Can the minister explain how the government's commitment to getting Indigenous Australians into work is delivering real jobs, especially in my home state of New South Wales?

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

Could I just take this opportunity to congratulate all of those people who are running the VTECs. These are really passionate people who come from a background which I suspect was not engaging with employers all the time. But they have made that leap. There are people like Deb Nelson from Yarn'n in Sydney who have just done an absolutely remarkable job.

Many of the traditional areas where we have not had entry, we now have entry into: the health, transport and retail industries. What I think is the most exciting thing about not only Yarn'n but many of these processes is that they do not get paid until they deliver six months of work. They do not get a single government dollar! I think that was the challenge which those opposite understood to be the case when they started this policy off.

We now have, in terms of Yarn'n, a 91 per cent retention rate. Yes, there are some, but the churn has gone from the system. So I would like again to commend this excellent policy to this place. (Time expired)