Professor Peter Shergold, AC supports industry specific training to create sustainable employment for Indigenous Australians. 

Peter Shergold will be working with GenerationOne to ensure the industry specific training for Indigenous Australians is brought to fruition.

Read his approach and speech below:

A New Approach to Indigenous Training 

(Speech delivered by Prof. Peter Shergold, the Centre for Social Impact, at the GenerationOne launch of new Indigenous training initiatives.  The meeting was held at Yaama Dhiyaan, Darlington, on 11 August 2010.)

I thank Aunty Beryl* for her heartfelt welcome to country.  I am delighted to be asked by Andrew Forrest to participate in this important event.  I am particularly pleased that Tony Abbott, Leader of the Opposition, and Tanya Plibersek, representing Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, have made time to speak.

I stand before you as a liberated public servant.  I enjoyed the wonderful opportunity to work for 20 years as an Australian Public Servant.  For me no area of public policy was more important than that which administered government support to Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders.  As CEO of ATSIC, and then successively as Secretary of the Departments of Employment and Education, and the Prime Minister & Cabinet, I had responsibility for the oversight of Indigenous programs.  It was rewarding.  It was also wickedly complex and ultimately frustrating.

The Hawke, Keating, Howard and Rudd governments I served were committed to improving the lot of Australia’s first peoples.   The Ministers I worked for had very different political persuasions but all wanted, in varying ways, to make a positive difference.   Most of the public servants I worked alongside did their best.  Yet, after two decades, the scale of relative social and economic disadvantage suffered by Indigenous Australians was as intractable as ever.

In the 30 months since I left the APS I have reflected at length on that failure.  Two key things I have learned.

First, that far too many government initiatives, always well meant and often well implemented, simply ended up compounding the problem of passive welfare and learned helplessness.  Programs that were meant to alleviate social exclusion were delivered in such a way as to reinforce a sense of dependence and marginalisation.   The best of intentions often created the worst of outcomes.  Stripped bare of the rhetoric of self-determination or mutual responsibility, what was too often provided was sit-down money, training to nowhere and, unintentionally, financial disincentive to undertake work.

Second, the structure of bureaucratic programs tended to ossify over time.  Progress can be regulated to the most exacting of ethical standards and meet every guideline but still become disconnected from the outcomes that they were meant to deliver.  Time after time publicly-funded training led to little sustainable employment, inevitably feeding cynicism amongst Indigenous participants.  Go-round-in-circles training became not a solution but part of the problem.

It is absolutely clear that to provide Aboriginal people with a real chance to take control of their lives, to find a job, to earn a wage and to support their family, the delivery of training has to be inextricably bound to the experience of work.  Training needs to guarantee employment.  It needs to be delivered in a short but intensive manner.  Most importantly, it needs to be tied to the actual job requirements of employers or industries.  The workplace is hard yakka.  Certified training alone is not enough.  Work-readiness is equally important.

That’s why I lend my full support to the idea of Industry Vocational Training and Employment Centres.

That’s why I’m 100% behind this important initiative of the Australian Employment Covenant and GenerationOne.

That’s why I’ve given my commitment to working with the next Commonwealth government and its public servants to flesh out this bold idea.  I give my assurance that the rhetoric can be turned into policy.  It’s really not that hard.

I would like to believe that an incoming government, of either political persuasion, will commit to its implementation.  It’s vital that political risk aversion or administrative caution does not stand in the way of public and social innovation.

For Aunty Beryl’s sake:  let’s just to it.©

*Beryl Van-Oploo is the dynamic force behind the Yaama Dhiyaan hospitality training college.

© Julia Gillard, in writing, and Tony Abbott, in his speech, have now indicated their support for the initiative.