LAUNCH OF THE ‘INNOVATIVE EMPLOYMENT PROJECT – DISABILITY SUPPORT WORKERS’

_{20 April, 2007}

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Thanks very much Gene it’s a real pleasure for me to be here at the launch of this new programme today.  There are so many important people here, which is all of you of course and that demonstrates the community’s support and interest in this particular programme. 

I particularly wanted to mention Mike Reynolds, and you can’t get anyone more important than that as he is the Speaker of the Queensland Parliament, so he is the absolute boss man when it comes to the Parliament in Queensland.  It’s great to have Mike’s support for this initiative.

It is also great to see Councillors Jenny Lane and Ken Turner here from the Thuringowa City Council which are obviously well represented and any number of other significant people; Jason Milward from DEWR in Townsville, Ian Kuhl the Chairman of NQCES and Gene who is an effervescent live wire person who is always very good at getting people involved.

I do want to congratulate all of you who have been part of this new initiative. 

My briefing notes say that it is the launch of the Innovative Employment Project – Disability Support Workers Employment Demand Demonstration Project.

Now I tried to find an acronym for that and whilst it is part of our Government’s ongoing employment generation project, I thought “well that would employ two or three public servants for a couple of years to actually get that name for this project”.

But it does aim to place 30 Townsville people who are unemployed, people who aren’t normally in this field, parents in some cases and disabled people in some cases into training and employment in the disability support industry.

These 30 Townsville people will join others in what is interestingly, Australia’s fourth largest employment sector, that is the Health and Community Services sector.

Over the last five years there have been 153,300 new jobs created in the Health and Community Services area and according to Australian Job Outlook 2006 which was published by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations more then 150,000 new jobs are predicted for the next 5 years in this sector.

I am confident the 30 people targeted in this particular programme will form part of those 150,000.

This innovative employment project received $82,500 funding from the Australian Government through its Employment Demand Demonstration Projects.

Ladies and Gentlemen, all of this work being done proudly by the Australian Government and I am here representing Sharman Stone the Minister for Workforce Participation.  All of this is part of the strong employment situation which we have in Australia at the present time, following a decade of uninterrupted economic growth in our country through, I proudly say, the careful management of Peter Costello and the Australian Government.

As you would have seen recently, unemployment in Australia is now down to 4.4% and in Queensland 4% and when you compare that to what it was 12 years ago at something in the order of 12%, you can see that there have been huge steps taken forward in creating new full time and part time jobs.

Ladies and Gentlemen today we’re celebrating the opportunities that this project will present to participants, also to the disability employment industry and indeed to the community as a whole.

I particularly want to thank others who have supported this project and of course very important in that area is TAFE and I particularly thank George Peever, the Director of Business Studies at TAFE for his involvement in this particular project.

I also want to thank the industry employers who have been part of this and as well the providers of Australian Government Employment Services.

By providing funding for this innovative employment project the Australian Government is looking to the future and to the benefit which will come from all of us working together to generate arrangements which do support employers, do support job seekers, do support the service providers and of course in this instance support the disability community with these new trained employees.

Ladies and Gentlemen it is good to catch up with many of you again.  It is not an area I personally have a lot of involvement in the Federal Parliament.  I have interests in lots of areas and certainly I am a great supporter of this area but I am delighted to say to those of you who are in the disability support area, that just last weekend we selected a new Senator to come in to the Federal Parliament and I only mention this to say that Senator Sue Boyce, as she is as of yesterday (and thank you Mike for getting that through the Queensland Parliament) I just want to mention to this audience that Senator Sue Boyce has had 23 years in the disability support area.

As many of you may have read she has a daughter with Down syndrome and that means for the term of her daughters life she has been very much involved in the disability support associations and services.

I am delighted that we are actually getting in to the Federal Parliament not just someone like me who supports, but someone who understands right at the grass roots level what this all means, how governments can help and indeed how governments should help.

So ladies and gentlemen I look forward very much to the success of this project and to the continued development of employment of job seekers in the Health and Community Services sector.

Congratulations again to all of those who are involved and it will be great to see this new support network for the disabled in Townsville, be great to see people who haven’t previously been able to get involved in training, involved in the disability support area through this programme.

Congratulations to all those involved.

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