Not sure how to take this. I dislike Arbib, but have little respect for the NT News.
I get the distinct feeling Arbib is a bit clueless in this area. Particularly if he's talking about remote aboriginal communities - I don't think Cohen has a macdonalds to take on unskilled 15 year olds...
Indigenous need to 'get out of bed'
SIMON KEARNEY
Source
September 19th, 2010
AUSTRALIA needs to teach young Aboriginal people to get out of bed and focus on economic development in indigenous communities to solve unemployment at more than three times the national average.
Indigenous Employment Minister Mark Arbib said government at every level would have to employ more indigenous people to start bringing unemployment down from above 16 per cent.
But he said many indigenous employment programs needed to start again from scratch. "The corporate sector says here are all these jobs, fill them. I could fill them tomorrow but they wouldn't be there in a month's time," he said. "These people would leave unless there's proper mentoring and proper support.
"You've got to make sure that anyone going for a job can actually read and write, work as part of a team, have a work ethic so they can get out of bed and go to work, and stay on at work, day in, day out.
"There are a lot of young indigenous people that have never done that. We've got to build from the ground up, brick by brick."
Senator Arbib said the only way to improve a range of indicators of well-being in indigenous communities was to create economic development and jobs for indigenous.
"It's all about employment in the end, you've got to do indigenous health, you've got to provide homes, but if you really want true and long-lasting change it all comes down to employment," he said.
"The only way to do it, to get indigenous employment right is through indigenous business and economic development."
Senator Arbib, who has the portfolios of indigenous employment, homelessness and sport, says the three are closely linked.
He said sport was another lever he could use to improve participation and motivation among indigenous and homeless people.
He estimated we need an extra 30,000 dwellings to beat homelessness. "Overall there's 105,000 people who are homeless. There's about 16,000 rough sleepers," he said.
The Senator, known as a party machine man, has told Prime Minister Julia Gillard he now wants to devote himself to working on social policy and has resigned his party positions.
He said policy makers often created complex programs and he wanted to create some more simple solutions that focused on improving connections between different levels of education and the workplace.
"I think we've got to get the basics right and improve connections, leverage off programs that are working and that's what I'll be doing," he said.
