00:00 It is a program that when we came to government in 2022, we said we would abolish GREG. We
00:07 felt it wasn't working. We felt it was penalising heavily on participants across Australia.
00:14 But also it didn't have superannuation, it didn't have long service leave, all the kind
00:19 of entitlements that come with work. People were largely, you know, in many places just
00:24 painting rocks or doing lawn mowing and very, very menial sort of tasks. So we wanted to
00:30 actually drill down to what we could do with this program. And this program has had many
00:35 iterations. Greg, if I can just sort of remind your audience, you know, even as far back
00:40 as the 1990s, I was actually on the Community Development Employment Program, which was
00:45 the first iteration of this. And that program was providing money to organisations in regional
00:53 and remote Australia. And those organisations would then determine who they would employ,
00:58 how they would employ, where they would employ. And it worked. You know, it worked. So we'd
01:03 like to see something similar to that in this program going forward.
01:07 Yeah, I understand you were a beneficiary of it in the early years of your media career.
01:13 You set up, I think, a community radio station, didn't you?
01:17 I did. I was enormously proud to do that. And it was back in my home community of Borrella
01:24 to be able to set up community radio whilst I was working on the CDEP with the local organisation
01:30 there. And, you know, again, the local organisation could work with the skills of the different
01:36 people who needed jobs. And I was one of them at the time.
01:39 OK. So does that mean because it is so community led that you as a government are unable to
01:45 put your finger on which sectors, that is to say, oh, we'd aim to have X hundred people
01:51 in retail, a certain number in the care sector? Is it truly laissez faire? Is it truly left
01:58 to the community to direct all of those sectors and all of those numbers?
02:03 Well, what's exciting about this, Greg, is that you have the community, yes, and they
02:07 should be at the table in these discussions. But you also have local government. The local
02:12 government sector does need a large cohort of employees, especially in our regional and
02:18 rural areas, in the shires, in the regional councils. But I would also like to see the
02:24 Chamber of Commerce involved, especially here in the Northern Territory. I'd like to see
02:28 the hospitality industry involved. We have a great ranger program that is working where
02:33 we're doubling the number of rangers. So we can really do a broad sector. And even with
02:38 the rangers program, you know, surveillance of our coastlines, all of this can be incorporated
02:44 in this new plan going forward.
02:46 Now I noticed, you may not have heard it, Senator, but Peter Dutton in his speech to
02:50 the Reps' Chamber after the Prime Minister tabled closing the gap, he said if almost
02:56 three quarters of a billion dollars is to be spent on a program, there must be guarantees
03:01 the 3,000 jobs figure is achievable rather than simply being a wishful target. Are there
03:07 guarantees around that number, 3,000?
03:11 Well I'd certainly want to see it. Greg, I'm enormously proud of this announcement and
03:15 I'll be working very hard in the areas that I have responsibility for. I want to see health
03:20 workers and health clinicians involved in this. I want to see the care sector involved
03:24 in this in terms of aged care, childcare. All of these are still very critical on our
03:30 remote and regional communities and they can be self-sustaining jobs.
03:35 But will they ever reach a point where they, yes they fund them, what is self-sustainable
03:40 I suppose is my question. Will they always require repeat dollops of Commonwealth cash
03:46 and it's $700 million for three years today, but do they get to a point where they are
03:51 economically viable themselves?
03:55 Well there's no doubt that for businesses to be able to grow from this kind of concept
04:01 is important. We've seen in Watair for example with the green plum or the Kakadu plum, there
04:07 have been businesses that have generated as a result of these kinds of programs and I
04:12 expect that that would be the case with these jobs going forward too.
04:16 And just a quick final observation from you, Malindiri McCarthy, on the closing the gaps
04:22 targets I brushed over them very lightly and we are having other discussions in the program
04:26 today, but no great sense of encouragement for you is there?
04:32 Well we have to take hope from what we can see is improving, but we've got a long way
04:37 to go Greg. Obviously the structural change that the Productivity Commission referred
04:42 to was what we tried to do with the referendum last year. We were unsuccessful with that.
04:47 It is important that First Nations people are at the table and being involved in policies
04:52 and decisions that impact them. So we will be working on that continuously.
04:56 [BLANK_AUDIO]
