Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share 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)