NORTHERN FUTURES

Mr ODENWALDER (Little Para) (15:26): Last Friday I had the absolute pleasure to attend, along with the Minister for the Northern Suburbs and the member for Taylor, the launch of the Northern Futures Northern Adelaide Skills, Workforce and Employment Blueprint.

Northern Futures is a group of business people and stakeholders in the north who have established a not-for-profit organisation, which aims to develop and progress government programs to advance education, training and workforce development in the northern suburbs. The board of Northern Futures enlisted the help of Professor Ed Carson and Dr Lorraine Kerr to develop a blueprint and an action plan to help residents in Adelaide's north take advantage of the growing employment opportunities in the region, which, as we all know, is the focus of much of Adelaide's economic growth. As everyone who lives and works in a professional capacity in the northern suburbs knows, the employment situation there has been the subject of study after study and, despite growing economic activity in the area, it has rarely translated into jobs specifically for locals. There is a skills deficit in the northern Adelaide region associated with poor educational outcomes, early school leaving and generational unemployment and underemployment.

The state government is addressing all of those issues and making considerable headway, but it is also up to local leaders in education, training, business and politics to take action in our own community. We all need to work together in the north, and, as the federal member for Wakefield Nick Champion said on the day, we need to smash the status quo and stop doing things the same old way. We need to have an action plan instead of more studies telling us things we already know.

So, this blueprint was developed, and I will quote and paraphrase from this blueprint from time to time. It identifies both long and short-term areas for action. The major aims are to upskill existing workers and place local unemployed and underemployed job-ready people into jobs, and also to upskill and re-skill those who are unemployed but not yet job ready, and then, importantly, to carefully monitor and evaluate the outcomes over a longer period.

As most of us who live out there would know, and as this report, like many before it, details, there are several barriers to employment for many, but by no means all, people in the north. Some of these barriers include: being of Indigenous or Torres Strait Islander origins; being from a culturally and linguistically diverse background; and also, quite importantly, having low literacy and numeracy levels. Young people, particularly in places like Elizabeth, Elizabeth South, the Grove and Davoren Park, are still grossly over-represented in early school leaving and rates of post-school qualifications are very low there.

The report notes that low literacy and numeracy among children is so significant that it will prevent future job seekers from benefitting from any employment programs offered now. For example, the NAPLAN results demonstrate that in excess of 25 per cent of children in some of these poorer areas are below minimum national standards for literacy and numeracy. The report accurately notes that:

It is imperative that these learning, literacy and numeracy shortcomings are addressed now for current unemployed people, and for the children who will be in the labour force of tomorrow.

So, the blueprint points to six distinct areas, or pillars, for action, both short and long term. The first pillar is to address the aspirations of young people in the area, to support and grow proven initiatives, which increase young people's aspirations, and to develop new initiatives. The second is to promote numeracy and literacy in the north and to continue to work with schools and state government programs to make sure that young people leave school work ready in terms of their basic literacy.

The third pillar is coordinated career development; that is, working with schools, training providers and employment services and exposing young people to work and career options at an early stage. The fourth pillar is to encourage and further develop links between industry, education, training and employment providers, and we are making considerable headway in that area already in the north.

The fifth pillar—and I think this is an important point—is to collate an accessible evidence database, a hub of statistical information, and to agree on sets of measures that can be monitored and built on as time goes by. The final pillar is 'to establish a regional governance body, with links to the Australian government and state and local government, industry, business and education and employment providers, to lead and coordinate responses to priority regional needs'.

As I said, the last thing we need in the north is yet another report telling us things we already know gathering dust on the shelves of MPs and councillors in the area. I have a lot of faith, after attending that launch, in the team at Northern Futures as well as the other local MPs, business leaders and leaders like Lea Stevens at Northern Connections that we can translate some of these sobering statistics into real action for the future.