Andrew Forrest’s jobs program goes directly to jail

The federal government and billionaire philanthropist Andrew Forrest are taking indigenous jobs training into prisons.

Andrew Forrest will today announce the ­Coalition is spending $872,000 on a vocational training and ­employment centre at Perth’s Acacia Prison for men.

The federal government and billionaire philanthropist Andrew Forrest are taking indigenous jobs training into prisons, starting in Mr Forrest’s home state where the Aboriginal incarceration rate is the highest in the nation.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion and Mr Forrest will today announce the ­Coalition is spending $872,000 on a vocational training and ­employment centre at Perth’s Acacia Prison for men.

So far, 9000 indigenous Australians have been helped to find work through the federally funded VTEC program, based on the employment model of Mr Forrest’s GenerationOne, an initiative of his charitable organisation, the Minderoo Foundation.

Of those men and women who have found work through VTECs, more than 5000 were still employed six months later.

The jobs training centre at Acacia Prison will initially help 70 indigenous men prepare for guaranteed jobs on release from prison. It will be jointly run by ­Ebenezer Aboriginal Corporation and GenerationOne.

The federal government’s contribution to the centre comes from the $5 billion Indigenous Advancement Strategy.

Senator Scullion has praised the VTEC program as a departure from the “broken system of churn and training for training’s sake” that he said the Coalition inherited in 2013. There are now 30 VTECs across Australia.

“The VTEC program is an innovative new model where providers only engage an indigenous jobseeker when there is a guaranteed job at the end, provide training specific for that job, and only receive funding when the jobseeker has been in work for that all-important first six-month ­period,” Senator Scullion said.

“Pleasingly, the VTEC program has exceeded all expectations. Over 9000 indigenous jobseekers have been placed in jobs and of these 57 per cent, or 5192 jobseekers, have been in work for over six months.”

Mr Forrest, the chairman of ­GenerationOne, described the program as a way of reducing the rates of recidivism. “We want to change the way training is provided in prisons, eliminate barriers to employment, break the cycle of reincarceration and change lives,” he said.

According to the 2016 census, in Western Australia the number of indigenous Australians in jail per 100,000 was 3997.