Forrest backs training provider

MINING magnate Andrew Forrest will today endorse a Sydney youth organisation as a best practice provider of training for indigenous employees.

MINING magnate Andrew Forrest will today endorse a Sydney youth organisation -- Marist Youth Care -- as a best practice provider of training for indigenous employee candidates, increasing pressure on the government to adopt its model across the nation.

Marist Youth Care is a specialist youth organisation that provides services for more than 1000 young people and their families in western Sydney every year.

Marist's Vocational Training and Employment Centres provide a range of pre-employment, job-specific training programs for at-risk young people and link young jobseekers with real and sustainable employment opportunities.

VTECs deliver employer-directed training and holistic support for guaranteed jobs, committed through the Australian Employment Covenant, an initiative of Mr Forrest's GenerationOne indigenous campaign.

New job centres that link indigenous training with direct jobs being pushed by Mr Forrest have won the in-principle support of the federal government, but they are still to unveil how they will implement his plan, frustrating the mining magnate.

Tony Abbott has promised to fund four trial sites for the indigenous job placement program, designed by Mr Forrest to offer a guaranteed job to indigenous people ready to do six months' training.

Mr Forrest will sign a memorandum of understanding with Marist Youth Care in recognition of its best practice model. He said that under Marist's training system, the retention rate of employees beyond 26 weeks was well over 70 per cent. This compared with employment commencements with Job Services Australia, that sat around 24 per cent.

The AEC began in 2008 as an agreement between employers, the government and indigenous people to secure the commitment of 50,000 sustainable jobs for indigenous Australians.