State and Territory governments will work more closely to provide co-ordinated government efforts for job seekers.

The Minister for Employment Participation, Brendan O’Connor, today hosted the first meeting in a decade of Federal, State and Territory governments to discuss employment services.

The governments have agreed to work together on an on-going basis to better match state and territory programs to Commonwealth resources in areas including:

• Indigenous job seekers
• Highly disadvantaged job seekers, and
• People with a disability

The Australian, State and Territory governments agreed greater co-ordination between governments would ensure the most effective support to help job seekers.

The Ministers supported stronger links between governments to provide timely and appropriate assistance to workers displaced due to the global economic circumstance.

The Australian Government has acted immediately with a comprehensive and decisive $10.4 billion package which includes $187 million to create an extra 56,000 new training places this financial year to help keep the economy strong during the global financial crisis.

This takes the Australian Government’s commitment for extra training places to $2 billion and 701,000 new places over five years.

Minister O’Connor also outlined the Rudd Government’s new $3.9 billion employment services, which will begin on July 1 2009 and discussed how existing state and territory programs can link in with the new services to help job seekers.

The Australian Government has also agreed for the States to contribute their ideas for projects under the $41 million Innovation Fund.

The Australian, State and Territory governments have all agreed to meet again in 2009.