White paper on employment: Submission to Treasury

The Centre for Policy Development’s submission to Treasury for the Employment White Paper in December 2022 followed the Jobs and Skills Summit.

The submission draws on CPD’s diverse and interconnected work across the employment services system, people- and place-centered policy, early childhood development, and climate transition.

It identifies three major opportunities to advance full employment and build a bigger, better trained and more productive Australian workforce:

• Early Childhood: Create two generations of productivity gains through universally accessible, high quality early childhood education and care, which will boost women’s economic participation and set all children up for success.
• Just Transition: Reap the rewards of transitioning to a zero carbon economy, and mitigate related risks, by investing in emerging industries and diversifying our exports, in a way that puts people and communities
  most affected first
• Regional and Community Job Deals: Address long-term unemployment and disadvantage, build community capability, and respond to industry and employer needs locally by scaling up place-based approaches to jobs and skills.

It recommends:

• The identification of Place-Based Investment Sites to seize the opportunities at hand, and to demonstrate new approaches
  to policy, implementation and service system design and delivery. Places should be chosen on the basis of concentrated need, community readiness and diversity of settings.
• An approach to employment, skills, wages and industry that solves for the long-term wellbeing of Australian people, communities and the environment on which they depend.
• Viewing employment, skills building and workforce development as inextricably linked to advancing other areas of policy, and reaching stated goals. For example, a universal, high quality early childhood education and care system; or transition to a zero carbon economy; or renewing our trade and export position.
• Moving from piecemeal, disconnected policy processes and interventions, to joined-up approaches that involve greater coordination between departments, with states and territories and with non-government actors.
• More effective use of the Commonwealth levers and a more active role for the Commonwealth, including the necessary capability uplift.