E&OE...........
Well thank you very much Mr Brough, Dr Peter Boxall, my parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. Nights like this are important because they allow me on behalf of the Government to pay tribute to all of the people who';ve worked so hard in connection with Work for the Dole projects over the five years that the programme has been in operation. And in that time something in the order of 180,000 places in Work for the Dole have been filled, involving 9,500 projects. And it';s covered a variety of activities, many of them extremely exciting and all of them very rewarding, especially for the people who';ve been helped and given motivation and a greater sense of purpose and learned new skills and new capacities as a result of being involved in Work for the Dole.
It';s also an occasion to congratulate the achievers, to compliment all of the participants and generally to reflect on a programme which did, as Mal said, have its detractors, there were those who said it was wrong to ask people to put something back in return for the provision of basic support which is the obligation of any decent society. But as time has gone by the doubters have disappeared and the hesitations have gone away and the difficulties have dissolved. And it really is a programme that has been very successful. I did have a particular commitment to its introduction and I';m personally delighted that the Department, and I want to congratulate Dr Boxall and his Department for the splendid work that he and they have done in making this programme so successful. And I also want to thank Mal Brough, and before him other ministers for the tremendous energy that they have bought to this project because it was a new concept in the Australian experience. It was said for many years you couldn';t do this, there was this vague idea, it proved to be a complete furphy, that it in some way violated Australia';s international obligations. I don';t think something that helps 180,000 people can violate any of our obligations, international or otherwise.
I think it';s something that is reaching out to people and involving them. And what it does is to bring together the sinews of a decent positive society. It brings the Government, it brings the business community, it brings motivated community groups and it brings individuals together in a great social coalition as I';m fond of calling it.
And I am delighted once again to be involved here tonight, to congratulate everybody, to thank the Minister and the Department and most importantly of all to wish those people who are here tonight as beneficiaries of Work for the Dole, to wish them well in their future careers, to remark upon the turn around in so many lives that Work for the Dole has provided and to wish them great success and going from strength to strength in the years ahead.
I thank everybody associated with Work for the Dole, it';s been a great success, it';s going to be expanded and improved and added to from the first of July and it will be bigger and better when I come back next year.
Thank you.
[ends]