Press conference: Nominations open for the 2023 Prime Minister’s National Veterans’ Employment Awards

E&OE transcript
Press conference
Avalon Air Show

MINISTER KEOGH: It is wonderful to be here at the air show in Avalon, here with, obviously the Air Forces, but Defence Industry as well and, critically, veteran employers involved in this space. We’re here in the stall for AeroPM because today, I’m announcing the opening of nominations for the Prime Minister’s Australian Veteran Employment Awards.

These are important awards to showcase the great work done by employers across the country, in all different sectors, in employing veterans, taking advantage of those great skills that our veterans have to offer. But not just veterans, but their partners as well. So, we have awards across veteran employers, veterans themselves, as well as veteran partners, to make sure we’re showcasing that full opportunity that’s available for employers, as well as our veterans to connect with those employers when they do transition out of Defence. The awards provide that opportunity, of celebrating the great work that’s already happening, and reminding potential employers of the great opportunity that employing a veteran provides, because they get those soft skills that they all have, in leadership, teamwork, being able to work under pressure, that agility, no matter what the role is. Employers are crying out for those sorts of skills, and the experience, that our veterans and their partners have to offer, and AeroPM have won these awards in the past, and are a great example of an employer that is supporting veterans, and is veteran-led, in many respects, and really recognises the benefit at the table to bring, for their business as well as so many other businesses around Australia.

Those nominations are open now, for the Prime Minister’s Australian Veteran Employment Awards, and nominations close in April. So I encourage any employers out there that are employing veterans to nominate, but to also nominate their veterans that they’ve employed for those awards. As well as anyone that’s engaging with veteran partners around Australia.

JOURNALIST: Roughly how many veterans are there coming out of the Forces every year?

MINISTER KEOGH: At the moment we see around 6,000 people leave Defence every year, for a variety of reasons. Some for medical-related reasons, some because they’ve made family decisions about needing to stay in particular locations, or it’s just time in their career to move on to something different. We understand that. We want to keep as many people in Defence as possible. But when people do make that choice to leave Defence, we want to make sure that they’re able to find good employment opportunities. So celebrating those employers that are good employers of veterans, provide that cultural appropriate workplace that understand what veterans might be having to grapple with as they readjust to civilian life. It’s a really important element of these awards.

JOURNALIST: Is there extra support for businesses that employ veterans?

MINISTER KEOGH: So, we are certainly looking at how we can develop even more than what we’re doing. Because it’s important that potential employers understand what they can get out of a veteran, the great benefits that come from that, as well as some of the matters that are important to understand about a veteran’s background in Defence. So, importantly, we’re developing some programs around better understanding the skills that have been built up in Defence that might not look like a civilian qualification, but actually they’ve already got all of those skills and they’ve done that experience. So we’re going to be rolling out, as part of our Veteran Employment Program, programs that are about supporting and recognising prior learning, and to support employers in understanding what that prior learning can give them now in civilian life.

JOURNALIST: Because that’s often an issue for veterans, isn’t it? They’ll come out, they would have done all the training, and yet out in the real world that training’s not recognised. What sort of response are you getting from, I guess, the Unis and the academic world with that sort of particular initiative?

MINISTER KEOGH: Certainly we have seen a problem where (aircraft noises), so certainly it’s been the case that certain training elements that have occurred in Defence have not directly married up with civilian qualifications. We’re doing a body of work now in Government as well as working with training sectors like universities around how they can best understand and recognise that prior learning and convert either directly to an outside qualification or recognise that prior learning and experience as getting advance credit on qualifications so that then you only need to cover the gap in skills training so that a veteran can get that degree or that technical qualification in the civilian world much quicker and get out into the workforce.

JOURNALIST: Minister, suppose you’ve got ten people in a lift for 30 seconds, why should they employ vets out of the ADF?

MINISTER KEOGH: Veterans that are coming out of our Australian Defence Force come with leadership skills, teamwork skills, the capacity to work under pressure, they’re incredibly agile, they offer all the soft skills (aircraft noises) the veterans that come out of our defence force are incredibly well trained, they come with all the soft skills that an employer wants, leadership, teamwork, agility, working under pressure, and many of them come with trade qualifications and experience as well so they are a great group of people to employ across a whole range of different sectors and industries.

JOURNALIST: And Minister finally, Veterans’ Affairs in the more recent years hasn’t been, shall we say a happy camp for many of the veterans, thankfully that’s changing, what’s your message to the veterans that perhaps have been a little frustrated over the last year or so.

MINISTER KEOGH: We completely recognise that the Department of Veterans’ Affairs hasn’t delivered everything that veterans have needed or deserve to get from their government and that’s why we are implementing critical change, employing 500 additional staff to get through the backlog of claims as well as making sure its fit for purpose in the 21^st century, with additional upgrades to IT and internal systems, we’ve now started our process of consultation about new legislation reform, new entitlements system, based on 21^st century legislation. To support that we are asking people to give us their feedback on that now so that we can better support veterans going forward.

JOURNALIST: Terrific.

MINISTER KEOGH: And I might let Adam and Emily say a few things as well.

JOURNALIST: Emily and Adam you guys have won this award before, what’s it meant to your business?

EMILY FRIZELL: I think it’s been instrumental in elevating our business. So winning the award I think gave us a lot of publicity, recognition within the broader community, but importantly we are actually really passionate about supporting veterans, so winning this award and talking a lot about our veterans’ employment program, the support and the transition elements that come with that, we think has actually positively influenced the industry and other businesses within the industry in terms of establishing their own great veteran employment programs which at the end of the day is what the awards program is all about, which is encouraging businesses to actually facilitate and create great employment options for veterans. As the Minister said, veterans are fantastic for our business, you know the veterans in our business bring with them so many different skill sets from their time in the military. They’re dedicated, they’re passionate, they work hard, they have a lot of teamwork and leadership skills, and that is just amazing for our business.

JOURNALIST: Excellent, Adam what would you say to a business that goes: well it’s great to have all these awards but it’s just paperwork, submissions take a long time and we get nothing out of it in the end.

ADAM FRIZELL: I would challenge that business immediately and say when we applied for these award, we had a great brand around employing veterans but our processes weren’t quite as mature as we thought they were. So by looking at the awards nomination criteria we looked back and went well, now we can reflect and update our processes to ensure that they’re contemporary and align with what DVA are looking for, but also what is best practice for the community and then we can demonstrate to everyone else in our ecosystem that there is a really great way to support veteran employment and looking backwards, inwards into your business to see how you can improve and continuously improve your processes to support veteran employment is one of the ways you can get a good outcome by applying for these awards.

EMILY FRIZELL: And Brian if I can add to that as well, and actually as far as the applications go, this particular program has a really easy application process, so it’s very simple and clear to put your application in at the initial stage, so it’s not something which is onerous and you know requires hours and hours and hours to do.

[END]

Authorised by The Hon Matt Keogh MP

Open Arms – Veterans & Families Counselling provides 24/7 free confidential crisis support for current and ex-serving ADF personnel and their families on 1800 011 046 or the Open Arms website. Safe Zone Support provides anonymous counselling on 1800 142 072. Defence All-Hours Support Line provides support for ADF personnel on 1800 628 036 or the Defence Health Portal. Defence Member and Family Helpline provides support for Defence families on 1800 624 608