Community-controlled training builds lasting capability and community resilience
Aboriginal Community Controlled RTOs are economic infrastructure. They create jobs, build local leadership, and retain expertise to train future workers in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
That capacity grew in Brisbane today, with 27 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander trainers and assessors graduating from the Building the First Nations VET Workforce Program. The graduates completed the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment as part of the NACCHO-led program's first cohort, delivered by MRWED Training and Assessment and supported by Aboriginal Community Controlled RTOs.
Coalition of Peaks Lead Convenor and NACCHO Chair Donnella Mills delivered the keynote address, ‘Authority, Capability and the Workforce We Build Ourselves’, at the inaugural National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander RTO Summit ahead of the graduation. Ms Mills said the graduates demonstrate what Priority Reform Two of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap means in practice: building community-controlled organisations with the capability and authority to shape their own economies.
“The Priority Reforms are often discussed as governance reforms or social policy reforms. They are also economic reforms,” Ms Mills said.
“Economic development cannot be delivered to communities from the outside. Lasting prosperity comes when Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have the organisations, capability and authority to shape our own future.”
The Summit comes as the Coalition of Peaks completes a national capability analysis of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled RTO sector. The project is mapping the sector’s reach and operating needs, as well as the investment required to sustain it. It includes a social and economic impact study and will give governments recommendations to stabilise and grow the sector over the next five years.
This work sits within the five-year National Skills Agreement, which includes dedicated Closing the Gap investment and a commitment to establish a nationally networked VET Policy Partnership. It also carries forward the case that the former Coalition of Peaks Lead Convenor, Pat Turner AO, took to Skills Ministers in 2024 for equal partnership, urgent investment and long-term sector strengthening.
For the Coalition of Peaks, the next step is not another short-term program. It is a VET Policy Partnership with equal standing before decisions are made; dedicated Closing the Gap investment that is additional and visible; and multi-year funding that treats the community-controlled RTO sector as permanent skills infrastructure.
“Authority means this sector has a formal role in the decisions that govern it. The VET Policy Partnership must have equal standing to set the agenda, shape options and hold governments accountable before decisions are made,” Ms Mills said.
“Mainstream dollars cannot be rebadged as Closing the Gap. Dedicated Closing the Gap investment must be additional, visible and quarantined for structural reform.”
Ms Mills said Pat Turner’s agenda was not a short-term response to workforce shortages. It was about putting capability and authority in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations.
“Pat wanted our people throughout the system, as learners, workers, trainers, managers, chief executives and decision-makers, and our organisations resourced to lead,” Ms Mills said.
Each graduate returns to their organisation able to deliver and assess recognised training for future cohorts. Together, they increase the sector’s capacity to prepare future workers through community-controlled training.
“We are not asking to be fitted into the future of vocational education and training. Through our RTOs, our trainers and our next generation, we are building it,” Ms Mills said.
Media contact:
Meg Bacalhau (Essential Media), 0452 567 844, meg.bacalhau@essentialmedia.com.au