Ms Anne Marie McDonnell:

We would like to share a case study from ourselves with an employer. We have permission to share their case study today. A lot of it comes from building disability confidence with employers. Leaning back, even to the Senator's earlier question, people are people and some of what we learn from the private sector we can also apply to the public sector.

We are working with Mr. Price Branded Bargains. It has got 60 stores across the country. It is looking at building up disability confidence at all levels, particularly the hiring managers and the supervisors in the store. Part of building up confidence is about exposure and about having authentic conversations about disability.

We have 650 employers. We have lots of wonderful, rich conversations, but a theme that runs throughout is an employer saying to us, "I am afraid I would say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing", which is understandable.

Even for ourselves as providers in the disability space, we fall into using titles and terms that are not familiar to employers. We talk about "reasonable accommodations", and perhaps that sounds like quite a costly intervention. What we have taken back - some lessons learned ourselves - is we realise that business-to-business talking to each other helps break down barriers. It is just that trust there.

Mr. Price allows us to share some of the lessons learned in what it does. They strongly believe in building confidence, giving work experience placements and being inclusive about how you hire. There is one wonderful example that I want to share about one of our students, for whom perhaps the traditional route would not have worked. They did a host company placement. They are very creative and instead of doing a curriculum vitae, CV, they wrote a poem about what employment would mean to them and then they met with a supervisor.

That was their accessible route into the job. They demonstrated their competencies on the ground and instead of a curriculum vitae they showed through a medium they were very comfortable with what it would be like. We really need to support employers to be creative in their inclusive recruitment and retention practices but to understand businesses are busy and need support in that way, and also create greater awareness around the subsidies and supports that are out there already. I hope some of that might be helpful to other private employers.