Dr. Alice Mathers:

I may have to leave after this response but I wanted to come back to Senator Higgins's point about skills not being the end point. That has always been our philosophy because the moment we get tied into focusing on a framework for measurements and success which is driven by the number of people who have the requisite-seeming skills for work at that point, we are already out of date. The other big thing about that is that it does nothing really to demonstrate what we all need, which is a lasting behavioural change to using digital positively in work and in life. Our model and the model of all the community organisations with which we work have been about that lasting behavioural change. It is a question of how one overcomes previous negative experiences, the feeling that one is being "done to", that digital is something one must accept. Increasingly, that is the story we hear time and time again from heavy users of a range of government services: "This is being done to me, and I am being sanctioned as a result." It is a matter of overcoming those engagements and solving the immediate crisis in order that people have the space to engage with digital differently. A lot of this, as a number of other speakers have mentioned, comes through peer-to-peer support and people who have been on a similar journey. We work a lot with digital champions, who are people who have come through that journey in their communities and can say that digital is about achieving one's personal goals in life, that it will change and particularly that it is critical that one is adaptable. Digital is not about using one programme or piece of software to do one task because that immediately places people in a point of vulnerability. It is about thinking of digital as helping people solve problems or achieve goals and that therefore digital is an ally. Teaching people how to have that mindset is as critical as teaching them the technical skills themselves. That is what community organisations are brilliant at doing.