Generic skills--skills that apply across a variety of jobs and life contexts--are taking on increased importance in Australia and internationally. There is a high demand for generic skills in the workplace because employers seek to ensure business success by recruiting and retaining employees who have a variety of skills and personal attributes as well as technical skills, while individuals also need a range of generic skills to form and maintain family and community relationships. Generic skills are known by several names, including key skills, core skills, essential skills, key competencies, necessary skills, transferable skills, and industry's preferred term employability skills. There is no one definitive list of generic skills, but each list includes the following elements: (1) basic/fundamental skills; (2) people-related skills; (3) conceptual/thinking skills; (4) personal skills and attributes; (5) skills related to the business world; and (6) skills related to the community. Each sector of education schools, vocational education and training, higher education, and adult and community education has a role to play in helping people develop their generic skills. Australia's education sectors have facilitated generic skills development in isolation, but a collaborative cross-sectorial approach that focuses on the generic skills most closely linked with employability is being developed and will be appraised in 2004. (Contains 5 figures and 22 references.) (MO)