No more dreaming of CDEP

The list on the blackboard of a primary school said it all. On one side was a list of jobs performed by white people in the community (teacher, nurse, and so on). On the other side was a list of jobs performed by local Aboriginal people (assistant teacher, health worker, CDEP worker, and so on).

I was initially horrified at the teacher categorising Indigenous and non-Indigenous people this way – until I was told the students generated the list, not the teacher. I was only slightly less horrified to hear that.

Though well intentioned, past policies designed to ‘help’ Indigenous people into employment have created a form of unofficial apartheid, whereby Indigenous people have been steered into ‘culturally appropriate’ positions that invariably entail being assistant teachers, not teachers and Aboriginal health workers, not nurses.

These separate career paths have limited the career aspirations of Indigenous children. When the Community Development Employments Projects (CDEP) program was in full swing, it was not unusual to hear children from Indigenous communities say, ‘When I grow up I want to go on CDEP.’

For this and many other reasons, the Howard government decided to end the CDEP scheme. But although the Rudd government continued to phase out CDEP, existing recipients were allowed to remain on the program until July 2011; this was later extended to July 2012. And just last week the Indigenous Affairs Minister, Jenny Macklin, announced that the 4,000 people still receiving CDEP payments will remain on the scheme for another five years.

Macklin argued that many of the people on CDEP have been on the scheme for so long that it would be ‘pointless to move them on.’ The Coalition has criticised this approach, arguing that the Labor government was taking a lazy approach to CDEP by allowing Indigenous people to stay on it for a further five years without reforming it and returning it to its ‘original principles.’

CDEP was originally designed as a replacement for unemployment benefits in remote communities and to provide work and on-the-job training. But despite its good intentions, CDEP ended up hindering rather than helping Indigenous people.

At the program’s heart was the notion that Indigenous Australians are not capable of holding mainstream employment. Inevitably, because it was a separate program for Aboriginal people, lower standards were allowed to creep in and people ended up getting paid for doing very little.

If the Labor government is serious about tackling unemployment in remote communities, it must ensure that its new $1.5 billion Remote Jobs and Communities Program treats Indigenous Australians the same as all other Australians, enforce the ‘No Show No Pay’ policy, and provide Indigenous Australians with real training and real jobs. There can be no more excuses or allowances.

Sara Hudson is a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies and author of CDEP: Help or Hindrance? The Community Development Employment Program and its Impact on Indigenous Australians.