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Neo-paternalism and the destruction of CDEP.

Article Excerpt
On 23 July the Howard Government announced its twelfth intervention under its national emergency measures: the abolition of the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme in the Northern Territory. The scheme presently has an estimated 7500 participants (according to official figures). This ranks in my mind as the single most destructive decision in Indigenous affairs policy that I have witnessed in 30 years of research and involvement in Aboriginal communities, alongside the decision to abolish ATSIC in 2004.

CDEP is often referred to as the Indigenous work-for-the dole scheme, but it is much more than that. Created in 1977 by the Fraser Government, it has multiple objectives, including community development, employment creation, income support, and enterprise assistance. CDEP was introduced at a time when unemployment benefits were first being made available to Aboriginal people in remote Australia as a consequence of the abolition of paternalistic training allowances and their partial replacement with award positions, which resulted in a rapid increase in unemployment.

The beauty of CDEP is that the equivalent of participants' unemployment benefits is provided as a block grant to community-controlled organisations, which apply these funds according to local aspirations. In addition to unemployment benefit equivalents, participating communities are provided with administrative and capital support. The offset from welfare entitlements has meant that the scheme is cost effective. While participation in CDEP is sometimes referred to as 'passive welfare', this is wrong: participation has always been based on active work participation and, in many small communities remote from labour markets and commercial opportunities, CDEP is the only source of employment and income.

From 2004 and the demise of ATSIC, CDEP has been under threat. This is despite the fact that 36 000 Indigenous people and over 200 Indigenous organisations were participants at the time. This is primarily because it has come to be defined by the Howard Government as a labour market program only,...

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