Stepping away from CDEP

The Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) program was established to help Indigenous Australians move from welfare into work. But despite its good intentions, thirty years of CDEP have proved that it is preventing Indigenous people from getting mainstream jobs. Only around 5% of people on CDEP move into real employment and more than 40% of Indigenous people in remote communities have been on CDEP for five years or more.

The federal government has admitted CDEP has a number of failings, and has asked for “fresh innovative ideas” to bring about meaningful reform.

Recognising the extent of the problem and having in a set of standards in place is essential to any reform in this area. Here are the standards that should set the foundation for reform:

As part of the Northern Territory Intervention, the federal government converted over a thousand CDEP positions that were supporting government service delivery into real full-time positions. But the government has not seemed to recognise the amount of training needed to enable people to take on these new roles.

CDEP has effectively hidden the crisis in Indigenous education, because ‘work’ in most projects does not require participants to know how to read and write, and the training component is almost nonexistent.

To understand the extent of the problem, and to identify what the training needs are, the government should undertake an evaluation of the literacy and numeracy levels of people currently on CDEP. There are then four ways that people could be moved off CDEP.

First, those who are most able and who may have been working as teacher’s aides, health care workers, or in other areas of service delivery, should be moved into real employment paid for by the relevant government departments or agencies, and provided with appropriate training and support.

Second, those with very low levels of literacy and numeracy, who may have been engaged on CDEP in makeshift work-like home duties should be encouraged to undertake remedial literacy and numeracy training. CDEP should be linked with the Job Network, and refocused on work readiness and getting people into jobs. Payments should be administered by Centrelink. This would not only prevent ‘double dipping,’ but would also enable the government to continue welfare quarantining where necessary.

Third, CDEP organisations that have managed to successfully engage with outside businesses in ‘host employer’ schemes could continue to act in a ‘job broker’ role. In this case, CDEP payments could take the form of a wage subsidy paid directly to employers to encourage them to hire and train Indigenous people.

Lastly, alternative funding should be sought for some programs currently reliant on CDEP, such as the CDEP ranger programs that are eligible for funding from the Department of Environment and Water Resources’ Working on Country program.

The government also needs to address the issue of communal land ownership and access to land, which has effectively stymied the development of an economy in remote areas. The government’s decision to enter into forty-year lease agreements with traditional owners goes some way towards addressing the problem, but reinstating the permit system was a mistake. In some communities, delivery of food to the local store is hampered by delays in issuing permits. The maintenance of vital transport networks should not be subject to the whims of a powerful few. If these places are expected to become viable communities—where employment outside of CDEP is a possibility—the permit system cannot be allowed to continue.

Sara Hudson is a Policy Analyst at the Centre for Independent Studies, her paper CDEP: Help or Hindrance? was published by CIS in July