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NT Intervention — the Wedge that Couldn’t

By: Marni Cordell

21 November 2007 - Aboriginal communities in Central Australia are the latest to be hit by the scrapping of Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) as part of the Northern Territory Intervention. In Hermmansburg, 180 kilometres west of Alice Springs, the transition is not going smoothly.

A group of men working as rangers around Hermmansburg have not been paid since their program lost CDEP funding on 26 October — the same day they received a Northern Territory Landcare award for their work.

The Tjuwanpa Rangers were told they would have to sign up for the dole and register for ‘transitional activities’ to continue receiving payments. But more than three weeks later many of the 37 men have still not received a cent since their last CDEP money came through on 29 October.

The co-ordinators of the program, the Central Land Council (CLC), say this problem is just the latest in the ill-managed rollout of the NT Intervention.

‘We’re finding it very hard to get straight information,’ says David Ross, Director of the CLC. ‘All that the Government tells us is that CDEP will be cut — in some places it’s already been cut — and that they were not ready to go with a replacement [at the time they cancelled it].

‘This is a lovely how-do-you-do, when [the Tjuwanpa Rangers] won a merit award four weeks ago,’ says Ross.

CDEP has always been a double-edged solution in Aboriginal communities. In some, the projects are a source of pride and well-earned income; in others, they’re little more than a glorified work-for-the-dole scheme or money-saving measure by governments wanting to skimp on wages.
Participants in the CDEP get a base wage and then ‘top ups’ for extra hours worked. In many communities the garbage collectors, road workers, and even teachers’ aides are CDEP participants, despite working full time in what are otherwise regular jobs.

As the Intervention rolls out across the Northern Territory, only around a quarter of CDEP participants are expected to be placed in so-called ‘real jobs.’ The others will remain on welfare and be expected to undertake 30 hours of work for the dole and apply for two jobs each week or risk being ‘breached’ and their payments reduced or stopped altogether.

But as people right across the Northern Territory are now asking: What jobs? There are only so many times you can ask the store owner if he has any work going.

In Hermmansburg, the manager of the community supermarket, Charlie Fletcher, expects he’ll be signing a lot of dole forms. ‘Even if 100 people want to work, there are just not 100 paid positions available,’ says Fletcher, who has seven full-time staff on the books.

Fletcher acknowledges that there are huge problems with employment in Aboriginal communities, but after 12 years running the supermarket at Hermmansburg, he says CDEP was often not working.

‘I was surprised, to tell the truth, when CDEP started to be axed, about the degree of attachment that people had to it,’ he says.

‘I think it was perhaps a good scheme, but badly supervised [in some places]. The problem with these places is it’s hard to recruit people to [supervisor’s positions]. The wages aren’t that great, and not everyone is suited to this kind of life. I don’t think people realise how hard it is to get good people out here.’

Will Dobbie, co-ordinator of the Tjuwanpa Rangers, is certainly a strong factor behind the success of the Program. He’s modest about his achievements but the enthusiasm of the Rangers is proof of the good work he has been able to do in obviously difficult circumstances.

Dobbie’s main concern now is that he doesn’t have the means or the equipment to meaningfully engage 37 men for the 30 hours a week required for them to keep receiving payments. He points to the sole four-wheel drive vehicle that the Program utilises as a way of illustrating his point.

‘I feel responsible,’ he says. Morale was low when I spoke to some of the Rangers last week.

‘We don’t intend employing people in some half-arsed arrangement where people aren’t paid properly,’ says David Ross. ‘We need proper funding to get people employed. If that’s what the Commonwealth Government really wants to do, we’re happy to do it, but they need to fund it properly. We need proper equipment for them to get out and do their work.’

Ross says the CLC has applied for Federal funding to create up to 75 new full-time positions over the next five years.

But it’s unclear what role the CLC will play under the new system, given that the Government-contracted Job Network Providers are the bodies responsible for work-for-the-dole programs. Is this a move to lessen the CLC’s influence? Ross says he’s not worried.

‘I really think the Australian people have woken up to what’s happened in the last three years, and will never ever give one Party control of both Houses of Parliament [again],' he says.

‘I would hope that they’re going to vote the right way and make sure that there’s some democratic process that takes place within the Senate, rather than the rubbish that we’ve seen for the last three years — having things rammed down people’s necks because someone thought it was a good idea.’

In the last days before the election, Indigenous advocacy groups across the country appear to be taking it easy on the ALP when it comes to the Intervention — the Coalition’s wedge-that-couldn’t. There seems to be a ‘vote now, ask questions later’ attitude among those working on the ground.

Apart from bringing back the permit system for remote communities, retaining and reforming CDEP is the only change Labor has said they will make to the Coalition’s Intervention package.

But very few people have been wiling or able to extract details from Labor on exactly how they will reform the program. For those we’ll have to wait until after Saturday.

Listen to David Ross from the Central Land Council

Source: New Matilda

Further information: NT Intervention issues page - includes news index and external links