{"id":3602,"date":"2007-07-23T22:33:22","date_gmt":"2007-07-23T22:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2007\/07\/cdep-changes\/"},"modified":"2011-02-05T07:47:05","modified_gmt":"2011-02-05T07:47:05","slug":"cdep-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2007\/07\/cdep-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"CDEP changes"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was going to take a break from whinging, but then today the changes to Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) in the Northern Territory were revealed<\/a> – further Q&As at FACSIA<\/a> [.pdf]. I can’t say I’ve fully taken in the changes. But it looks like no one is spared; people in all Northern Territory remote communities will go off CDEP. <\/p>\n

The changes to CDEP in the Northern Territory are a key part of the broader emergency response to protect children, make communities safer and normalise services for Indigenous communities.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/em>
\nThe only link to protecting children seems to be that if everyone’s on welfare and not CDEP, this will make it easier to introduce food stamps and welfare deductions as a way of making parents send their kids to school and making people clean up their yards.
\nWhile it’s good to see that the Government is at last thinking about transitions from CDEP (unlike the poor people in communities such as Jigalong which lost CDEP on July 1), it also presumably means the loss of the extra Federal funding that has been put into CDEP businesses and community operations.<\/p>\n


\nSo now we can guess what the Government Business Managers and Community Brokers will be doing. They’ll be trying to arrange conversions of some CDEP jobs into real jobs (with money from where?), converting CDEP businesses into real businesses (or winding them up), and explaining to people if or where they’ll getting money in the future. And maybe they’ll also have to create Work for the Dole schemes. Some of which apparently will involve Norforce troops moving from playing with the kids<\/a>, to marshalling people into emu squadrons<\/a> to pick up the rubbish – at least at the start. The Government claims:<\/p>\n

Jobs will also be created across the Northern Territory through moving service delivery away from reliance on CDEP. CDEP currently delivers essential government services in many communities. By working closely with the Northern Territory Government, many CDEP participants will be transitioned from CDEP into real jobs.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Understandably, the Northern Territory Government wants to know <\/a> where the funds for this will come in the future – since presently cleanup around communities is funded by the Federal Government through the disappearing CDEP scheme.
\nBut what happens to all the good and useful things like Arts Centres, Language Centres and Cultural Centres which survive on staff on CDEP wages, and the extra CDEP support? They may never be self-sufficient, but they do provide interest, training, work and some income for both the employable and the people who are too sick or have too many responsibilities or are too old for full-time work. Let’s hope the Government Business Managers can help them survive jumping through the hoops to convince Someone that they’re Job Network services, Structured Training and Employment Projects (STEP) or Work for the Dole schemes, rather than just Good Things.
\nAnd hurry now for your Information session this week!
\nDarwin: Darwin Entertainment Centre 26 July 2007 10:00am
\nTennant Creek: Karguru Conference Room \u2013 Tennant Creek Training Centre 26 July 2007 1:30pm
\nNhulunbuy: Arnhem Club Function Room 26 July 2007 1:30pm
\nAlice Springs: Voyages Resort: 27 July 2007 11:00am
\nKatherine: Government Centre, First Street 27 July 2007 11:00am
\nWadeye: Job Futures Conference Room 30 July 2007 10:30am
\nOr call the Northern Territory Emergency Response Hotline 1800 333 995.<\/em>
\nBig centres, note. What about the remote communities? I wonder if the scoping teams that visited the smaller communities over the last couple of weeks got to tell them about all this. And if not, why not?
\nSo here’s my fear – communities will lose the extra CDEP income and resources. The NT Government will be told that it is its responsibility to fund services on communities (but won’t be given extra money to do it). So there’ll be only a couple more real jobs on each community. Most people on communities won’t be able to get jobs, and will be told to go to towns on pain of losing their welfare payments. It’d be nice to think that the Federal Government is planning for the social costs of that, but I bet they’ll wash their hands of it when it happens, and say that it’s the NT Government’s responsibility (and, foolishly, the NT Opposition Leader is already saying that – does she really want to deal with that if she wins office?).
\nOne last Q for which there was no A in the FACSIA site – how does it help children for their parents to be anxious and uncertain about what’s to happen to them, and where the money to live on will come from?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was going to take a break from whinging, but then today the changes to Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) in the Northern Territory were revealed – further Q&As at FACSIA [.pdf]. I can’t say I’ve fully taken in the changes. But it looks like no one is spared; people in all Northern Territory remote … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-indigenous-australia-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4336,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3602\/revisions\/4336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}