{"id":3603,"date":"2007-07-24T13:12:26","date_gmt":"2007-07-24T13:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2007\/07\/ploughing-salt-into-the-ruins-of-the-nt-broughs-end-game-with-cdep-and-the-little-children-bob-gosford\/"},"modified":"2011-02-05T07:47:05","modified_gmt":"2011-02-05T07:47:05","slug":"ploughing-salt-into-the-ruins-of-the-nt-broughs-end-game-with-cdep-and-the-little-children-bob-gosford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/2007\/07\/ploughing-salt-into-the-ruins-of-the-nt-broughs-end-game-with-cdep-and-the-little-children-bob-gosford\/","title":{"rendered":"Ploughing salt into the ruins of the NT – Brough’s end game with CDEP and the little children – Bob Gosford"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Guest post from Bob Gosford, who has written on NT topics for Crikey<\/a><\/em>]
\nIndigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough and Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey yesterday announced<\/a> the imminent demise of the Commonwealth’s Community Development Employment Programme (CDEP) in the Northern Territory.
\nAs of 30 September this year, CDEP in the NT will be dead.
\nAccording to Brough, it’s all about the cash and the kids.<\/p>\n


\nSpeaking to<\/a> Leon Compton on Darwin ABC radio yesterday he was asked: <\/p>\n

Compton:<\/b> Are you saying that money from CDEP is the problem in child sexual abuse and alcoholism and violence?
\nBrough:<\/b> Absolutely, there is no doubt that there is a contributing factor beyond the CDEP payments and because for all intents and purposes they are a welfare payment – it is the cash that is being used to buy the drugs and alcohol that have caused so many … so much of the pain for these children. There is just no doubt about that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Brough was asked if he had considered the impact on people in remote communities, who according to Compton were surprised by the announcement:<\/p>\n


\nCompton:<\/b> Certainly taking a lot of people we’ve spoken to this afternoon by shock.
\nBrough:<\/b> Umh, yeah probably. Because at the first blush of it people will think that, ahh, um they’re gunna be worse off or they’re gunna be destitute and it’s not that at all. It’s quite the contrary.
\nLeon, the main driver behind this was that clearly with our emergency measures we said that we’re trying to cut the disposable income – the cash I should say in communities which has led to this abundance of drugs and alcohol and gambling abuse and you know, as the Little Children are Sacred<\/em> report stated it’s been the rivers of grog that have had so much to answer for.
\nCompton:<\/b> Are you saying this is about cutting more cash out of communities?
\nBrough:<\/b> Well, what happened is, when you actually look at it, is the biggest single influx of cash is in fact through CDEP payments. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

But for many in the NT familiar with the operation of CDEP in the NT, the nexus between the money provided by CDEP and child sexual abuse is less than clear.
\nI spoke to Professor Jon Altman, Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR)<\/a> at the Australian National Unity. CAEPR has for many years conducted research into the economics of Aboriginal Australia, including a strong focus on the role that programmes like CDEP play in the economic life of communities (and see Altman’s more detailed piece “Scrapping CDEP is just dumb, dumb, dumb”<\/a> in Crikey<\/em> 24\/7\/07).
\nAltman disputes many of the statements and assertions made in the Brough\/Hockey joint statement and the attached explanatory document<\/a> [.pdf].
\nMal Brough describes CDEP as:<\/p>\n

“a destination for too many. We need to do much better to improve the long-term prospects for economic independence for those living in the remote areas of the Northern Territory.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Altman contends that Brough just doesn’t get it: <\/p>\n

“On CDEP an individual has some real say about the kind of work you do and you work for your own organisation. CDEP used to be, in my view, a very positive institution before the Howard government got into power.
\nAnd in places like Maningrida on the north coast of the NT, what the Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation has done with CDEP is very instructive of the true potential, even under the constraints imposed by this Government.
\nCAEPR research has shown that CDEP, as part-time work, has been turned into full-time work by many, many organisations – so it’s not just a ‘destination’ – with support and a little imagination it can be a very effective employment generator – or in the kind of military jargon the Minister might understand – ‘a force multiplier’.
\nYou actually create thousands of full-time jobs through CDEP. What these politicians don’t get – CDEP is not a ‘dead-end destination’ – it is actually a way out of unemployment and poverty.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Brough says that Aboriginal people in the NT should be looking for jobs in the booming mining, pastoral and tourist developments and opportunities in the NT.
\nAltman’s response to this is that Caring for Country (CFC) projects<\/a> that are run in the NT by the Northern and Central Land Councils ) in conjunction with the Federal Department of Environment and Water Resources<\/a> are greater generators of ‘real’ jobs for indigenous Territorians than any work that these industries might be able to provide. <\/p>\n

The full potential of these [CDEP] programmes has yet to be realised – at the moment there are about 400 jobs in CFC in the Top End- more than all of the mining industry jobs in the NT put together. This proposal will negatively affect a lot of other success stories on remote communities as well – it will have serious negative affects on the booming Aboriginal arts industry in the NT, it could potentially kill those arts organisations that provide essential support to thousands of artists, and ring the death knell for the phenomenally successful Indigenous Protected Areas (IPA) programs<\/a> – all of which have CDEP employees as rangers. There are programs that other Commonwealth Government departments provide considerable and invaluable support to. I really wonder if these flow-on effects have really been thought through properly. On what I’ve seen so far it seems very much like poorly thought out policy conception and delivery<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Altman points out one inexplicable inconsistency in the decision to cut CDEP.<\/p>\n

In this year’s Commonwealth budget, only two months ago, about 1,000 CDEP positions were enhanced over the next four years to assist communities with Night Patrols and to use CDEP workers to provide and enhanced policing effort on remote communities where the Police are clearly under-resourced. This is a real policy contradiction – why enhance the program in May 2007 and then kill it in the NT in July 2007?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

\nAltman casts an historical eye at the long-term effects of Brough’s announcement:<\/p>\n

What Mal Brough said in that interview with the ABC, was that “indigenous people in the NT have an expenditure problem – the way I’m going to address this expenditure problem is to cut their income”<\/b>.
\nI don’t think the Government has any idea of the cost of what they are doing to Aboriginal people in the NT – both personally and financially.
\nThey are going to leave a terrible legacy but it seems that they don’t care. There is a possibility that they will lose the next election and, like the Romans after they sacked Carthage in 146 BC, they are ploughing salt into the ruins before they leave. Any incoming government will be left with a terrible legacy to rectify.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Guest post from Bob Gosford, who has written on NT topics for Crikey] Indigenous Affairs Minister Mal Brough and Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey yesterday announced the imminent demise of the Commonwealth’s Community Development Employment Programme (CDEP) in the Northern Territory. As of 30 September this year, CDEP in the NT will be dead. According … 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-3603","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\/3603","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=3603"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4335,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3603\/revisions\/4335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.paradisec.org.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}