FINAL
David Ross - Speech to ACTU Indigenous Conference
17 February 2011
The case for a new Community Employment and Enterprise Development Scheme for remote indigenous Australia.
Let me begin by acknowledging the Larrakia Nation on whose land we stand today.
I would also like to thank the ACTU Indigenous Committee for organising the ACTU delegation to central Australia late last year, and for providing this opportunity to address you today.
I am here today in my capacity as the Director of the Central Land Council - an Aboriginal organisation that has a long and proud history of working for Aboriginal people in central Australia.
The CLC is a Commonwealth statutory body operating under both the Aboriginal Land Rights Act and the Native Title Act. We represent more than 24,000 Aboriginal people living in the southern half of the Northern Territory.
For many years the main role of the CLC has been to help traditional owners reclaim ownership of their land under the Land Rights Act or to help gain recognition of rights under the Native Title Act. Around 50% of the land mass of the NT is now Aboriginal freehold title.
But the CLC also has many other functions, including land management, community development, enterprise development and assisting with Aboriginal employment. My bosses – the 90 traditional owners that govern the CLC – are clear about their priorities. Keep law, language and culture strong, ensure remote communities and outstations are healthy and sustainable - particularly the small ones not ‘prioritised’ by the Commonwealth and NT Governments – and pursue new opportunities for land management and remote livelihoods.
The CLC operates within a development framework, that is, we seek to work with Aboriginal people to support their aspirations, build their capacity and develop opportunities based on their knowledge, circumstances and priorities. It’s about investing in Aboriginal people through on-ground programs.
In my view, little will improve in central Australia until all levels of government understand that the ‘top down’ approach based on managerialism from afar by people with little local knowledge is simply not working. For example, there is simply no point setting bold employment targets in Canberra if local and regional factors and diversity are ignored or poorly understood.
It is quite clear that state agencies lack the capacity to deliver in remote communities, including in the area of employment services and jobs generation, and yet the last three years has seen a systematic and deliberate undermining of community-based organisations with a far better track record of delivering in such a complex environment. Thankfully, some have survived - I am referring of course to organisations that have done the hard yards, like Julalikari Council in Tennant Creek, and Tjuwanpa Outstation Resource Centre near Hermannsburg, and many others.
Just last week the Prime Minister delivered the annual Closing the Gap statement to the Parliament. In relation to indigenous employment she noted that:
‘Nearly 2000 indigenous Australians were supported into employment over the last twelve months through the Community development employment projects program.’
She neglected to mention that the CDEP scheme has been abolished, reinstated and then ‘reformed’ in the last three years since July 2007. We now have the confusing situation where some CDEP places are ‘grandfathered’ under the old scheme while other places are administered by Centrelink and are essentially Work for the Dole. How will this help achieve ‘Closing the Gap’ employment targets?
Let’s move closer to home and talk in more detail about Aboriginal employment in the NT.
An estimated 80% of the Indigenous population aged over 15 live in remote areas. CDEP has been the key labour market and community development driver throughout remote areas of the NT since the late 1970s. In 2007 it was estimated that there were nearly 8000 participants in the program in the NT comprising nearly 40% of the labour force.
I’m not saying CDEP was perfect. Some of the reasons for reforming CDEP are sound – such as reducing cost shifting by federal and state agencies and offering more public sector positions in remote locations, or seeking greater accountability from some service providers – however the CLC asserts that the Australian Government has fundamentally misunderstood the scale of the development challenge. Hasty policy reform is resulting in an unfolding Aboriginal employment disaster. The impacts are already evident, particularly for remote communities and outstations:
1. Community-based Aboriginal organisations are losing capacity, some no longer have a role to play having been displaced by outside ‘experts’;
2. Local business—some that have taken decades to develop—are closing or facing insolvency without CDEP wages subsidy;
3. Locally-tailored services provision, especially to outstations and other small communities, are being eroded;
4. Less capacity building and involvement of Aboriginal people in delivering essential services to their own communities and outstations; and
5. Individual capacity is also being eroded where active work through CDEP is being rapidly replaced with passive welfare.
Available data suggests at best one CDEP exit into a job is counter-balanced by two exits onto welfare. Assuming existing CDEP participants will progressively move from CDEP wages to income support, it is likely that the 6037 already receiving Newstart income in NTER prescribed communities will be joined by 4643 others, swelling the numbers to 10680 – almost 50% of the current labour force. Unless there is a rapid escalation in the NT Jobs Package the employment gap is set to expand rapidly.
While some moves have been made to create public sector jobs in remote communities, the investments have been woefully inadequate, and are not guaranteed into the future – in fact funding for 500 of those jobs runs out in six months Additionally, the ‘real jobs’ reform requires careful examination. It essentially replaces part-time CDEP employment by community-based organisations with low paid employment in public sector agencies, including the Shires. What is being overlooked is the critical role played by CDEP (where it was administered well) in generating more sustainable enterprise development than the ‘real’ jobs now being funded by the state. This is partly because there was a strong incentive to generate additional income to fund additional wages (called Top Up) to fund employment beyond CDEP base payments for 15 hours work per week.
In the words of CLC constituents from Titjikala -
‘When CDEP was working people were happy and enjoying working. People were busy working in the community. Now it’s all broken - no one is going to work. Work for the dole is sit-down money.’ As a direct result of the reform of CDEP the residents of Titjikala have the seen:
- the decline of a successful small-scale tourism enterprise;
- the loss of organised CDEP community services and other community-driven initiatives; and
- the loss of individual income associated with CDEP ‘top up’ and loss of morale as CDEP places are replaced by welfare.
These impacts must also be considered in the context of the NT Governments local government reform process which abolished community councils in favour of large Shires, and the heavy-handed measures of the Northern Territory Emergency Response, including income management.
I have never seen Aboriginal people in this region so disempowered and demoralised.
In my view it is critical, and urgent, that a new scheme be developed to provide a bridge between welfare and economic participation. The Aboriginal Peak Organisations of the NT, with the assistance of Professor Jon Altman, have joined together to call for a new Community Employment and Enterprise Development scheme for remote Indigenous Australia. Our work puts a clear and compelling case for the development of a new scheme which could occupy the niche between welfare and full employment – informed by the strengths and weaknesses of the old CDEP program and the experience of local organisations managing CDEP.
In broad terms we are talking about a new employment and enterprise program in remote communities that will provide continued support for a range of productive activities in remote areas. These may include:
· Supporting community services for young and old people that are normally provided by a combination of levels of government and the private sector in non-remote areas—after school care, care for kids at risk, care for the aged, support jobs in the primary health care sector;
· Supporting the visual arts sector;
· Enhancing the substantial investment already being made by the Australian government in the successful community ranger programs;
· Funding for enterprises that are socially productive and important but not necessarily commercially viable;
· Supporting small to medium scale horticulture as generator of fresh food to outstations/communities/regions; and
· Funding for new enterprises including in carbon farming, in aquaculture, in cultural tourism, and wildlife harvesting that all require up front ‘infant industry’ support.
The arrangements for administering our proposed new Community Employment and Enterprise Development Scheme would be flexible. As with the Working on Country program it could be delivered via community-based organisations, existing successful CDEP organisations or outstation resource agencies, sometimes via Shires or land councils.
A central feature of this new program and locating it with community organisations is that it will re-empower community organisations and thus provide a means to build the state/community partnership that has been so undermined in the NT and is so essential for sustainable development.
Addressing the high unemployment levels and need for regional solutions to nurture remote livelihoods requires a commitment to work with local Aboriginal organisations to develop a comprehensive and long-term development plan. We cant effectively tackle unemployment without addressing the appalling state of indigenous education, we cant concentrate on ‘priority’ communities at the expense of hundreds of other dispersed settlements, we cant tell Aboriginal people to take more responsibility for their behaviour – as the Prime Minister did last week – without also demanding that governments take greater responsibility for their policy failures, wasted resources and ‘we know best’ attitude.
On behalf of the Central Land Council and the Aboriginal Peak Organisations of the NT – I ask that the ACTU and conference delegates support our call for local Aboriginal organisations to be listened to, and for the urgent establishment of a new Community Employment and Enterprise Development scheme — or CEEDs — to sew the seeds for sustainable reality-based development futures for those whose lives and livelihoods will be in remote Indigenous Australia.
Thank You
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