First Peoples
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The Community Development Program (CDP) was established in July 2015. In January 2024, the National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) described the aim of the CDP as to ‘support job seekers in remote Australia to build skills, address barriers to employment and contribute to their communities through activities and training’.
Participation in the CDP is not exclusive to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. However, the majority of CDP employment service providers and participants are Indigenous. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet was responsible for the CDP until 2019, when the NIAA became responsible for the overall design and administration of the CDP, administering grant agreements with CDP providers and monitoring provider performance.
A 2017 Senate committee inquiry into the CDP concluded that the program should not continue in its current form due to negative impacts on participants and their communities. Since 2017, the Australian government has signalled its intent to fundamentally reform or replace the CDP through various announcements and measures.
Remote employment programs aim to assist people in thin labour markets to secure employment. Since 2015, the CDP has been the primary Australian government remote employment program. The CDP covers 75 per cent of Australia’s land mass in over 1,000 communities.
This audit provides the Australian Parliament with assurance on whether the NIAA has been effectively managing the transition from the CDP to a new remote employment program, including its processes to design a new program.
Key findings:
- The NIAA’s processes to design and transition to a new remote employment program, as at January 2024, were partly effective.
- Internal reporting on CDP performance is largely fit for purpose, except that longer term outcomes are not monitored. Public reporting on CDP performance is not commensurate with the materiality of the program and does not meet the NIAA’s Closing the Gap commitment to provide information to support local decisions.
- The NIAA’s processes to develop policy advice for a new remote employment program were not fully consistent with the Australian government’s expectations for best practice policy advice.
