The Community Development Programme (CDP) is a remote-area Work for the Dole scheme that principally affects Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. The program is billed by the government as 'helping people find work, and allowing them to contribute to their communities and gain skills while looking for work.' But there is mounting evidence that...

In July 2013, a new Australian Government-funded labour market program was implemented across remote Australia: the Remote Jobs and Communities Program (RJCP). The program (now renamed and restructured as the Community Development Programme - CDP) had a case load of around 36 000 people, of whom about 85% were Indigenous. Most people in the program...

Overview

This working paper reports on a survey of provider organisations conducted almost one year into the implementation of Remote Jobs and Communities Program.

The competing principles framework for analysing Australian Indigenous affairs is revisited, starting with Rowse on 'the Coombs experiment'. Rowse rehabilitates this term from pejorative critics, arguing that all government policy in Indigenous affairs is experimental. The task becomes one of characterising changing patterns of government experiment since the Commonwealth became involved in Indigenous affairs on...