Remote access: Guiding principles for a new livelihood and work program in remote Indigenous Australia

The Abbott Government’s Community Development Program (CDP) was launched on 1 July 2015. This Program, like others before it, sought to bundle together job search, job creation, and skills acquisition as a condition for accessing income support. CDP’s geographic jurisdiction is remote Australia, and its target is unemployed people who are overwhelmingly (more than 80%) Indigenous. It is delivered in 60 regions by a diversity of for-profit and not-for-profit Indigenous and non-Indigenous providers. In contrast to earlier remote-focused programs with similar complexity, CDP imposed harsh mutual obligation requirements, including by requiring abled-bodied unemployed people to engage in higher levels of work-for-the-dole than non-remote support recipients, initially 25 hours a week. This approach resulted in disproportionately high rates of breaching and penalties. There is growing consensus that the Program has failed to meet its overriding objective of improving employment outcomes. Empirical evidence indicates that CDP has instead had significant negative consequences for participants, with levels of impoverishment greatly increasing. Cognisant of the Program’s overall failure to deliver, the Australian Government has recently announced that CDP will be replaced with a new program by 2023. Minister for Indigenous Australians, the Hon. Ken Wyatt, committed to developing this new program ‘in partnership with communities’, beginning with Indigenous Advancement Strategy funding ‘to pilot alternative approaches for the new remote jobs program in four sites starting this year [2021]’. The current period provides an important opportunity to assess the negative impacts of punitive welfare-to-work approaches in remote Indigenous communities, and to consider alternatives that take a more caring and creative approach to supporting the health, wellbeing, and economic aspirations of remote living Indigenous peoples. This discussion paper arises from a workshop attended by a small group of academic researchers and seeks to provide some early input into the emerging co-design process for a replacement program. We do not set out a specific plan for the journey ahead. It is not our goal to pre-empt the outcomes of the current co-design process. Instead, drawing on peer-reviewed research, including our own, and grounded community-based observations, we seek to: 1) reflect on key lessons learned from the inadequacies of CDP; 2) examine possible lessons from the COVID-19 2020–21 exceptional, but temporary, changes to the social security system; and 3) consider how, in combination, these experiences might inform guiding principles that can be drawn upon to underpin a future alternative approach. In this discussion paper, we propose seven guiding principles to ensure that the harms experienced under CDP are not repeated. These principles are intended to inform a more holistic livelihoods strategy that would uphold the basic rights of people impacted by government policies, to protect their wellbeing and support locally valued work in the remote Indigenous communities where they reside. In our view, a new remote livelihood and work program that follows these principles could take several forms, including weaving together different strategies that respond to diverse local circumstances. Ultimately, whichever approach is taken, it is critical to address the reality of life in remote Indigenous communities, while supporting individuals and families in these communities to first recover and then flourish and thrive. In accordance with the July 2020 Closing the Gap agreement, Indigenous peoples should have far greater say in how programs and services are delivered to their people, in their own places, and on their own Country; and the role of Indigenous Community-Controlled Organisations (ICCOs) in delivering the best services and outcomes for Closing the Gap must be properly supported. Indigenous peoples are well placed to decide on the post-CDP program that might best meet communities’ needs and nurture their health and wellbeing. Any proposed co-design process must accord with these values