‘Racist' dole jobs are axed as Aboriginal people receive over £1m in compensation

Australia’s Indigenous policy questioned, writes Steve Evans

- Steve Evans

The Australian government is wrestling with how to replace a jobs scheme branded “racist” after it agreed to pay A$2m (£1.1m) in compensation to hundreds of Aboriginal people who said they were subjected to discrimination.

The Community Development Program (CDP), which is better known as “work for the dole”, required people in remote outback areas – home to a high proportion of Indigenous communities – to work up to 25 hours a week to receive income benefits. About 80 per cent of the participants were Aboriginal. Yet a successful class action on behalf of 680 participants of the CDP said it discriminated against them because it set harsher rules than other welfare schemes, while critics said it drove many vulnerable Aboriginal people deeper into poverty.

In settling the long-running legal dispute, the federal government did not admit that the scheme was “racist”, but it did agree to pay the compensation. The programme was started in 2015, before being modified and finally abolished this year, with the federal government in Canberra saying a replacement would be developed by 2023. It said the scheme was “designed around the unique social and labour market conditions in remote Australia and is part of the Australian government’s agenda for increasing employment and breaking the cycle of welfare dependency”.

But critics say that it was fatally flawed because the idea was to coerce people into jobs that simply did not exist. They fear that there has been no change of an entrenched government mindset that views the big stick as the way to get people into work – particularly Aboriginal communities in desperately poor areas.