I lived in a remote community where CDP was run, I was actually the bookkeeper who managed the financial side of the scheme.
It wasn’t forced onto the community, the residents were all asked to vote on whether or not they wanted to participate, and unfortunately for those few men who weren’t in favour, they were outvoted by the women and the aged pensioners.
I noticed a huge difference in the place once the scheme was up and running. The community itself was far cleaner, household maintenance was being done. There were less domestics because the men weren’t hanging around the houses all day.
One of the projects was the making of artefacts to sell in the nearest town, which brought the men some extra money on top of their wages. Another scheme was doing lawns and garden maintenance for the elderly.
The men had a reason to get out of bed each day and certainly there was less dissent and grumbling in the place, something that returned quickly when the scheme stopped.

It is pretty stupid to be issuing fines for failure to work for the dole when removal of the dole is quite simple. It's not as though the fines will ever be paid. And, of course, the bleeding hearts “urging” the federal nitwits to drop the fines don't want the sit-down money taken away. Oh, and the luvvies think that the scheme is “racist”. What's it called when WFD is applied to white bludgers?

There is no future for anyone in remote areas, so there really is no point in talking about pie-in-the-sky schemes devised by Canberra nitwits who should also be kicked off the gravy train.

I didn’t realise fines were issued these days. The old scheme men simply lost wages for hours they didn’t work.

Working for the dole is a zero-sum game, Like shifting a bunch of logs from one end of a campsite to the other end then returned to their original position. And done in the military as KP punishment! To expend maximum effort for no perceivable end result! And literally, soul destroying. If we want folk to work we need to shift industry to where the unused employment pools are rather than import even more folk (square pegs into round holes) into already overcrowded gridlocked cities. And can be myriad government facilitated and funded profit producing recycling cooperative ventures. Or crops like cotton or industrial hemp grown using desalinated water in previously permanently arid areas only needing missing reliable affordable water to turn them into fields of cotton or grain or orchards/plantations etc. And all needing to be farmed as locally owned and operated government funded and facilitated co-ops producing essential commodities or products we need to currently import. And as finished products garments etc, from the field to your back or wherever without any profit demanding middleman adding his cost burden to the finished product! Thu produced at a reasonable profit and at competitive prices, no other producer locked into traditional manufacture can actually compete with and still return a profit! We need to start thinking outside the square all while returning self-determination and the dignity of work to folk who have neither! And as win/win outcomes! Alan B.

Hi Alan,

Most people who have ever worked in Indigenous communities have arrived all starry-eyed, seeing enormous potential - gosh, we could try this, we could try that, so many possibilities ! Of course, many communities have close to zero natural productive potential, so tourism and environmental work may work there. So many notions MAY work. But they usually don't.

Skirting around the edges, one could say, as a dear friend did, that any such project would work if only the magic ingredient was added - work. Effort. Willingness. But of course, many rural projects require far more even than that - education, years of study and practice to train the people for the high skills and initiative and innovation required to make difficult projects succeed. Ask any young farmer these days. Currently, these requirements may be far, far beyond the willingness of people in many communities.

I worked/lived in a couple of communities down in 'southern' SA, totalling twenty thousand acres of arable land, some of its top-soil a metre deep. Back in about 1972, each had a strong, viable economy. Fairly quickly, after 'self-determination' was implemented, many of the projects there, all quite viable and productive (totalling an annual return of around four million in today's money) were wound down. At one community, the council was having trouble with the dogs getting into the Merino stud flock of two thousand, so - you're guessed it - they got rid of the sheep. They stopped planting two thousand acres under wheat and barley, they ripped out the 80 acres of grapes and 140 acres of lucerne and stone-fruit and planted almonds; their role was to maintain the orchard and let a big company from up the road come in and shake the trees. Employment there shrunk somewhat from twenty jobs to two. Self-determination works wonders.

At the other community, the council stopped producing action at there new dairy, stopped any ploughing, and now runs a couple of hundred beef cattle on twelve thousand acres. I heard of a bloke in a motorised wheel-chair doing something like that. Self-determination.

[TBC]

[continued]

So unless CDP jobs are genuine, and perhaps coupled with TAFE study, so that annual PKIs are actually positive, and projects are sensible and not too prohibitive cost-wise, I'd be pretty sceptical.

Joe