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

If someone repairs your house for dole payments? Skilled tradesmen are being robbed of their service model and by often untrained rank amateurs, who spend twice as long doing half the work, that often needs redoing? What the unskilled untrained unemployed could be doing is intensive under glass market gardening that produces often otherwise extremely expensive nutrition. I've just had my gutters replaced by skilled trades I paid for out of my pension and via a modest personal loan. And as such available to any pensioner! Under glass (polycarb) intensive cultivation needs only recycled water as taped underground irrigation to support any continuous above ground vegetable (salad vegetables) or fruit (berry) production. And a better investment of taxpayer generosity! That then keeps on giving for years! And only needs several trained bookkeepers to keep each other and the books honest! Least one or two welds too much economic power, nepotism and favouritism inside a non-monitored non-mentored community? Alan B.

Sorry Big Nana, but as a tax payer I strongly object to paying useless bludgers to pick p their own litter, fix the window in their free house, that they broke last week, or repair the hole they punched in the wall last month in a drunken temper.

I even more strongly object to paying for materials, & for the labour involved in making artefacts, that those paid to make them, will then sell for a profit. All bleeding heart stuff.

Time to say, do this stuff, or be kicked out of the village, with no welfare.

Using cliches like “zero-sum game” doesn't change the fact that nobody should be getting paid money for doing nothing; and the idea that those working for the dole would be doing the jobs of qualified tradesmen is absurd.

Hi Joe. A travelling library could also function as a touring tafe, landing here or there for a few weeks/months to set up a local branch that could then be supported by something like the old school of the air, only with video and computer links etc. And the education could be two way, with traditional medicine and language being exchanged for 21st century upskilling? All of which could be digitized and shared for centuries with any who are interested or involved in survival training etc. One imagines the travelling library/touring tafe, would also be digitized and computerized and stay within a particular circuit? Cheers, Alan B.

Hi Joe, grew up on a soldier settlement dairy farm and note the seven days a week twice daily milking routine isn't for everyone! Particularly when it interferes or prevents drinking time! Metres deep topsoil is something many of today's farmers can only dream about. However, under glass production, as practised by the Israelis has a lot to recommend it as is cultivation that can even be accomplished in arid desert regions, or with salt water, i.e., bananas coconuts. And there are a number of food-producing natives that are salt drought and frost tolerant. like some wattles that produce a high protein flour from copious seed. Or native wisteria that produces both biodiesel and high protein meal. Harvesting the wattle seed similar to the macadamia. Shaken but not stirred. Cheers, Alan B.

Hi Alan,

Yes, indeed, those projects could work. Just add them to the pile of unutilised suggestions in with the others :)

Actually, my last paying job was in a new dairy on my wife's community. Her brother was the dairy manager, very hard-working and dedicated, a former teacher. Me and him, two middle-aged graduates, getting up at 4.30 while the young blokes in the village caught up on their beauty sleep. As the local saying went: eyes shut, arse open.

That community, with 12,000 acres, good soil, but with small patches of salt lakes, payment-free, rates-free, and unlimited water licence, all there equipment it would ever need, AND blokes paid to do two days of work each week (seven blokes = equivalent cost of two blokes full-time) - what other expenses were actually paid for ? Electricity, insemination, some feed, etc., nothing major, and the dairy turned over $ 1.5 million p.a. My rongi had a bad accident and couldn't work the dairy, so the council closed it, after four years of operations. Self-determination.

But thanks for that GREAT IDEA !

Cheers,

Joe

Alan, if you seriously don’t know that billions of dollars have already been spent trying to set up viable horticultural, agricultural, aquacultural ventures in remote communities then you need to do some research.
Countless programs have been initiated, local staff trained, facilities provided etc. and it all goes brilliantly until the non indigenous staff leave and everything is left to rot.
As Joe pointed out, many groups have been have been handed viable ventures, only to run them into the ground.
In the north the missions were all almost self sustaining when run by churches. They had goats, cattle, pigs, chickens, fruit and vegetable gardens, bakeries etc. . When the church moved out, these ventures were handed over to the self managed communities, to be managed and worked by those who had already worked there for years, in some cases decades.
Needless to say, none of those activities exist today.

Hi Big Nana,

Yeah, my late friend Rev. Bill Edwards, Superintendent 1958-1972 at Ernabella, laughed (hollowly) once when he noted that, when people on the gardens there found out they could get welfare for doing nothing, they walked away without even turning off the sprinklers.

Self-determination. Let the people decide. Consult extensively, the people are always right. The people always know what they want; yes, indeed.

Joe

Hi Alan,

Did I mention the 300-acre almond block ? All dead now. How come ? Well, when the CEEP scheme there was ordered to be closed, the local CDEP administration paid every body out (about 180 people) for all their back pay, sick pay, holiday pay, super, etc., amounting into the millions. The government department, the debtor of last resort, DEEWR, took out the pump in response, trying to get its millions back. So the trees died. Nobody gave a toss. Now everybody's left, there's only one family there now. But I notice that people do have very nice 4WDs.

Everybody could have chipped in and bought another pump, but of course not. Thinking back, there was no need in the first place to rip out the grapes and stone fruit and lucerne to put in almonds. With 8000 acres, it would have been no problem to open up another 300-acre patch for the almonds - and another 300-acre patch for pecans - and other 300-acre patches for pistachios, avocados, peanuts. Etc., etc., etc.

That's self-determination for you :)

Cheers,

Joe

At the 'community' above, not the one that closed its new dairy but the one which ripped out its grapes/lucerne/stone-fruit (and maybe 10 ha of citrus as well), the DAA funded the development of a yabbie farm, to the tune of at least two million dollars.

Being on the river with all its billabongs etc., there was one stretch about a mile long which was always packed with yabbies: as the rubbish-collector, I well remember huge rubbish bins full of yabbie shells. What a great idea, set up a yabbie farm. [There was one operating just up the Torrens Valley which they could have bought, fifteen km from the city centre, but ......]

Yes, a great idea. But a DAA bureaucrat pointed out that that billabong got flooded periodically, flushing out the yabbies, which would interrupt production, so maybe it would be better to build a yabby farm half a mile back from the river where it couldn't ever got flooded, so that they could have a continuing supply of yabbies for the Adelaide market. So a huge trench was dug, filled with water and yabbies introduced to it; the right feed was worked out, and away it went.

I don't think it ever produced a single commercial crop of yabbies. But it had (from memory) at least two managers and directors and supervisors for some years, all closely related to the council chairman. So, for barely two million dollars up-front plus on-going expenses, the 'community' had the promise of an enterprise. Of course, with nobody in the 'community' qualified in riverine biology, environmental science, etc., they had to employ a white fella.

With unlimited funds from Canberra, self-determination can be a wonderful thing. There was probably a rumour that the Aboriginal 'community' up near Coober Pedy was also thinking of a yabby farm.

Joe