Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory have been given an undertaking by the federal ALP to commute the death sentence hanging over the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) Program. The execution had been ordered by the Howard Government zealots piloting the intervention juggernaut.

The CDEP program is imperfect, but at least provides the basis of an economy, community control, and the opportunity for people to undertake work in return for their payment. CDEP has played a crucial role as a stepping stone into ‘real’ jobs, and has facilitated the delivery of essential aged and community services to Aboriginal people across the NT.

Undaunted, the Howard Government ideologues waded into the tricky terrain of employment opportunities in remote communities. But even by their own reckoning, only 25% of those on CDEP would find ‘real’ jobs. The majority were destined for the Centrelink scrap-heap – and smug sermons from Canberra-based bureaucrats about the importance of economic development.

“To meet the Government’s election commitment to reform rather than abolish the CDEP, a moratorium was today placed on the dismantling of CDEP in the Northern Territory”, announced Minister for Indigenous Affairs Jenny Macklin on 10 December 2007.

But has the Minister instructed her public servants to ‘cease and desist’ in their demolition of CDEP? Will the Minister advise if a review of the program is to be carried out? Who will undertake it, what will it involve, and when will the results be available? This is CDEP, not rocket science, and any review must surely be a labour of weeks rather than months.

Federal Member for Lingiari, Warren Snowdon, represents an electorate which embraces all of the NT’s remote Indigenous communities and, along with his NT federal caucus colleague Senator Trish Crossin, has been a committed fighter for Indigenous rights.

In an October media release entitled ‘Titjikala CDEP: The baby and the bathwater’ Snowdon rightly bemoaned the Howard Government’s “total and deliberate misreading of what has been happening on the ground”, describing their action in cutting down CDEP as “stupid and short-sighted”.

Ironically, the Central Land Council reports a Titjikala Community Councillor observing at a meeting on November 6, 2007 that “They should have stopped sit down money and moved people onto CDEP but they just stopped CDEP. We want people to work for the community — we have been tough with people. People gotta sweat if they want sit down money.”

In mid August 2007 Snowdon and Crossin jointly issued a bulletin to remote communities advising them that “Labor will look to continue and improve CDEP, and only in consultation with Aboriginal people.”

These same Aboriginal people voted overwhelmingly for the ALP on November 24 and are looking to see this undertaking honoured.