Posted: April 11, 2005

Reduce Indigenous unemployment

John Howard visited the remote (and chronically impoverished) Indigenous community of Wadeye this week to call for a rethink of communal ownership of traditional Aboriginal land. In the Prime Minister’s words:

"I believe there is a case for reviewing the whole issue of Aboriginal land title, in the sense of looking more towards private recognition. I certainly believe that all Australians should be able to aspire towards owning their own home and having their own business…Having title to something is the key to your sense of individuality, it's the key to your capacity to achieve and to care for your family, and I don't believe that indigenous Australians should be treated differently in this respect."

There are two important issues here. The first is why Indigenous people, whose concept of land ownership is collective and communal, should cede to the dictates of an ‘ownership society’ and its intrinsic individualism. The second is how changes in land title would provide impoverished individuals - living in Indigenous communities where a majority are unemployed - with the means to own a house. With respect to the second issue, the PM needs to be thinking about how to create employment in Indigenous communities. An effective employment policy does not require an assault on the provisions of the Land Rights Act.

CofFEE has just published a response to the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) CDEP Discussion Paper 2005. CDEP is the Community Development Employment Projects Program and accounts for 25 per cent of the total employment of Indigenous Australians. CofFEE’s response is available HERE.

The DEWR Paper is extremely disappointing and very little is up for ‘discussion’. The strategy to ‘Build on the Success’ of CDEP has been pretty much decided. Indeed, the Paper includes a time frame for its implementation. While DEWR says the timeframe is subject to the feedback received, its consultation questions relate only to the Department’s proposed reforms and centre on administrative matters. The question DEWR didn’t ask was ‘Do you think these reforms will allow us to drastically reduce the level of Indigenous unemployment’? CofFEE’s answer to the missing question is a resounding "no".

CofFEE’s principal criticism of the DEWR Paper is that it fails to outline a macroeconomic approach that will generate the jobs required by unemployed and discouraged Indigenous workers, now and in the future. In addition, the Department does not provide an evidential basis for the assumptions that underpin the proposed policy changes. The key assumption is that closer integration between - and new funding arrangements for - the CDEP program, Job Network agencies and Indigenous Employment Centres will generate CDEP and non-CDEP employment outcomes that will significantly reduce Indigenous labour market disadvantage.

How acute is this disadvantage? Where would you like to start? The majority of CDEP participants (84 per cent) live in very remote, remote or outer regional areas having few, if any, mainstream labour market opportunities. Classifying CDEP participants as ‘unemployed’ (they are counted as ‘employed’ in official statistics) would have increased the total Indigenous unemployment rate from 23 per cent to 43 per cent, and from 17.2 per cent to 46 per cent in remote areas in 2002. In addition, the wages component of CDEP funding (a notional welfare equivalents payment) only provides for part-time work, most commonly 18 hours per week. While this will be the preference of some participants, and allows CDEP work to be combined with customary activities, the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research (CAEPR) has estimated the cost of underemployment in the CDEP scheme in 2001 at $305 million. But wait, sadly there’s more

Demographic factors and a high incidence of discouraged workers in the Indigenous population mean that in the absence of measures to generate a substantial number of jobs, an already shameful situation is only going to get worse. CAEPR estimates that the number of Indigenous people in the labour force will increase by 30 per cent between 2001 and 2011. By 2006, 32,000 additional jobs per annum will be required to achieve equity in Indigenous and non-Indigenous unemployment rates while providing paid employment for Indigenous discouraged workers. The Indigenous employment growth required to achieve equity with the 1996 employment/population ratio for non-Indigenous Australians will generate a projected deficit of 49,000 jobs by 2006.

DEWR claims that the Job Network and Indigenous Employment Centres (IECs) have been particularly effective in finding mainstream jobs for Indigenous workers (we dispute this) but they fail to provide evidence that:

1. The net impact of services offered through the Job Network, IECs and the Indigenous Employment Policy (IEP) will be sufficient to reduce the jobs deficit just identified; and

2. The results achieved for CDEP participants are likely to be of a similar magnitude to results achieved for Indigenous people who have been assisted by the Job Network, IECs and the IEP to date.

On the first point, the combined effect of the current programs is to generate between 2,400 and 4,300 new jobs for Indigenous jobseekers per annum. At best, this is less than 15 per cent of the number required. On the second point, CDEP participants are a much more disadvantaged group (younger, less educated, and more likely to have experienced longer duration unemployment, to live in a remote area and to have a recent arrest record) than those participating in the programs DEWR has evaluated. DEWR’s own research shows that the effectiveness of the labour market programs it wants to link to CDEP falls sharply for highly disadvantaged people. We are left to wonder on what basis DEWR determined the strategic direction outlined in their Discussion Paper. Having spent a lot of time thinking and writing about the Paper in recent weeks I’m stuffed if I can work it out.

If we want to solve the problem we need to increase the demand for Indigenous labour through the introduction of a Job Guarantee (JG). Our proposed model - and the way in which it can integrate placement and support structures that are sensitive and responsive to Indigenous culture and communities - is detailed in Section 4 of our submission. The Job Guarantee proposal shares some of the aims and characteristics of the CDEP program, however there are critical differences between the two models. In particular, the JG model is set explicitly within an employment framework as opposed to the quasi-welfare structure of CDEP. While JG and CDEP workers are both paid at the minimum award rate, the JG funding model does not place a constraint on the number of hours individuals work. The individual may choose to work full-time and will be paid accordingly. By contrast, most CDEP work is part-time as the wages pool is limited to a notional welfare equivalent payment. Finally, unlike the streaming of CDEP activities into ‘employment’ ( non-CDEP jobs) and ‘community development’ that is proposed in the DEWR Discussion Paper, the Job Guarantee model does not demarcate between these objectives.

Instead, the JG model argues that the foundations of community development require that all citizens who are able to work have access to paid employment opportunities and recognises that chronic joblessness is a major source of hardship and insecurity within Indigenous communities. It follows that an essential pre-condition for strong and cohesive communities is access to paid work through which individuals can realise their desire to contribute to community well being, and sustain their own destiny. If the Prime Minister is sincere in wanting to address Indigenous poverty and disadvantage and enable Indigenous people to “share in the bounty of this country” he should ditch the CDEP reform plan and implement a Job Guarantee. Then he won’t need to worry about busting communal ownership of traditional Aboriginal land.

Blog entry posted by Sally