Road to Ruin: The Howard Government, the Concept of Aboriginal Welfare Dependency and the Fall of the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) Scheme

• Published in: Australian Journal of Politics & History
• Main Author: Gordon, Zoe
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2022
• Subjects: First Nations
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ajph.12804; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/ajph.12804; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full-xml/10.1111/ajph.12804

As the last vestiges of the remarkable, Indigenous‐controlled, Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme were removed, Australia entered a post‐CDEP era in 2013. In its place, in remote areas only, the rigid and externally imposed Community Development Programme (CDP) has been installed. The CDEP scheme had been a successful work‐creation strategy that produced positive social, economic, and political outcomes for First Nations citizens across Australia. In contrast, the CDP has operated like Work‐for‐the‐Dole on steroids and its introduction has seen high numbers of unemployed Indigenous participants exit the welfare system altogether. In this article, I look at how we got here. Guided by postcolonial theory and implementing the toolkit provided by Carol Bacchi's “What's the Problem Represented to be?” approach, I pay close attention to the way in which Indigenous policy has been represented over the past 25 years. In particular, I examine the construction of the problem of “Aboriginal welfare dependency” by the Liberal/National Coalition Government led by Prime Minister John Howard between 1996 and 2007. This interconnected problem representation, I argue, has been instrumental in changing the way Indigenous affairs is thought about, with concrete implications for policy today.