By insisting on the political dimensions of CDEP, I hope to bring back into our understanding something that we are in danger of forgetting. The then Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Ian Viner, first tabled guidelines for CDEP in the House of Representatives on 26 May 1977. The fourth of his four objectives was ‘to maximise the capacity of Aboriginal communities to determine the use of their workforce’ (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) 1997: Appendix 2, p.59, emphasis added). One of CDEP’s architects, ‘Nugget’ Coombs, suggested later that same year that those evaluating the new scheme should bear in mind that ‘CDEP is not simply a means of providing employment as a source of a minimum cash income but a training exercise in self-management and increasing independence for the Aboriginal communities involved’ (Coombs 1977: 1, emphasis added).

In the 23 years since Viner and Coombs wrote political objectives into the founding documents of CDEP, it has been too easy to evaluate CDEP as if it were only or mainly another strategy to counter ‘welfare dependency’. For example, the Department of Social Security (DSS) asserted in 1997 that ‘the philosophical basis of the scheme is to assist unemployed Indigenous Australians in their move away from welfare dependency towards self-reliance’ (cited in HREOC 1997: 48). This is far too narrow a view of CDEP. By contrasting ‘welfare dependency’ with ‘self-reliance’, the DSS was ignoring the possibility that CDEP communities might develop their self reliance in the context of their continuing dependence on a certain form of welfare payments—CDEP. Self reliance is a term with more than one meaning. It may refer to an individual ‘not relying on any kind of payment from the state’, but it can mean other things too. These other forms of ‘self reliance’ are those envisaged by Viner—‘the capacity … to determine’ how consolidated Unemployment Benefits are to be used—and by Coombs—‘training … in self-management’. We should avoid assuming that ‘self determination’ or (‘self management’) is possible only once people have moved outside the welfare system. If people get organised so as to use their welfare payments as they wish, and if governments do not impose narrow conditions on such uses, then we can have a form of self determination that is based on, and secured by, ‘welfare dependency’. Unlike the author of that 1997 DSS letter, I believe that welfare payments can be the financial foundation for Indigenous self reliance. It all depends on the political conditions that are placed by the government on the transfer of funds to the CDEP scheme.

If we are to evaluate CDEP with a sensitivity which pays attention to its complexities, we must understand each CDEP scheme as an interlocking set of three political relationships: between the government and the eligible Indigenous participants, between those participants and the managers of each scheme, and between each scheme and the other organisations within its region.

Just as the emergence of the ‘Indigenous sector’ since the early 1970s is a new chapter in Australian political history, so CDEP is a unique program within the history of Australian social policy. Because it is unique it is very tempting to try to understand it by comparing it to some welfare program with which we are already familiar. It has been very common, in discussions of CDEP, to liken it to other programs—such as income support programs and job-training programs—and to evaluate it in such terms. No doubt there are elements of CDEP which cause it to resemble, in some ways, other social and industrial programs. One example has just been mentioned: DSS in 1997 chose to think of CDEP as if it were essentially aimed at getting its participants into jobs and so making them ineligible for welfare payments. Another way of understanding CDEP, which also falls into the trap of likening it to something with which we are familiar, has recently risen to prominence: is CDEP the Indigenous version of ‘work for the dole’ (WFTD)? And are both CDEP and WFTD the prototypes of the newly-acclaimed principle of ‘mutual obligation’?