In 1995, HREOC directed its Race Discrimination Commissioner to investigate and report on these complaints. In her report in 1997, the Commissioner generally accepted the validity of the complaints and, although stopping short of making a finding of racial discrimination, was quite critical of the way the DSS and other government agencies treated CDEP participants. She argued that there was a lack of ‘consistency’ or ‘uniformity’ in the treatment of CDEP participants by government agencies which, in some situations, meant that they got the ‘worst of all’ treatments (HREOC 1997: ix).

The Race Discrimination Commissioner suggested that the solution to this ‘worst of all worlds’ treatment was to consider CDEP participants consistently and uniformly as ‘ordinary wage earners’. To this end, she even contemplated the repeal of the 1991 provisions of the Social Security Act which had partially recognised the CDEP scheme as part of the Commonwealth income support system, and had hence forbidden CDEP participants from also qualifying for New Start Allowance (HREOC 1997: ix). However this repeal did not occur.

By late 1997, the DSS had also come to accept the validity of the complaints of CDEP scheme participants and was moving, in consultation with ATSIC, to resolve the issues in another way altogether. Its solution was to extend the recognition of CDEP participants within the social security system. CDEP scheme participants would become social security customers, while also being wage earners in relation to their local Indigenous community organisation. They would have a social security customer reference number and receive ‘add on’ entitlements as income support recipients from within the social security and tax systems, even though their basic entitlement would still be routed through ATSIC and the Indigenous community organisations administering CDEP as wages.

This is the arrangement which was foreshadowed in the 1998 Budget and which was slowly introduced during 1999 and 2000. The new social security service delivery agency, Centrelink, is now part of the CDEP scheme’s administration and DFACS, which oversees social security system, also has a background policy presence. This reshaping of the CDEP scheme after 20 good years has brought it, and its participants, considerably closer to the social security system than ever before.