At the policy level at least, the recent reshaping of CDEP has been a matter of adjusting balances within the scheme by moving in two directions at once. This movement has been both towards the social security system, as a result of (though not recommended by) the HREOC Review, and towards a greater employment focus as a result of the Spicer Review. In an earlier paper I described CDEP as being ‘astride the welfare/work divide in Australian social policy’ (Sanders 1997). With this recent movement in two directions at once, CDEP is as firmly and awkwardly astride that divide as ever, though as I noted in that earlier paper, there are both opportunities and problems in that position, and the opportunities for CDEP have in general outweighed the problems.

I have not attempted here to make any overall judgment as to whether this recent pull in two directions has been a good or a bad thing for the CDEP scheme. I simply observe that this is what has occurred, and try to understand why. At the level of practice—rather than policy—it is debatable whether the CDEP scheme is in fact moving in two directions at once. It would seem to be very difficult to encourage people off the scheme onto social security payments because they are not working, while at the same time telling them they are indeed Centrelink customers, even while on CDEP. In practice, on the ground, the scheme may not have been moving in two directions at once; it may simply have been moving closer to the social security system, with some old and thorny issues about working and not working within the scheme remaining unresolved.