The remote regions of Australia are those where mainstream economic opportunities are most limited and where the CDEP scheme is most prominent. They constitute what is without doubt the most problematic economic development extreme. In a paper written a decade ago (Altman 1990), remote Indigenous communities were typified as having extremely limited capacity to generate income independent of government. Such communities have come into being historically because of their very remoteness.^[18] This in turn is the reason for their current under-development: they have poor resource endowments and poor market linkage. This generalisation has exceptions: major mineral deposits can provide development opportunities based on exploitation of non-renewable resources, and remoteness can be an advantage for tourism enterprises and cultural industries. With globalisation, improved transport links, and electronic communication, remoteness need no longer be a major barrier to effective market linkage.

Official statistics on CDEP scheme participation are rare; indeed it was only in the 1996 Census that the ABS started asking a question specifically about CDEP employment. It so happens that this question was only asked in nominated discrete communities, almost all of which are located in remote areas, although a few exist in, or near, towns and cities. These required specialised enumeration procedures because of their geographic isolation and/or the extent of their cultural or language difference from mainstream Australia.^[19]

The 'specialised' enumeration strategy (SES) was used for an Indigenous population of 72 229, or 20 per cent of the total Indigenous population in 1996. There is a high degree of CDEP scheme participation in this statistical region, as shown by Altman and Gray (2000). At the time of the 1996 Census, there were 265 CDEP schemes, and it is estimated that 183 of these (69 per cent) were in Indigenous Local Areas (ILOCs) where the SES was used. All told, the 1996 Census found 10 948 CDEP-employed Indigenous persons in these areas, nearly 60 per cent of the Indigenous people estimated to be employed by CDEP in 1996. In these remote areas, CDEP employment also coincidentally accounted for 60 per cent of all Indigenous employment, with only 7247 Indigenous people employed outside the CDEP scheme.

The analysis here focuses on the 236 (out of 934) ILOCs where the SES was used. The reasons for this focus are that it is only at these ILOCs that data on CDEP participation are readily available. It also happens to be the case that CDEP is the primary form of employment in these areas: these ILOCs are the remotest from markets, at the difficult extreme in terms of engagement with the mainstream economy; and they demonstrate the highest level of cultural continuity, as measured by imprecise variables like 'cultural or language differences'.