18. CDEP in Victoria: A case study of Worn Gundidj[51]
In 1992, when Will Sanders looked at CDEP across the country (Sanders 1993), there were only two CDEP schemes in Victoria, both based in Gippsland in the east of the State. Since that time the scheme has expanded rapidly, and now there around 750 participants involved in about a dozen CDEP schemes across the State. The subject of this paper is a corporate CDEP scheme in Western Victoria which operates under the mantle of the Worn Gundidj Aboriginal Co-operative.
Worn Gundidj is located in Warrnambool, in south-west Victoria. Warrnambool is a rural city with a population of 28 000 people, and a rich agricultural hinterland. Through its light industry, retail outlets, government bureaucracies and educational facilities it services a wide area of the south-west. Warrnambool has two Aboriginal co-operatives: Worn Gundidj (CDEP), and Gunditjmara Aboriginal Co-operative. The Warrnambool Aboriginal community has strong links to the Framlingham community located about 15 kilometres to the north-east; indeed the bulk of Warrnambool's Aboriginal population either came from Framlingham, or had ancestors who came off the Framlingham Aboriginal Station.
As a corporate CDEP, Worn Gundidj has a central office that services a number of satellite schemes (also referred to as outstations in CDEP-speak). The central office is the grantee and has the responsibility for administering the scheme's wages, on-costs and the specialised software program 'CDEPManager'. However, the Worn Gundidj central office is not just an administrative arm; it also has its own work programs and participants.
The structure displayed in Fig. 18.1 represents the totality of Worn Gundidj's operations. I conducted fieldwork only in the Warrnambool-based section of the scheme and so will focus on that part of the scheme's operations. I will refer to the central office and its operations as 'Worn Gundidj' and to the outlying operations as the 'satellites'. Fig. 18.1 shows that Worn Gundidj has a board of directors and chair at its decision-making apex. It is fortunate to have a regional CDEP coordinator based at its offices, who also sits as a board member. At this level the scheme is dominated by Indigenous voices. Yet at the next level—the executive and administrative level—the picture is reversed. Only two out of eight of the executive positions of program coordinator, finance manager, administrators (including receptionists), and supervisors are occupied by Indigenous people. Below the work supervisors come the participants. Worn Gundidj has around 110 participants on its schedule, and of that total between 40 and 50 are employed at any one time through Worn Gundidj's central office. The rest are employed through the satellites or in hosted positions elsewhere in the State.
[51] I would like to thank the participants and management of Worn Gundidj Aboriginal Co-operative for generously giving of their time and thoughts in support of this research project. In particular I would like to thank John Collier and Max Hall for their support and comments. A fuller version of this paper was published as Madden (2000).