ATSIC’s two largest programs, which were ‘mainstreamed’ in mid 2004, were CDEP and CHIP. Both programs functioned through a wide network of Aboriginal-controlled organisations, and CDEP had around 35 000 participants. The CDEP transfer in particular was to have dramatic impacts.

The handover of CDEP to the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) brought it into close contact with other mainstream labour market programs. The ‘old’ CDEP model, which offered close to guaranteed, relatively flexible, annual funding for community organisations, and provided continuing support for a broad range of community-defined work for participants (albeit with none of the usual benefits and conditions of regular employment or superannuation entitlements), was gradually replaced with a model in which contracts specified clear job targets, defined what work was more narrowly (e.g. excluding some cultural work), and did not provide continuing job subsidy support^[7] (Sanders 2007a, 2007b). DEWR was transforming CDEP into a narrower skill development and employment program, more reflective of that department’s wider employment philosophy.^[8] Around 60 urban and regional CDEPs across Australia were closed in mid 2007,^[9] and another 50 in the Northern Territory (NT) were expected to close by mid 2008, until some of these were given a reprieve with the late 2007 change of Australian Government (Brough and Hockey 2007; Koori Mail 2007; Murdoch 2007). CDEP activity underpinned a number of other government programs and economic development initiatives with Indigenous people, among them the Indigenous Protected Areas Scheme (Gilligan 2006), art programs, municipal services, and the activities of outstation resource agencies, yet the implications of DEWR’s changed approach for these activities seemed not to have been fully considered. However, some 800 former CDEP jobs in government programs were fully funded by the Australian Government (ABC News 2007a, 2007b; Altman 2007a; Brough 2007; Hunt and Smith 2007). Clearly, the Australian Government expected State and Territory Governments to take up more of the employment challenge. In December 2007, the Labor Government transferred responsibility for CDEP to the new Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaHCSIA), indicating some rethinking about the program for the future.

In May 2007, the Australian Government also announced the abolition of the major Aboriginal housing scheme, CHIP, which had been managed by the Department of Families and Community Services and Indigenous Affairs (FaCSIA) since July 2004, and delivered by State and Territory Governments, local government and around 600 Aboriginal community housing organisations. An independent review had found extensive problems with the program (PricewaterhouseCoopers 2007). It is being replaced by new arrangements that involve mainstreaming Indigenous housing into public housing programs, policies to encourage Indigenous people to move to new public housing in locations where education, health and other services are available (i.e. no more new housing at outstations or homelands), and encouraging home ownership (Brough 2007). Whilst Dillon and Westbury (2007) argue strongly that parallel housing schemes for Indigenous and other Australians have seriously disadvantaged Indigenous people,^[10] the impact of the policy announcement is nevertheless the redundancy of many Indigenous community housing sector organisations.

This transformation of the CDEP and community housing programs has clearly impacted on the Indigenous organisational landscape in some regions, as smaller organisations close down, coalesce or become dormant, and larger ones juggle new responsibilities. As this organisational adjustment process has been occurring (which at best may lead over time to fewer organisations with greater capacity, or at worst may leave communities without programs and services), other programs have inevitably, if unintentionally, been affected (Altman 2007a).