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Abstract:
As the last vestiges of the remarkable, Indigenous-controlled, Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme was removed, Australia entered a post-CDEP era in 2013. In its place, in remote areas only, the rigid and externally imposed Community Development Programme (CDP) has been installed. The CDEP scheme had been a successful work-creation strategy that produced positive social, economic, and political outcomes for First Nations citizens across Australia. In contrast, the CDP has operated like Work-for-the-Dole on steroids and its introduction has seen high numbers of unemployed Indigenous participants exit the welfare system altogether. In this article, I look at how we got here. Guided by postcolonial theory and implementing the toolkit provided by Carol Bacchi's ?What's the Problem Represented to be?? approach, I pay close attention to the way in which Indigenous policy has been represented over the past 25?years. In particular, I examine the construction of the problem of ?Aboriginal welfare dependency? by the Liberal/National Coalition Government led by Prime Minister John Howard between 1996 and 2007. This interconnected problem representation, I argue, has been instrumental in changing the way Indigenous affairs is thought about, with concrete implications for policy today.
