Basic income and cultural participation for remote-living Indigenous Australians
Basic income and cultural participation for remote-living Indigenous Australians
Implementing a Basic Income in Australia: Pathways Forward
- Author(s): Altman, Jon, Markham, Francis
- Secondary Author(s): Klein, Elise, Mays, Jennifer, Dunlop, Tim
- Published: 2019
- Publisher: Springer International Publishing
- ISBN: 978-3-030-14378-7
Abstract: In much of remote Australia where a sizable minority of Indigenous people live, labour markets are able to employ only a small fraction of the working-age Indigenous population, a legacy of Australia’s settler-colonial past and present. In this chapter, we do two things. First, we describe the former Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme as a basic-income-like programme. Using survey data from 2002–2003 to 2014–2015, we examine the impact of the abolition of the CDEP as a proxy for a future basic income scheme on cultural participation. We find that the existence of CDEP was associated with a modest increase in cultural participation, especially in attendance of sporting carnivals. Second, we argue for the implementation of a true basic income scheme in remote Australia as a first priority for a staged programme nationally.
- Urls: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14378-7_5
- Publisher Location: Cham
- Keywords: Indigenous, Remote Australia, Cultural participation, Cultural activities, Surplus population, Community Development Employment Projects scheme, Workfare