When Minister for Indigenous Australians Malarndirri McCarthy is asked to outline her vision for Indigenous policy after the Voice referendum, she has a three-word answer: “jobs, jobs, jobs.” McCarthy has been travelling across the north in recent weeks, touting Labor’s Remote Jobs and Economic Development Program (RJED) ahead of the May 3 election. The $707 million initiative replaces the Community Development Program (CDP), a punitive regime of mutual obligations and work-for-the-dole that was rolled out concurrently with robodebt and has since been the subject of multiple class actions, one of which is ongoing. Since 2017, successive Australian governments have stated their intention to fundamentally reform or replace the CDP. Labor ultimately vowed to abolish it in 2018 and went to the 2022 election promising to “replace it with a new program with real jobs, proper wages and decent conditions designed in partnership with First Nations people”. When announcing the program in February 2024, the prime minister said the new remote jobs program would create up to 3000 jobs over the next three years. It was the first major policy announcement after the failed referendum and it coincided with the release of the government’s annual Closing the Gap figures. A 2024 Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) report into remote employment programs paints a bleak picture of the transition to Labor’s new scheme and of its efficacy. The report says, “Advice to government to support a February 2024 announcement of $707 million in funding for the new ‘Remote Jobs and Economic Development Program’ was not clearly informed by evidence. There was no program logic or evaluation framework for the new remote jobs program at the time of announcement. The NIAA’s [National Indigenous Australians Agency] processes to develop policy advice for a new remote employment program were not fully consistent with the Australian Government’s expectations for best practice policy advice.” The Saturday Paper sent a raft of questions to the NIAA, but the agency declined to comment, citing caretaker conventions. Not only did Labor promise to develop a new program “in partnership with First Nations people”, but it also spent the first two years of its term talking about the need to listen to Aboriginal people in order to get better outcomes. With this as the backdrop, the ANAO found the NIAA didn’t establish a governance structure to ensure that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were included in decision-making until a month before the prime minister announced the new program. The stakeholder engagement plan wasn’t finalised until months after Labor had already announced the new program. The report also says the NIAA’s trials to inform the design of a new scheme “were not consistent with an effective trial design”. It says trials were “delayed or undersubscribed” and that “consultation was not verified by the NIAA”. The report notes the data collection, performance measurement and evaluation approach “does not produce a clear understanding of which projects worked best to achieve the objective of ‘creating real jobs’ ”. Despite the clear-eyed nature of the ANAO’s report, the NIAA’s website says the “design of this [RJED] program and service builds on the success of job trials and reflects feedback from consultation”. Responding to detailed questions about the ANAO report’s findings, Minister McCarthy said the Remote Jobs and Economic Development Program “is about giving First Nations people in remote communities the dignity of work, with real jobs, decent pay and conditions, including superannuation and leave”. “From the Kimberley to Alice Springs to Maningrida, I’ve seen the impact these jobs can have on people – some of whom are in jobs for the first time. That’s life-changing. “RJED is the first phase of replacing the failed CDP program; the second phase is a new remote employment service to support jobseekers who are looking for work or need help to become job ready. “Both programs have been designed in consultation with remote communities and First Nations organisations.” McCarthy criticised the Coalition and its spokesperson for Indigenous affairs, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price who, she says, “has no vision to create jobs in remote communities or invest in them”. “Labor went to the last election promising to replace the failed CDP program, only Labor is delivering on that commitment. “Senator Price was a strong advocate for the failed CDP program, which penalised First Nations people and families, placing many in poverty.” The report was critical of the Commonwealth’s 2023 decision to extend grant agreements with poor performing and high-risk providers to bridge the transition period to a new program. Instead of leveraging the contract expirations to renegotiate terms that would address the widespread underperformance and lack of accountability, the NIAA extended 63 out of 64 existing CDP provider grant agreements, despite 41 per cent having an average performance rating “below requirements”. “It’s the same old story,” says Kristin O’Connell from the Antipoverty Centre. “The extension of these contracts was about financially propping up the providers” and continuing the regime of “punishing and controlling people for being poor”. Since the CDP was introduced in 2015, numerous inquiries and reports have set out the detrimental impacts of the program, which include an increase in break and enters to steal food, predominately by children and young people; an increase in domestic and family violence; an increase in financial coercion and family fighting; and an increase in mental health problems, feelings of shame, depression, sleep deprivation and hunger. The Commonwealth was first advised in 2015 that there was a “medium” risk the program was inconsistent with the Racial Discrimination Act. In 2016, a complaint was brought to the Australian Human Rights Commission by the remote Western Australian Shire of Ngaanyatjarraku, alleging a breach of the act. The process for mediation failed and in July 2019 a class action against the Commonwealth began. Despite the known legal risks and the fact that parliamentary inquiries first started handing down recommendations to the NIAA in 2017, the ANAO found the agency “did not have a process or policy for monitoring or responding to parliamentary committee recommendations until December 2023”. Additionally, “the NIAA Executive Board and Audit and Risk Committee had no specific oversight over the implementation of parliamentary committee recommendations”. Up until 2024, the NIAA continued to describe the aim of the CDP as being to “support jobseekers in remote Australia to build skills, address barriers to employment and contribute to their communities through activities and training”. In response to questions from The Saturday Paper, Senator Price said Labor’s failure to overhaul and replace the CDP amounts to a broken election promise. “Ensuring there was a proper jobs and training program in place should have been a priority for this government, but it wasn’t,” she says. “We have been left with nothing more than a trial of the new RJED Program and nothing to explain the full detail of that program. “The Coalition has been clear about our commitment to practical solutions and encouraging economic independence for Indigenous Australians, especially through the private sector, away from dependence on government. “We are committed to providing real jobs and training for Indigenous Australians and to ensuring that mutual obligations exist, as Australians would expect to see in any kind of jobseeker program.” The Saturday Paper asked Price to specify what those “practical solutions” are and what evidence base she is relying on to affirm the efficacy of mutual obligations. This newspaper also asked her to provide the research or data indicating that Australians expect jobseekers to be bound to mutual obligations. She did not respond. The CDP has been found to cost five times as much per participant as the mainstream Jobactive program and twice as much as the scheme it replaced. Those under mutual obligations also take longer to find work. Generating meaningful opportunities at scale in remote Australia is mission critical, but an honest account of the major parties’ remote employment programs over the past two decades shows that neither is willing to pursue a long-term and evidence-based agenda. People out in the bush long for a paradigm shift away from a politics of punishment and to one of possibility and prosperity.