Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I understand that there are proposals about reducing top-up, as it is referred to. I would like you to find what you understand top-ups to be but, in any event, I want to know whether you understand the implications of these changes on small area labour markets where there are no external job opportunities and what the implications will be on these families and communities when they have their incomes effectively reduced by 12 per cent or almost $3,000. Is the minister aware that a majority of the residents in remote communities of the Northern Territory, South Australia, Queensland, the Kimberley and Western Australia have little or no chance of getting a job that is not CDEP related, given the nature of the small area labour markets? Can the minister tell us how many Aboriginal and Islander communities in Australia, if any, where the job supply exceeds the job demand? Do you understand that in remote communities there is no adequate job market to satisfy the demand for a job for CDEP participants? If you grasp this self-evident fact, how can you explain the reasons stated by the department that the income cut for CDEP workers is so that they will be induced to go out and get a job? On the evidence available in Hansard, the government appears to consider that reducing people’s income will reduce their dependency on welfare and create incentives for people to move into jobs where there are none. If the government has reduced anything, it has reduced CDEP for an unemployment program for a quasi welfare system. Does the minister acknowledge that Indigenous people by and large do not have this attitude of CDEP being a hand-out and does he realise that these people regard CDEP as an opportunity to gain skills and take up any jobs that may arise in their community? Finally, does he know that such people need no incentives to move to employment and in fact would generally welcome an opportunity that currently, as a rule, does not exist?

See this speech in context