Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

Senators will no doubt be aware that there are a number of CDEP positions in many of these communities that I think everybody acknowledges are full-time positions—and those people should not be there. So we are moving those people. If it is a Commonwealth position and it should be paid for by the Commonwealth, it needs to be a full-time position, not a CDEP training position with top-up. In the last budget the Commonwealth committed significant sums of money to pay for that. We would expect it will be the same for those people being paid for local government positions—and for the Northern Territory government, which has people in those communities. Those people who are employed on CDEP to do a job that should be full time will be transferred to those jobs.

The remaining cohort will move from CDEP to income support, with the provision of employment services. There will be literacy training and job preparation and training, as well as access to the STEP program, which in effect is how CDEP was originally intended. That is the suite of options that people will have, but, principally, much of that cohort will move to income support and employment service providers, with a whole suite of training initiatives to ensure that they can move into employment.