The Inclusion and Control of Indigenous Organisations in the Delivery of Remote Employment Services

Indigenous organisations have been involved in the delivery of government funded employment programs since the late 1970s, particularly through delivery of the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme which operated from 1977 to 2013 (Sanders, Australian Journal of Political Science, 52(2):272–287, 2017). The existence of this program shielded many unemployed Indigenous Australians and Indigenous organisations from reforms to employment assistance that occurred from the mid-1990s—changes characterised by a combination of New Public Management (NPM) techniques and intensification of the obligations of the unemployed—or ‘activation’ (Sullivan, A reciprocal relationship: Accountability for public value in the Aboriginal community sector. The Lowitja Institute, 2015; Fowkes, Settler-state ambitions and bureaucratic ritual at the frontiers of the labour market: Indigenous Australians and remote employment services 2011–2017 [PhD thesis, Australian National University, Canberra], 2018). The abolition of CDEP, and its replacement by the Remote Jobs and Communities Program in 2013 (RJCP, 1 July 2013–30 June 2015) and the CDP (Community Development Program, 1 July 2015–present), cemented the inclusion of remote Indigenous unemployed people in the mainstream system (Fowkes, Settler-state ambitions and bureaucratic ritual at the frontiers of the labour market: Indigenous Australians and remote employment services 2011–2017 [PhD thesis, Australian National University, Canberra], 2018; Sanders, Australian Journal of Political Science, 52(2):272–287, 2017). Many Indigenous organisations took up the opportunity to become involved in provision of employment services (Fowkes, Settler-state ambitions and bureaucratic ritual at the frontiers of the labour market: Indigenous Australians and remote employment services 2011–2017 [PhD thesis, Australian National University, Canberra], 2018). This chapter examines how this process unfolded and the techniques by which Indigenous organisations were increasingly harnessed to government agendas over two iterations of the remote employment scheme.