The Wire

The Federal Government announced this week it will abolish its Community Development Employment Programs (CDEP) in all Northern Territory communities. It says the CDEP scheme will be replaced by ‘real jobs’ and training programmes. This announcement is a major backflip on another it made earlier this year, when it said it the CDEP scheme would only be axed in urban and major regional areas. Up to 8000 people in Austarlia’s most remote communities will lose their only source of employment from October 1. The director of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy at ANU, Professor Jon Altman condemns the move and predicts the Northern territory’s unemployment rate will skyrocket to at least 50 per cent – leaving one in two people unemployed.