A most egregious transition: CDEP to CDP

Abolishing CDEP was a well-intentioned mistake and CDP is our attempt to atone for it. So said ex-Prime Minister Tony Abbott in an exchange with Amos Aikman reported in The Australian newspaper on 6 October 2016 (Aikman 2016). There is no question that the abolition of CDEP was a disastrous policy decision by the Howard Government, subsequently endorsed by a series of both Labor and Coalition governments during the next decade. This was an outcome that was predicted by a considerable body of evidence based on both official statistics and case studies about the benefits of CDEP to Indigenous individuals, communities and organisations compared with welfare and Work for the Dole. This evidence was provided to one government after another by CAEPR at the ANU, as summarised in a recently published monograph edited by Kirrily Jordan (Jordan 2016) all to no avail.