Reframed as welfare: CDEP's fall from favour

How is it that an employment program designed to avoid Indigenous reliance on social security payments in 1977 became reframed as part of the welfare system 32 years later? How does a popular and successful solution to a significant public policy problem come, over time, to be seen as part of that problem? These questions are explored below in seven sections of analysis. The reframing of CDEP from employment to welfare did not occur all at once. It proceeded through diverse events over a 20-year period from seemingly innocuous beginnings, and it led in the end to the destruction of CDEP. Some of the reframing was legislative, but much was administrative. Only occasionally did the reframing become a matter of public debate between politicians and in the media. Such was the power of routine decisions within government that cumulatively they did most of the reframing of this once positively regarded program. This is the story of CDEPs fall from favour.