The deadly virus delivers accidental benefit to remote Indigenous Australia

The past two weeks have seen some extraordinary backflips by the current government on some of its long-cherished beliefs as its shutdown of the economy has resulted in the addition of likely millions to the dole queue. The resulting introduction of new JobSeeker and JobKeeper income-support measures will have a significant accidental benefit on the economic situation in remote Indigenous Australia. The earliest reported negative impacts of measures to control COVID-19 on remote Indigenous people was in the downturn of tourism visitation and an associated impact on art sales. My initial concern was that art-centre closures could see disposable income of people already deeply impoverished decline by up to 15 per cent and that this would cause immediate economic hardship. To offset this impact, it was advocated that the government suspend the Community Development Program (CDP) and its compulsory participation and activity-testing regime that has seen thousands of Indigenous participants financially penalised since 2015. This program has been criticised by many commentators and in Arena Magazine no.150 I likened it to modern-day slavery. It was also recommended that Newstart payments (recently renamed JobSeeker Payments, ironically just as jobs are extinguished by government action) increase significantly. The government’s economic-survival measures announced as a part of its second stimulus package of 23 March exceeded the hopeful lobbying for a rise in income support. The government also suspended CDP, sensibly recognising that group activity and intensive case management will be too risky to countenance.