Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Under standing order 74(5)(a), I seek an explanation from the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Senator Scullion, as to why question No. 477, which I placed on notice on 13 June 2017, remains unanswered. I note that the minister sent a reply to my question to my office at 1.41 this afternoon, but I am advised it is yet to be tabled with the Table Office.

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the senator indicated, the answer is with the senator's office but not yet tabled. It's awaiting the normal tabling process, and I apologise in advance for the delay in providing the information.

Sue Lines (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Under standing order 74(5)(b), I move:

That the Senate take note of the explanation.

The catchcry of this government has been, 'We want to be doing things with, not to, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities,' yet the introduction of the CDP, in regard to consultation, would be rated as a failure. Despite the government's stated intention of wanting to engage Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals, families and communities, no such consultation has indeed occurred. The CDP, as we have heard through our own visits to communities, through our own investigations and, indeed, through Senate estimates, has absolutely impacted, in an extremely negative way, on the lives of individuals, families and communities.

From the range of questions Labor senators put during the estimates process and, indeed, these unanswered questions on notice to the minister, we can see that the CDP is not transparent. We have spoken to organisations on the ground and to affected Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and they don't understand the process which has been imposed upon them. But that's about all we do know for certain. There is little evidence, if any, that the CDP has been successful in getting people into sustainable jobs, which surely must be the intent of this program or, indeed, any program. Its forerunner, the Remote Jobs and Community Program, known as the RJCP, was just in its infancy when the government declared it to be a 'disaster'. There was no long-term investigation into how it was operating; it was just stopped and cut. Then, seemingly without consultation, the CDP was rolled out.

One of the claims the government makes is that there are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations running the CDP program—and there are. But many of those organisations were simply transferred over from the abandoned RJCP scheme. They don't have any power to change or apply local circumstances to the CDP. They are merely a conduit for the government's harsh CDP agenda. As one of the submitters to the current CDP inquiry suggests:

It is therefore a government choice as to whether the largely government provided economy is a welfare or an employment based economy.

When we look at remote communities, we can see that they rely on governments for infrastructure delivery, for houses, for medical centres and, indeed, for service provision. The government is a large potential employer in communities. But it is their choice whether they provide an economy to remote communities or create further welfare dependency. It comes as no surprise to me that that submitter was none other than the Liberal former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander minister, Mr Fred Chaney, who has been the lone Liberal voice on injustice after injustice to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, and in particular to those in remote communities.

I've only had a short amount of time to have a look at the answers provided to me today, but certainly one of the concerns that all Labor senators expressed after the last Senate estimates was the number of compliance investigations. In just eight months there were nearly half a million. When we raised those questions at Senate estimates, the minister, Senator Scullion, offered us a briefing. Certainly he said that to me privately. Well, we called his office to organise that briefing—and guess what? We're still waiting. It never came. We waited several weeks for this offered briefing to materialise. I can certainly, outside of the chamber, provide the name of the individual that we spoke to in his office about the briefing, if the minister is interested. I certainly don't think it's appropriate to put it on the record publicly in this place. We were still waiting, so we submitted our questions on notice, and we waited and we waited, and we waited. And I think to have to wait a full month after the due date is tardy to say the least.

And so at 10 past 12 today, we informed the minister's office that we would be using the standing order after question time, and we were told that the minister had signed off on the questions, but they were 'floating around' in the department somewhere. Again, that is extremely tardy. This issue of CDP is a very, very important issue. I was up at the Ng Lands last year, in a very remote community—I'm sure the minister knows it well—and I know that Senator Dodson, too, visited that community to see firsthand the devastation that CDP is creating in those very small communities. English is not widely spoken there. Most people speak language across those communities. Indeed, wherever we went we were expected to have an interpreter, because, as I say, not only is English not widely spoken, it's not widely known. And I saw in that community breach letter after breach letter after breach letter.

There's a story out of Warburton on that. One of the questions we asked the minister today is: what sorts of records are kept? We were informed that participants are not given breach letters—aren't advised when their payments are breached. Well, that completely flies in the face of a four-page, extremely technical letter that was sent to a young woman in the Warburton community. As to her circumstances: again, if organisations on the ground had one iota of flexibility, she would never have been breached. She had served some time in a detention facility and had been released on orders, and those orders prohibited her from attending the Warburton community. As we also know from comments that Senator Malarndirri McCarthy made in this place last week, people in these communities don't have addresses. They don't live at '10 Smith Street, Warburton'. All of the mail is collected centrally. So she got a letter from the department that was just addressed to 'Miss So-and-so, Warburton'. She wasn't there, because she had an order against her which said that she wasn't allowed to go back, for the time the order prevailed, to the Warburton community. So she was in an adjoining community. The community knew that, and no doubt the CDP provider knew that, but somehow that message didn't make its way through to Centrelink.

Another interesting thing that happened was this. Again, local knowledge is really what we want to be applied in these situations. Anyone who visits the Ng Lands knows that they operate, for the most part, on central desert time. But Warburton doesn't; Warburton operates on Western Australian time. So when the required phone call was organised, the officer from the department residing in Queensland just assumed that Warburton was on central desert time, which it isn't. So she never got the phone call. But that was a strike against her. There was simply no investigation made; she was just told: 'You didn't show up for your appointment.' Even though the officer had arranged that appointment on central desert time, and Warburton is on Western Australian time, that was a black mark against her name. Again, if we'd been able to have that input of local knowledge, that would not have occurred, because someone could've told the Queensland officer: 'Hang on a minute—unlike the rest of the communities in the Ng Lands, Warburton is on Western Australian time.'

As I said, what's well known about that community—potentially not well known by an officer in Queensland, but certainly by those of us in this place who have visited—is that English, for most of the people in that community, is not spoken, and indeed is not well known. Her letter is four pages—four pages of technical jargon that she wouldn't have been able to understand in any event. But that flies in the face of the information that I've waited a whole month for, which tells me that those letters are not even sent. So not only do communities not understand the CDP and its implications; apparently, the government does not either. They told me in questions delivered to my office today at 1:41 that somehow no breach letters are given out, and yet I have a breach letter addressed to a young woman in Warburton. What's going on there?

So the CDP is a mess. We are having an inquiry into the CDP because, clearly, people are doing it really tough. The other evidence I heard in Warburton, and indeed saw with my own eyes, is that children are going hungry when a person is breached. Children are going hungry because there's no money in the community. They are relying on the person in the home who maybe has an age pension to provide for the whole community.

Indeed, this is not just about the Ng Lands. Last week, Twiggy Forrest came here and said the answer to the problem is to roll out the BasicsCard. We on this side know that there is no single answer to the generations of dispossession that have been foisted upon our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. And, from speaking to agencies firsthand in Kununurra, I can tell you that there is a problem with the BasicsCard. It is being cashed out by the local taxi drivers. Taxis are allowed to be used on the BasicsCard, so the drivers are exploiting the community. They give out cash but keep most of the money for themselves. And I'm told it's children that are doing this. I'm also told that burglaries have gone up in Kununurra. Why? Well, we know what young kids do when they're hungry: they break in. The BasicsCard is not creating all of the problems, it's CDP as well. So Mr Forrest needs to look a little further than his one-size-fits-all. He needs to speak to people in Kununurra and see what's happening. If it's widely known that that's what taxi drivers are doing there, and seemingly it is, then how come Mr Forrest missed that basic truth?

I'm told that the CDP and the BasicsCard are strongly contributing to what's happening in Kununurra. So I'm disappointed that the minister chose to ignore our questions for a whole month. And there are processes in this place to get information. I didn't necessarily want to go down the questions on notice route. By contrast, when I asked the Attorney-General for a briefing on the McGlade matter, I very quickly got a very thorough briefing by one of his staff. I was able to ask lots of questions. It was a very thorough briefing. I asked for it and I received it. Unfortunately, when the minister offered the briefing, we waited and waited and nothing happened. I put on notice questions about my very serious concerns about the CDP program. Those questions had remained unanswered until, at 10 past 12 today, I did the minister the courtesy of letting him know we would be doing that—and suddenly the answers are forthcoming. I haven't had a proper opportunity to give close scrutiny to those answers, but my first reading of them is that they fly in the face of other information we got from Senate estimates. I will leave my remarks there.

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the senator but I would like to correct some significant inaccuracies in her contribution. First of all, I did apologise for both the briefing and the lateness of this. I know that at least one member opposite, Senator Dodson—and I hope he'll have something to say about this—was in fact at Garma when I made an announcement of significant changes to this. Because we were making sure that the announcement was going to be able to be made absolutely accurately with the significant change in the policy, we wanted to delay briefing anyone until that happened—and that is just the way it went.

In terms of some other inaccuracies in your presentation of how this has all gone, in my view that is somewhat in fantasy land. You say the RJCP was in its infancy, that it had hardly had a go. Well, it had had a decline of 60 per cent in the number of people who were even attending. I'm not sure what those opposite would want it to decrease by. Maybe we have to get down to 100 per cent of people returning to passive welfare, complete misery and danger to themselves that goes with that, so we did intervene.

You said, 'Seemingly, without consultation.' Now, if anyone was listening to that, they might think that actually meant without consultation, but, of course, it doesn't. It's one of those slim little words you put in there when you wish to confuse people. There was consultation, and I can tell you people said, 'We want to go back to CDEP.' We decided to, as much as we could at the time, move in that direction, and there has been remarkable success: 92 per cent of eligible jobseekers are now placed in work-life activities; and active participation, instead of seven per cent, has actually increased by 62 per cent. These are actual facts, and should be regarded as such by all those listening.

We put strong protections in place to make sure the penalties are only applied where they're warranted. These protections are the same for all jobseekers across Australia. These protections ensure that jobseekers don't suffer financial hardship. It's okay to say, 'Well, there were miles and miles of people who were breached,' but then you don't go on and say what I'm assuming you know, because you are a part of that process under which submissions were made by government to indicate that 90 per cent of those breaches were waived. It's interesting that, when making a contribution in this place to inform people, you would leave such important facts aside.

You've also talked to a couple of facts I can't let go. You paint a picture of a child having someone else's BasicsCard, getting into a taxi, apparently with not much language but managing to be able to calculate quite comprehensive fraud. I've heard some of these rumours, particularly about the taxi industry—that's probably the only one. In South Australia, there was a significant fraud. I congratulate Kyam Maher and the Premier in South Australia for prosecuting those individuals who owned stores there in that regard.

The other notion is that somehow somebody on aged care is somehow subject to CDEP. Perhaps I should send you another brief, Deputy President, Senator Lines; they're not even a part of this program; they're part of a completely separate program and are not subject to any CDEP activities or, in fact, any of those processes.

You talk about these large potential employers. We are working, wherever we can, to ensure that we're providing leadership in that area. The Commonwealth are, in fact, quite large employers in the community. You mentioned Mr Fred Chaney, a previous Liberal minister. Well, if you'd also followed the processes at Garma, he was quite complimentary—not of mine—of the government's initiatives and the new changes to move to CDEP. In fact, I think he suggested he was going to build an extremely small statue in his garden to commemorate the changes.

We've relied on more than letters in Warburton. In fact, the response we gave you today actually itemised around 15 points on communication. Yes, you've got a letter but, as you said: we send a letter in these cases, but we don't rely on that at all. What we do rely on is people knocking on doors. We rely on using local people, because they have that local knowledge. It is very, very important that we continue to rely on that local knowledge. That's why we're able to, in 90 per cent of circumstances, ensure the breach is avoided.

You also mentioned, Madam Deputy President, that we have substantially used the employment of providers. It's those providers who need to depend on local knowledge. You may not be aware, but it was only 2½ months ago that I stood in Cairns and told all the employment providers in this space that, if they were not an Indigenous organisation by 30 June 2018, they would not have a contract with the Commonwealth. I know that that has had a significant impact in that they are out there now, making sure they have a joint venture with local Indigenous people who have that network and can offer the jobs to local Indigenous people, as it was in the original CDEP days.

Can I complete my remarks by simply saying that we are moving to a new model, and that model is not a government model. It is a model that has been put forward by the communities, and it is going to be a wage-based model. This wage-based model will ensure that we move from poverty in these communities and increase the amount of money that people are actually getting. It's going to move to ensuring that an economy and the synergies of investment by the Commonwealth and states and territories can be acted upon and we can use those synergies for benefit. Again, in closing, Madam Deputy President, I just wanted to correct all of those errors in your contribution.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wanted to make a contribution to this debate—I'll keep it short. I am going to talk about some of these matters at a later time in the chamber. Firstly, I want to pick up on the comment that around 90 per cent of these penalties were waived. If that is true, all I can say is that I cannot imagine what impact the community would have felt if none of them were. I also was in Warburton during the winter break, and I saw and talked to people firsthand about the devastation—it's true to say 'devastation'—that has occurred in the community in terms of the penalties that have been applied. What the minister conveniently forgets to add is that it was 90 per cent of the eight-week breaches. I have not had the answer, but I have asked this question: what percentage of the breach does someone serve before they are then waived? They don't waive the no-show, no-pay rule. There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds—in fact, thousands—of no-show, no-pay people. So that means that people lose money every day, and that is having a devastating impact on community. I've been in the community and I've talked to people about it, and the impact it is having is showing in the shops—in the stores, I should say. It's not fair to say, as the minister also implied, that there's a great move to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups as providers. I haven't seen a lot of evidence of that to date, and there are certainly still a lot of non-Aboriginal providers.

The minister made comments around moving to wages. I was really pleased when I heard at Garma about moving to community based wages, but there's no meat on the bones of the comments at this stage. The minister made the comment at the time they moved from RJCP. There are some issues around RJCP about which I agree with the minister; there certainly needed to be changes, and the communities were very clear about that. They all thought that they were getting CDP—that they were moving to community based wages, when in fact that clearly was not the case. The government have now said they are in fact going to move to that, and I will be very pleased to see that. We've got to take them at their word that they're going to be doing that, but at the moment we just can't judge that because we just don't know what that's going to look like. So I'm not getting too excited until I do actually see directly what exactly CDP is going to look like.

I have, in fact, seen the piles of letters that are turning up—just the Centrelink letters—in Warburton. I have actually seen with my own eyes the letters that are turning up—not necessarily the breach letters, but the letters with which Centrelink is communicating with income support recipients. That's an example of what is happening in other communities. It's terrifying. It's terrifying how Centrelink are communicating with Aboriginal people who are on income support. I have another example in Warburton. In fact, I suspect that Centrelink, when ringing in from Queensland into Western Australia, don't just forget about Australian Central Standard Time; I actually think they're ringing on Queensland time. I think they forget that they're in fact talking to different time zones, because when I myself was in Warburton—and I'll talk about this a bit later as well—twice while I was there they made appointments to ring people and did not ring at the right time. So who knows? Sometimes it might be Central Australian time. Sometimes it might be Queensland time. Who knows? All I know is that it has direct impacts for those on the ground who, if they don't turn up to their interviews, can get cut off. It's appalling.

Addressing CDP, I think we need to get on the record really clearly—which the Senate inquiry will do—the impacts that it is having in real life on people's lives. A lot of people have said to me: 'What happens now with all the damage that's been caused? Do we just forget that? Do we just forget what damage has been caused in these communities from CDP?' I tell you what: Aboriginal communities won't be forgetting the damage that's been caused by CDP.

I will be pursuing the issues that have been raised in Warburton a bit later, but in the meantime I think we urgently need to find out what is happening with CDP and when we can expect to see the meat on the bones of that particular program.

Patrick Dodson (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise also to speak to question on notice No. 477 in support of the statements by you, Madam Deputy President. It seems to me that the minister should not hide his talent under a bushel. He obviously has many things on his plate and he has great intentions, but in this place you actually have to translate that into written form by way of legislation or by way of policy and written documentation. So I would encourage the minister, with his best intentions—and I've had several discussions with him, and I know that he has the best intentions—to translate that into writing so that the rest of us can be privy to what we cannot perceive without him putting things in writing.

The issue of breaching rates and the way the CDP has been rolled out in these communities is a hugely significant one. Let us just look at what's happening in my state of Western Australia, as has been mentioned, particularly in the Ngaanyatjarra lands. The Ngaanyatjarra Council and Aboriginal Corporation represents the interests of around 2,000 Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara and Pintupi traditional owners who reside in the 12 member communities of the Ngaanyatjarra Council, the largest of which is Warburton. We've heard about Warburton today.

I've seen the impact of CDP and the way it has been rolled out on my visit to Warburton, and I know when the committee visits Kalgoorlie for the hearings we'll learn more. Warburton, the largest community in the Ngaanyatjarra lands, was established as a Christian community in 1934. Warburton is located 1,000 kilometres from the two nearest regional centres, Alice Springs in the Northern Territory and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. Warburton has approximately 500 Aboriginal residents and more than 50 agency staff.

In a very clear submission from the Ngaanyatjarra Council to the Senate committee investigating the CDP they've said:

… the work done through the CDEP has been replaced by 'work for the dole'. This is not paid work but serves to establish and maintain entitlements to welfare benefits. The required number of hours has increased from 17 to 25, and the penalties for any breach of conditions (usually absences) can lead to a suspension of benefits lasting nearly two months.

The design of the CDP is explicitly based on an assumption that a regime of incentives and disincentives, if sufficiently punitive and applied over an extended period of time, will eventually teach Ngaanyatjarra people the value of regular work. History suggests there is no basis for this assumption. In practice, CDP requires adults to meet their income support obligations by undertaking work-like activities, often relatively meaningless tasks and under strict compliance arrangements. This is a hopeless vision of life on the Lands.

The chairman of the council, Mr Dereck Harris, wrote in his covering letter:

We now find ourselves in a situation where desert people cannot feed their families. People don't know what they can do to fix this problem. They feel frustrated and helpless. This is bad because people move to places that have a Centrelink office and many get into trouble when they're away from their own country.

The predecessor to the CDP program, the CDEP, was introduced into Warburton in 1979. It was not perfect, but it was adapted to the needs, interests and concerns of the community, as Ngaanyatjarra Council described it. The main advantage of CDEP was the flexibility it gave to community administrators. It was relatively easy to fill vacancies in the CDEP workforce, respond to emergencies, reprioritise jobs and so on. The strengths generally outweighed the weaknesses. In addition to funding municipal services, CDEP programs focused on housing renovations and maintenance that often occurred under the supervision of a non-Aboriginal tradesman that not only kept housing stock in order but provided practical on-the-job training. Workers were paid to assist in the development of outstations and infrastructure and work on restarting the cattle industry. Thus, five decades after the foundation of the mission, the CDEP program offered, for the first time, the possibility of full employment, albeit in circumstances and on terms that took account of some of the powerful cultural dynamics that characterise Ngaanyatjarra cultural and social relations.

The contrast of the present situation with the CDP program is stark and worrying. As Ngaanyatjarra Council again puts it:

Now, the communities in the Lands are forced to fit into a centralised welfare system where the administration of income support is the responsibility of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Department of Human Services and Centrelink. It is dependent on the use of the telephone and internet, unreliable technologies in remote locations, the failures of which place huge pressures on participants and the staff attempting to support them. The CDP and the Ngaanyajtarra Lands are a bad fit.

Not only has CDP destroyed the sense of agency among Ngaanyatjarras that had been fostered over decades, CDP threatens the very viability of the Ngaanyatjarra Lands communities.

These are extremely worrying concerns. The Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee is undertaking a hearing into the CDP program. We'll be hearing from community members and providers in Kalgoorlie, Alice Springs, Papunya, Townsville and Palm Island. We'll also be hearing from academics who have studied the ways in which this program has been rolled out across Australia. The submissions we have received are tending to emphasise the points that have been made already about the program by Ngaanyatjarra Council. This goes to the heart of what meaningful work looks like in our remote communities.

While the CDEP scheme of the past was not a perfect program, it provided some sense of meaningful work and contributed to local communities' development. It allowed for community access to surplus funds. This is sadly lacking in the way that the CDP was designed and is now being delivered. I'm hoping that the committee hearing process can point to a new direction for the rollout of work programs in remote communities. I'm hoping that any such reform program can deliver meaningful work, award-wages equivalence and the promotion of work entitlements such as superannuation and annual leave. I hope these are in the minds of the minister. The sooner we get clearly from the minister what he intends to do about this particular space we'll be better off, and those people who rely upon the services will also be better off.

Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to speak on the failure of the minister to answer this question in a timely manner, noting that he has now answered it. If you look at the minister's answer, you see it falls into the category of 'if you don't ask exactly the right technical question then the department will use every opportunity to deprive you of the actual data that you're looking for,' when you know full well that they know exactly the information you are looking for. So I hope that much of this information does in fact come to light through the Senate inquiry that is now underway, because what's going on is this failed CDP is failing thousands of people in remote communities with devastating consequences on them at a personal level. It seems extraordinary to me that, confirmed at estimates, last year from July to just September, some 54,000 penalty notices were issued. And there have been more than 200,000 breach notices handed out since the new version of CDP began back in July 2015. What's amazing about this is that there are only 35,000 people in this program. So the idea that you could have 200,000 breach notices for a program that has just 35,000 people in it just shows what a heinous, overly bureaucratic, heavy handed program this actually is.

If the government were looking at where they really want to put their energy, where they really want to put their investment, it's not in punitive programs like this. Just think about the effort that it takes to regulate, control and send 200,000 breach notices. If the government were to reinvest that level of energy into supporting activities that are culturally determined by people locally on the ground, that would be meaningful for people to participate in. There are proposals that, frankly, have been about for some time about what these kinds of CDP programs could alternatively look like. We must go down the path of making those changes.

Senator Scullion, like me, was up in Senator Dodson's neighbourhood a couple of weeks ago for the Kimberley Land Council's Kimberley Ranger Forum. It's such a wonderful program that engages people in caring for country, caring for culture, and with meaningful economic and social outcomes. They are the kinds of programs that we should be investing in. We see communities desperately trying to cobble together resources to expand programs like the ranger program and they're being denied the opportunity to do that. A really good example of this were some wonderful women rangers that I met who are using Green Army funding to become rangers, and they've been monumentally successful. But the problem is that the money is about to run out, and they will be without jobs.

So what we see is the failure of the government to engage in the creation of meaningful opportunities, while they've got this heavy handed punitive approach to CDP. What we can see is that suspending people's welfare does not resolve the shortage of remote jobs. We need to see real engagement with these communities to create jobs. Nor indeed does this punitive approach encourage people to move off country in search of work elsewhere. The warnings in the ANU report that closing CDP would increase welfare dependency and impoverishment were indeed warranted. So the closure of the old CDEP and the creation of the CDP has indeed seen increased welfare dependency and impoverishment as a feature of the program. That was a finding of the ANU.

Indeed, they also said that there's a vastly disproportionate application of income penalties to CDP participants as compared to the equivalent program, such as the jobactive program, in non-remote areas. We have just 35,000 people engaged in this program, yet the statistics that were shown to me from APO NT demonstrated that those 35,000 people were subject to just about double the number of breaches compared to the general population involved in jobactive breaches, when in fact there are tens of thousands more people involved in jobactive programs than in CDP. The implications of this, according to the ANU, are profound. What you can see is that participants are incurring multiple penalties in a very short period of time. Again, I reflect back on the statistics I gave before, which were that we had some 54,000 penalty notices in just three months. This includes high rates of serious penalties that result in people being cut off welfare payments for eight weeks.

We know that job outcomes in remote areas are complicated and limited by a range of factors and that this is slow to resolve, but we can't resolve it through these punitive kinds of programs. We've got to resolve it through buy-in from the local community about the kinds of activities that are meaningful to their social and economic development—just as the ranger program does—and that are determined by people themselves, not through this very punitive process that we have with CDP. What we see with the program as it exists currently is increased harm, including poverty, a reported drop in food sales, increasing debt and a greater risk of incarceration when the suspension of welfare payments limits people's ability to make payments towards things like fines. We know that too many people in remote communities are locked up simply because they have fallen behind on fine repayments or can't pay them.

I've spoken to CDP participants whose confusion, frustration and anger about these issues is absolutely palpable. I'm pleased that there are an increasing number of Indigenous organisations and CDP providers mounting challenges against the scheme. I note that the Human Rights Commission have been asked to investigate whether the program is discriminatory, given that it is mostly affecting Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I also commend the ACTU for examining the scheme on the basis that it doesn't provide the kinds of benefits that standard employment should provide.

Behind the scenes, happily, there's a flurry of activity, as Aboriginal organisations concerned about these detrimental effects get organised, and I wish them well for the Senate inquiry that is underway. But, I have to say, it's no thanks to the work of this government and indeed our own Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Nigel Scullion, who've seen fit to put this heinous, punitive approach to Indigenous participation in employment in place.

Question agreed to.