Reconciliation and Social Justice Library

REBUTTING THE MYTHS - MYTH: ABORIGINAL PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO WORK

Aboriginal unemployment rates vary from community to community. Overall, unemployment among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is approximately four times the national average. The more remote an Aboriginal community, the higher its unemployment rate is likely to be. This reflects low labour market opportunities. Other factors contributing to this high level of unemployment are past limited educational opportunities and lingering prejudice among non-Aboriginal employers.

Unemployed Aboriginal people, like other unemployed Australians, are entitled to Job Search or New Start Allowances, at the same rates as other Australians.

Yet, a huge number of them prefer to work for that entitlement. In more than 185 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across the country, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have chosen to forego those entitlements in order to work part-time on Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) programs for which they receive the equivalent of Job Search/New Start. Approximately 20,000 Aboriginal and Torres

Strait Islander people are presently involved in CDEP projects. Almost 40 per cent are women. CDEP communities undertake a range of community development projects including building maintenance, construction and repair of community infrastructure and management of projects which generate community income.

An estimated 11,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are on waiting lists to join the CDEP Scheme.

Over the next three years, it is planned that 60 new communities will join the CDEP scheme, thereby creating places for approximately 4,000 of those presently on waiting lists.

Sources:

ATSIC Annual Report 1990-91, pp 20-25.

1992-93 Budget Related Paper No 7: Social Justice for Indigenous Australians 1992-93. AGPS, Canberra 1992, pp 35, 36, 37.