Long Road

From the Canberra airport (free wireless!).

On page four of the Sydney Morning Herald (Oct 6-7 weekend edition): “Labor Plan to Create Jobs”

Apparently on Friday in Alice Springs Peter Garrett and Jenny Macklin announced $150 million for CDEP including the Ranger programs (many which were set to lose funding through the scrapping of CDEP). Of that, $90 million will actually be used to create 300 ADDITIONAL positions for Indigenous rangers. Great news. Even better is the last paragraph in the article:

As part of the announcement Labor also said it would reinstate the Community Development Employment Project, which pays people about $230 a week to do jobs such as child carers, teachers’ aids and night patrollers.

Yes, finally a public statement. In the NT we have been hearing whispers and back-channeled promises, but I think this is the first public statement from Labor making a commitment to keep CDEP (presumably with some changes where needed).

Now when will Howard call the election so we can get on with this?

Update: seeing as my plane is delayed I decided to catch up on the news, since I have been off line for two days. Not surprisingly, Mal Brough thinks Labor’s plan to reinstate CDEP is bad, bad, bad.

We have seen what is a crucial element of the intervention, that is curtailing the amount of cash that can be available for alcohol, drugs and gambling being reinjected into those communities by reinstating of CDEP.

So who is the “we” that Mal is invoking here? Clearly he’s not up on his academic blogs, or Women for Wik or Art Centre managers. The money interjected into communities from CDEP goes to many, many things including food, rent payments, medicine, childcare….Come on Mal, you can keep trotting out the line that “the women” (who are always “old”) want, in fact are begging for, their money to be quarantined, but it’s just wearing thin. What Brough and Howard didn’t count on was the sustained critiques of and backlash to their CDEP and Centrelink plans.