"Work-for-the-dole" payments for young Aboriginal Australians will be slashed by a quarter under an overhaul of indigenous unemployment programs. The federal government, which advocates mainstreaming indigenous welfare arrangements, argues Aboriginal young people need incentives to find jobs. From July 1, it plans to strip new applicants for the indigenous work-for-dole payment, the Community Development Employment Projects program, of their payments after 12 months. Participants will then be pushed onto lower, mainstream payments. A youth rate is also set to be introduced for the first time.

Any new beneficiaries aged under 20 and living in a remote area will face a cut of almost $60 a week when the indigenous dole is brought down to the general youth allowance rate paid to the non-indigenous jobless. The savings are to be pumped into training opportunities for people on CDEP payments. Employment Minister Kevin Andrews said the changes would bring indigenous people into Australia's economic fold. "Aboriginal people have been largely locked out of the economic life of Australia for a long period of time," Mr Andrews told reporters in Canberra. "If we can return CDEP to a pathway to employment, rather than a dead-end destination as it is in so many instances, then that can only benefit more indigenous people," he said.

But he said today's announcement was not a stepping stone to abolishing indigenous-specific welfare. "I don't foresee that CDEP will cease to exist because CDEP has a broad set of objectives; part of it is employment," he said. Part of the government's rationale for the changes was to treat indigenous people in the same way as non-indigenous Australians. "I think we ought to treat, as far as possible, all Australians the same and not have some special ... program for indigenous people that effectively means they're not treated the same as other Australians," Mr Andrews said....

More here

************************

For more postings from me, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and DISSECTING LEFTISM. My Home Page. If this blog ceases to be updatable, or is difficult to access, there is a mirror site for it here which may work better. Email me (John Ray) here. RSS site feed: http://www.blognow.com.au/rss.php?u=libertas