Issue Brief 4 / 1996

At June 1996, the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme had 28,041 participants from 276 Indigenous communities. Its annual budget was $321.8 million. Urban communities continue to join the scheme. In March 1996, 28 per cent of participants were located in rural and urban areas. Fourteen per cent resided in New South Wales and Victoria, compared to 24 per cent in the Northern Territory. This case study, one of a series by CAEPR, looks at Yarnteen, in Newcastle NSW, a particularly successful urban CDEP scheme, in order to identify the factors in its success and highlight emerging funding issues.

Yarnteen: factors of success

Yarnteen Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Corporation was incorporated in June 1991 and in January 1993 expanded to undertake a CDEP scheme.

1. Good management

One of the reasons for Yarnteen's success is its high level of good management. Many of its Governing Committee are long-term members occupying senior positions in other local community organisations and government departments.

2. The linking of the social and commercial enterprises at Yarnteen by CDEP participants

Yarnteen has two streams; social enterprise and commercial enterprise.

• The social enterprise stream aims to 'enhance employment and training opportunities, community development and cultural awareness by providing a culturally appropriate, community-based employment and training service'. It includes the CDEP scheme, a Training Unit, an employment program (New Careers for Aboriginal People) and various cultural activities.
• The commercial enterprise stream aims to 'establish a sound economic base for future employment, training and self-sufficiency for the corporation, maintaining cultural identity whilst endeavouring to move into the commercial area'. It includes Yarnteen's business venture (Port Hunter Commodities) and its property improvements activities.

The two streams are linked by the role of CDEP participants. Port Hunter Commodities employs a CDEP labour force and offers on-the-job training and additional wages to those participants; Yarnteen's social enterprises can lead participants into the business venture or to work in the mainstream labour market.

3. Key role in providing in-house business training and mentoring

Most participants are long-term unemployed; some have never been employed. Most need intensive, graduated training focusing on basic work skills and routines. The Training Unit's in-house coordination of training has been vital in developing managerial expertise and job skills of workers.

4. Previous experience in labour market services

Prior to commencing the CDEP, Yarnteen already had over four years experience in Aboriginal employment service delivery and had established a client base within the community. This experience has helped its success.

5. Relationships with community

Yarnteen has fostered relationships with business and local government and made considerable efforts to secure traineeships and to tender for contracts.

Yarnteen has pursued both cultural and commercial objectives with some success. Its activities are collective, involve the community, feed into community organisations and create jobs. Business skills and success are valued.

Funding issues

The cost of training should be included in CDEP funding as a recurrent allocation to each organisation. A full-time training officer position should be funded for each CDEP scheme to enable the coordination of job-oriented training and to secure other sources of training funds.

The on-cost component of CDEP funds, pegged to actual participant numbers, has been critical to the establishment and maintenance of viable projects that produce meaningful work and begin to generate additional income for some participants. Yarnteen has tested its business and management capacities by going to commercial banks, not ATSIC, for money for larger-scale enterprise and property development.

Some CDEP participants are gradually leaving the scheme to take up full-time employment and wages within the Yarnteen enterprise, which is itself progressively shifting from CDEP-dependence into full private-sector status. As an incentive, ATSIC might fast-track access to funding involving the main enterprise and provide secured funds to Yarnteen to continue its key role in providing business training and mentoring. Another incentive for an efficient enterprise-oriented CDEP scheme would be for ATSIC to provide funding on a three-year block allocation directly linked to an equivalent three-year enterprise development plan.

Some participants appear to be engaged in a 'new' mixed employment status, made up of part CDEP employment and part private sector or contract employment in the mainstream. To separate the scheme into distinct welfare and labour market components might undermine the valued cultural strengths that underwrite these new trends. It could also undermine the community reinvestments that enterprises such as Yarnteen are making. However, the refinement of ATSIC program and funding support to those organisations attempting to establish CDEP-based enterprises could provide important incentives towards economic viability and sustained employment outcomes.

Conclusions

The CDEP case studies confirm the socioeconomic diversity apparent within urban Indigenous communities and their CDEP organisations. Levels of socioeconomic disadvantage in some urban populations are more like those in remote communities. Policies directed at enterprise-oriented CDEP organisations - urban, rural or remote - might enable the particular commercial and program needs of such organisations to be targeted and help them achieve better economic outcomes.

Rather than expand the CDEP scheme further, ATSIC should assess the real costs involved in running it with adequate funding for administrative, commercial and training staff. It should then proceed to fund existing CDEPs that are operating efficiently to a level where they can create meaningful employment and viable enterprises. That is, ATSIC should fund success.

D.E. Smith

This Issue Brief summarised CAEPR Discussion Paper No. 114, 'CDEP as Urban Enterprise: Yarnteen Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Corporation, Newcastle' by D. Smith published in July 1996. It was prepared by Stephen Matthews, assisted by Linda Roach and Melissa Lucashenko, and edited by Maureen MacKenzie-Taylor.