Work habits and localised authority in Anmatjere CDEPs: Losing good practice through policy and program review

Abstract

In the following analysis, I emphasise the highly localised authority structures of Anmatjere CDEPs and the work habits of participants as these developed from 2006 to 2013. This period includes the amalgamation of ACGC in 2008 into the much larger Central Desert Shire. The new Shire became the CDEP provider in five other settlements outside the Anmatjere region. My observation of CDEP in the Shire expanded to one of these settlements to the east, but not to those in Warlpiri country to the west. My analysis also covers the closure of CDEP in 2013 and the transition to the Remote Jobs and Communities Program (RJCP) over the next year or two. It is this latter period that gives this chapter its subtitle and argumentative theme—that good practice was lost through the processes of policy and program review that led to RJCP. This should not be taken as a critique of all policy and program review, but it should alert us to the potential for such processes to have negative, as well as positive, consequences. I will return to this argument about the relationship between policy review and practice in a later section of the chapter, but first I tell the story of Anmatjere CDEPs as I observed them from 2006 to 2013. Show more