FORUM: Abolishing CDEP: Coming Soon to a Community Near You! Monday 17th November, 6pm, The Block - Redfern SPEAKERS: Uncle Dootch (Sandon Point Aboriginal Tent Embassy and Illawarra Local Aboriginal Land Council) Sylvia Hale (The Greens) (If there is wet weather, we will meet inside Redfern Community Centre). The proposed abolishment of CDEP in regional areas, and ‘revamping’ of it in rural, extends the racist policies of the intervention across Australia. Veiled by the government as enhancing employment prospects, has been damned by Aboriginal leader Uncle Dootch of the Illawarra Aboriginal Lands Council as: “an asset grab” and aimed at “pushing people onto and controlling them through welfare”. Over 120 families will be threatened with unemployment in the Illawarra region alone! The Illawara region has a higher than average unemployment rate of 9% and with the looming financial crisis, these figures are set to rise. Removing CDEP will devastate Indigenous communities and further entrench poverty and disadvantage. Howard scrapped CDEP in urban areas in 2007. Now in 2008 Rudd furthers this program across all areas of Australia. Communities are being opportunistically classified as ‘emerging’ or ‘limited’ economies, and vaguely being offered ‘proper jobs’ under the ambiguous Universal Employment Services program. This policy only further disempowers communities, outright rejecting efforts that have successfully built services and jobs in communities. Instead it offers a possibility to work in areas the government defines as ‘proper’ and cutting those jobs, historically provided through the CDEP, in areas that theoretically the government should be offering, but isn’t. Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney see this decision by federal government as furthering those aspects of assimilation and displacement so clearly seen in the NT Intervention. We are supporting the call out by the Illawara Aboriginal Lands Council to Converge on Canberra on November the 25th, when both parliaments sit and the policy is due to be tabled. This forum is to help build knowledge about this issue, involvement in the convergence, and clarity on both the policies of the Intervention itself and how they are being coopted and extended by the Rudd government. Attached is a pdf of the flyer for the forum to distribute and also a template sent out by the Illawara Aboriginal Lands Council to submit to the government for feedback on the proposed changes.