Class action launched against the government over Work for the Dole scheme

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A Federal Court class action has been launched against the Commonwealth over claims its former remote Work for the Dole program racially discriminated against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. It focuses on those who participated in the program between 2015 to 2021.

Transcript

00:00The class action was filed in the federal court yesterday and it focuses on the Commonwealth

00:06Government's former Work for the Doll scheme known as the Community Development Program or CDP.

00:13Morris Blackburn lawyers allege that that program was racially discriminatory towards Aboriginal and

00:18Torres Strait Islander participants because of the disparity in requirements that it put on them

00:23to meet as opposed to the equivalent city-based programs. Now the CDP was brought into remote

00:29communities with a goal to increase workplace participation and employment. Principal lawyer

00:34on the case Miranda Nagy says that the focus or the key focus of this class action is that

00:40disparity in requirements. So she says that while city-based programs required people to work

00:46around 30 hours over a fortnight for up to six months the equivalent remote program the CDP

00:53required participants to work 50 hours over a fortnight throughout the whole year and

00:58those participants were disproportionately made up of First Nations Australians. Ms Nagy also

01:03claims that the program was more likely to penalise First Nations participants than

01:08non-Indigenous participants and she says that they were up to 27 times more likely to be penalised and

01:14that would lead to things like them being issued fines or having their payments cut. It's not the first

01:20time that the CDP has there has been a class action brought against the Commonwealth government over

01:25this program. Back in 2019 communities in central western Australia were awarded two million dollars

01:32after they sued the federal government over this program claiming that it was discriminatory. Minister

01:38for Indigenous Affairs Malindiri McCarthy has responded to this class action and she's noted that her

01:44government is fulfilling its promise to dismantle the CDP program. Her government has since created

01:50a new program called the remote jobs and economic development program and she says that that program

01:56gives First Nations Australians dignity of real work real pay and better working conditions and that

02:03program is to come into effect from November this year. The lawyers on this class action say that it should

02:10impact around 20,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians across some of the most remote

02:16communities here in Queensland, in WA, the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales and they

02:24say that the ultimate goal of this class action is to receive compensation for those unpaid hours, for

02:32stress, financial hardship experienced and also to hopefully revoke some of the fines that were issued to

02:38participants between that period of 2015 and 2021.

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