Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion has savaged Labor's pledge to scrap a controversial work-for-the-dole scheme, claiming the move will rip $1 billion out of the portfolio.
A Shorten government would scrap the Community Development Program and replace it, but Senator Scullion says a "shocking" lack of detail has created uncertainty for remote Indigenous Australians.
Labor announced the election promise alongside a new Reconciliation Action Plan unveiled at its national conference in Adelaide on Monday.
Labor's assistant Indigenous affairs spokesman Pat Dodson said the new scheme would create jobs, meet community needs, deliver meaningful training and economic development.
The Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion has slammed Labor's plan. Source: AAP
"The Community Development Program put in place by the current government in remote communities is discriminatory, punitive and ineffective," Senator Dodson told delegates.
More than 80 per cent of participants in the CDP are Indigenous.
The scheme has been dogged by concerns its participants are hit with repeated financial penalties and forced to work much longer hours than city-based job seekers.
But Senator Scullion defended the program, arguing it has turned around community engagement and participation from seven to 70 per cent.
He said it had created 28,000 jobs, with more than 9600 long-term employment outcomes.
"Has the Labor Party asked representative bodies and local Aboriginal CDP providers? Has the Labor Party asked residents of remote communities?" the NT senator asked.
"Or has the Labor Party just made its decision based on the views of east coast academics and its union masters?"
Earlier in the year, Labor confirmed it would oppose reforms to the program including reducing work requirements, ease demands on medical evidence and relax incoming reporting rules.
ACTU president Michele O'Neil said the CDP had discriminated against people based on their skin colour and where they chose to live.
The government's Community Development Program has been described by Labor as "discriminatory, punitive and ineffective". Source: AAP
"This scheme is an appalling example of state-sanctioned racial discrimination and worker exploitation and Australia will be a better place without it," Ms O'Neil said.
Labor's Reconciliation Action Plan includes strategies to work to better understand how to improve the current involvement of, and relationships with, people.
