For months the commonwealth has resisted releasing official evaluations of its remote work-for-the-dole program (Community Development Program or CDP), while insisting that it has been a “resounding success”.

When these evaluations were quietly released last week the reasons for this reluctance became clear. The single largest program of the commonwealth’s Indigenous Advancement Strategy has delivered only a 1% improvement in employment outcomes – and then only for those most likely to find employment on their own. Penalties have skyrocketed under the scheme, with more than half of those penalised losing 5% or more of their income.

There was evidence of penalties contributing to worsening mental health, family violence and petty crime by children seeking food. Over one third of community members surveyed said that the CDP had made things worse.

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It is not so much the failure of CDP that deserves condemnation – the problem is complex and any policy change will face risks. But governments should try to minimise these risks by taking account of evidence of what works, including recognising the importance of participation by Indigenous peoples in decisions that affect them.

The design of CDP not only ignored what we know about employment programs, it was top-down, implemented against the advice of Indigenous and sector representatives.

Finally, and belatedly, there has been an admission of the need for change. But the nature of the government’s proposed reforms shows that very little has been learned. CDP’s basic structure is not fit for purpose. A brief look at the evidence shows why.

CDP was introduced by minister Nigel Scullion in 2015. It is mandatory for all unemployment benefit recipients in remote areas (around 30,000 people), over 80% of whom are Indigenous.

Scullion’s signature reform was the introduction of continuous daily work for the dole from day one of unemployment – up to 1,150 hours per year. In other parts of the country, only the long-term unemployed can be forced to work for the dole. Even then, they can choose other means of fulfilling their “mutual obligation”, like training or part-time work, and must work at most 650 hours per year. In non-remote areas relatively few people end up in work for the dole and this is deliberate.

The program is expensive to run. There is little evidence that it helps participants move into work, and some evidence that it might actually reduce employment.

The largest impact of work for the dole in non-remote areas comes from its “threat effect” when people declare existing income or take up less attractive jobs in order to avoid the scheme. But the “threat effect” can’t do much good for those who have significant barriers to employment or in places where no jobs are available – like most of the remote communities covered by the CDP.

It can be no surprise that the CDP has had little positive effect on employment except for the “job ready”. In the absence of work, only the “threat” remains. CDP has led to the imposition of thousands of penalties and loss of income. As well as reducing incomes, the commonwealth’s evaluators found that penalties contributed to worsening mental health and a sense, for some, of disempowerment and despair.

Despite this, the government CDP reforms maintain continuous work for the dole in remote areas. Hours will be reduced but, at up to 920 hours per year, remote participants will still have to work much more to keep their ‘dole’ than their counterparts elsewhere.

Case management is also provided as part of CDP. In the right circumstances case management can be helpful for people trying to navigate a pathway to work. The problem, as a panel of experts recently found, is that “case management” in Australian employment programs is not currently working for those with more complex needs. The system has become highly standardised and compliance focussed, staff have limited time or skills and turnover is extremely high.

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Most case managers are so busy working on the computer they have no time to get to know their clients or employers. In remote areas these problems are compounded by lack of services (eg mental health services). When jobs arise they often require higher level skills which take training over long periods. But the focus on CDP is only on short-term (26-week) jobs.

The CDP is doing little to change the outcomes for those who need help to get work, and nothing for those who aspire to take up higher skilled roles in their communities. CDP providers have expressed frustration that so much of their work is administration, while community members are frustrated at the lack of focus on long-term strategies to build local economies.

The basic demand of people in remote communities is for paid work. Work doing things that are important to the community, that offer opportunities for ongoing learning and that give people enough money to live a decent life.

The government has proposed partial wage subsidies, but again the evidence is that this investment is poorly targeted. Indigenous wage subsidies in non-remote areas have had limited take up. In the remote areas that are most desperate for jobs there are simply not enough employers who can afford to make up the difference between the subsidy and employment costs. In stronger labour markets there might be more take-up, but because the scheme is not targeted there is a high likelihood of “deadweight costs” – that subsidies will do little for the harder to help.

The government has allocated $1.1b to its “reformed” CDP. But for the most part, these reforms offer more of the same. This is despite clear evidence that, even with the proposed reforms, the scheme will not provide people in remote communities with a pathway to work.

The Fair Work Strong Communities Alliance, led by the Aboriginal Peak Organisations of the NT, has been campaigning for the adoption of an alternative proposal, drawing on evidence of what worked (and didn’t) in past remote programs, like the former CDEP. The proposal includes funding 12,000 new jobs, recognising that that impoverished communities cannot climb out of poverty on their own.

Most importantly the proposal sets out a different way of “doing” policy. An approach that starts with the evidence and continues through a process of consultation and learning. It proposes that the program be Indigenous-led at every level, including in designing, implementing and running the scheme. It recognises the right of Indigenous people to make decisions about their future and the evidence that this is essential for program effectiveness.

There is no guarantee that there won’t be failures along the way. But, by starting with Indigenous governance and committing to learning from evidence, there is at least a fighting chance that the approach will work.