The federal government’s own review of the remote Aboriginal work-for-the-dole program has found 36% of participants say their communities are worse off under the scheme.

Of 1,000 surveyed participants, 21% felt their community was better off since the Community Development Program was introduced, but 36% said the community was worse off and 32% said their community was the same as before it began in 2015.

There are about 35,000 CDP participants in Australia and 83% are Indigenous. As a condition of income support, remote area participants must engage in up to 25 hours of work for the dole, five days a week.

The review found that Aboriginal CDP participants were three times more likely to be penalised for non-attendance and were penalised more often. They went without income for longer periods and were less likely to be exempted on medical grounds “despite a much higher burden of disease in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities”.

Poor mental or physical health, disabilities or other personal problems also meant people were more likely to be penalised.

The most penalised cohort were men under 35 who had “poor English-language proficiency, lower education levels”, limited online and phone access to deal with Centrelink, and less mobility.

At their national conference in December, Labor committed to scrapping CDP if it wins government. Senator Pat Dodson described the CDP as “discriminatory, punitive and ineffectual”.

CEO of the Aboriginal Peak Organisations Northern Territory (APONT), John Patterson, said the “CDP experiment should be abandoned and replaced with a positive Aboriginal-led model that ensures a better future for our people”.

“The government’s reforms have taken nearly four years. The discrimination and harm of CDP were apparent years ago and in 2017 we delivered a new model for fair work and strong communities to minister Scullion’s door. But the government refused to listen to us.

“It’s about treating people fairly and compassionately and not taking money away from mums and dads trying their best to make ends meet,” Patterson said.

The Greens senator Rachel Siewert said the review “confirms what we already know”.

“As we heard last year almost 6,000 people are ‘missing’ from CDP and these changes cannot be explained by people being placed into work,” Siewert said.

“We will not get people into work until we commit to addressing the barriers they face to unemployment, such as poverty and ill health.”

As part of the review, the federal government commissioned a survey of “community voices and stakeholder perspectives” in eight remote Aboriginal communities.

That report found social problems had increased since the introduction of the CDP including:

an increase in break-and-enters to steal food, predominantly by children and young people

an increase in domestic and family violence

an increase in financial coercion and family fighting, and

an increase in mental health problems, feelings of shame, depression, sleep deprivation and hunger.

It said the CDP had the opposite of its intended effect to get people off welfare or “sit-down money”.

“There was no evidence from the research in this evaluation to suggest that penalties are an effective way to generate engagement,” it said.

“In fact, this research found that for some jobseekers, penalisation has the opposite effect: it demotivates and disempowers them so they may attend but do not engage in the activities or they view CDP as ‘sit down for sit-down money’”.

Navigating the Centrelink system was “contributing to increased stress, anxiety and mental health problems for jobseekers”.

“All my mob want to do is work, do a real job that helps their people,” one respondent told researchers.

“Let them do things they know need doing in the community so they can be proud. Stop making people feel like they are the criminal for not having a job or having to look after their family and business [culture].”

Researchers did not find conclusive evidence that the CDP had an effect on the number of participants obtaining a job placement or 13-week outcome. The number of people finding 26-week placements had gone up – by 1%.

In 2017, the National Audit Office said the CDP cost almost twice as much as the previous work-for-the-dole scheme.

It costs $10,494 per person to deliver CDP, while the previous remote jobs and communities program only cost $5,071 per jobseeker.

The minister for Indigenous affairs, Nigel Scullion, has announced changes to the CDP aimed at increasing attendance and reducing penalties applied to remote jobseekers.

One thousand subsidised jobs for CDP participants would be available from March 2019, the minister said, with a focus on supporting Indigenous businesses.

“This is because Indigenous organisations are better placed to engage with the community and respond to community priorities,” Scullion said.

But APONT said the whole scheme needed to be abandoned.

“Its very foundations are flawed and no amount of tinkering around the edges can change that. A new Aboriginal-led model centred on creating fair and decent jobs and treating people with respect is needed,” APONT spokesperson and Central Land Council policy manager, Josie Douglas, said.