Dr Sharman Stone is being nothing if not creative in trying to justify her colleagues’ approach to axing the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP). And that starts with her title.

In the doublespeak of her profession, the campaign by the minister to push 6,000 Aboriginal Territorians from work to welfare seems a long way from her title as minister for “workforce participation”.

But, mind you, the daily re-writing of history as the Northern Territory intervention proceeds is now commonplace. Yesterday Dr Stone claimed on ABC radio:

The decision to change CDEP, a 30-year-old program didn’t come about as a result of the Northern Territory Emergency Response. In fact these transitions have been implemented and spoken about across the whole of Australia over the last eighteen months.

So this is nothing new.

False. Ministers Brough and Hockey made the specific point on 23 July when they jointly “announced (the abolition of CDEP as) a further key step in the Emergency Response being implemented in the Northern Territory”. The abolition of CDEP — alone in the Northern Territory — was deliberately designed to remove people from the workforce, transfer them to welfare, and hence control welfare income through “quarantining” 50 per cent of welfare income.

And Stone knows this perfectly well. On 4 September Stone herself stated the abolition of CDEP was “(to) support the Northern Territory Emergency Response”. And her press release yesterday cuts and pastes, almost word for word, parts of the Brough Hockey announcement of seven weeks ago:

… (while) CDEP has played an important role in many communities, it has become a destination for too many. We need to do much better to improve the long-term prospects for economic independence for those living in the remote areas of the Northern Territory.

Yeah right. In fact it was Brough’s 12th announcement in his campaign to control Aboriginal people in ways undreamt of since the days Aboriginal people were all regarded as “wards of the state” under the control of a Chief Protector.

Stone’s approach to the truth is interesting, or at least flatly contradicted by those of her minions on the ground. On a number of occasions, Stone has claimed not only that “no one will be demoted” or suffer financially—and that at least until 30 June next year there will be special “top ups” to Work on the Dole or other payments to equal current incomes.

On 4 September, she claimed that for “individuals moving from CDEP onto unemployment payments, a transition payment will make up any difference between average earnings from CDEP wages and income support payments as at 23 July 2007”.

While this begs the question of the poorest of Australians getting income cuts in nine months time, it’s not what people out bush are being told.

The Australian‘s Simon Kearney—one of the few journos reporting from the front line of the intervention—has reported that “Aborigines who work in their communities have been denied a guarantee that they will continue to receive the same amount of money for their efforts under new programs that are part of the federal Government’s intervention in the Northern Territory.”

Kearney’s piece reports a meeting at Papunya where people on CDEP have been told by DEWR officials they “will earn less money under the new system”:

When the officials were asked to guarantee that people who had worked in their community would not end up on less money, DEWR official Joan Purcell said: “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

Under the federal Government’s intervention in Territory Aboriginal communities, the CDEP has been axed and will be replaced by “real” jobs, work-for-the-dole or training, which is known as STEP.

The federal Government has pledged to remove that system and give many of those people who worked full-time “real” jobs and the rest will either work for the dole or do work training.

The bureaucrats sent to Papunya spent more time explaining which questions they could not answer than answering those they could. The biggest question from workers was which of their former jobs would be turned into real jobs. “We will talk to other departments as soon as we can work out which jobs will pay,” Ms Purcell said. “I can’t tell you how long it will take to identify those real jobs but as soon as I know, I’ll let you know.”

One of the main planks of the National Emergency was to remove the permit system so as to allow, among other things, journalists to report what is happening out bush.

Kearney’s reporting under the new regime is increasingly revealing that the architects of the intervention are lying, and leaving public servants to make it up as they go along.