Crikey

It’s hard to work out where Brough and Howard are going with their strategy in the Northern Territory. If there was a certain amount of “shock and awe” in their initial announcement of 21 June, it’s now developing into high farce as more and more resources are being thrown into the fray.

Thus far, not a single Aboriginal job has been created, mind you, and according to one insider it is the big end of town—firms such as KPMG—that will profit.

On his first visit to the front line, Howard yesterday announced a further 66 federal policeman would be deployed in the Territory as part of their training for “overseas service”. Well, I guess the Northern Territory is another country. But Howard is determined, he says, for the long haul, not unlike his brother in arms’ attitude towards Iraq. According to Howard: “The intervention is here to stay, it is not a flash in the pan.”

Flash in the pan or not, the feds appear desperate to lock in parts of the occupation, especially the bit that will see the abolition of the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP) and the effective sacking of Aboriginal people from the workforce (as we’ve previously reported here).

A letter obtained by Crikey (read it here) from Indigenous Business Australia (IBA) says it is aiming to recruit things called “PSPs” to the effort. “PSPs”—Preferred Service Providers to the uninitiated—are being invited to work “on this exciting initiative”, which is to purportedly transfer CDEPs to viable businesses.

The letter to prospective PSPs comes from the same breathlessly excited IBA apparatchik, Kim McIlveen, who Crikey revealed yesterday as the person behind the resumption of CDEP assets, only to rent them back to them at commercial rates.

Along with renting properties from the to-be-established Aboriginal Economic Development Trust, the “exciting initiative” might include:

Access to commercial loans for working capital … enterprise support services … to eligible CDEP organisations to assist with the transition of commercially viable, profit producing activities and subsidiary businesses from CDEP to full viability. 

The whole process of business planning is to be completed by the end of October, after expressions of interest close this Friday.

Worthy sentiments, perhaps, but seriously flawed according to one PSP that has  contacted Crikey:

… the timeframe is indicative of how unplanned this all is—they are making it up as they go along.

I don’t know how many PSPs they have, but one-person shows like me generally won’t be able to accept at such short notice—even though I’m sure they’ll pay whatever I were to quote.

This means only the big firms are likely to be able to respond—KPMG etc—who will invariably send their juniors to do the job.

With the exception of those from the Territory—my estimate would be six—very few PSPs would understand the NT economy and therefore would not be able to deliver a meaningful business plan.

And two months to do a meaningful business plan is pushing it even in the best of circumstances.

According to ever ebullient Kim McIlveen, there “are 50 identified CDEPs to visit” and “due to the remote locations it is anticipated the teams will visit CDEPS in a regional area during the course of a week”.

At this rate, Howard will have to recruit a few squads of KPMG PSPs to join his expanded federal police detachments.