Building a coffin may seem like a grim task, but for Indigenous residents of a remote island 440 kilometres east of Darwin, it offers the chance of meaningful work and helping their community.

Coffin-building at a furniture workshop on Milingimbi Island is one of the jobs available as part of a revitalised work-for-the-dole scheme in the Northern Territory that was launched on Wednesday by federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion.

Robert Wurrkrrwuy, 38,  started out at the workshop under a previous work-for-the-dole scheme and is now a manager.

A child passes a locally made coffin at a jobs fair in Millingimbi. Photo: Glenn Campbell

"It's a bit spooky," he says, lifting the lid of a wooden coffin in the workshop. "But it's pretty cool." 

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Some 30,000 Indigenous job seekers aged between 18 and 49 will be affected by the new work-for-the-dole scheme.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion with sea rangers in Millingimbi. Photo: Glenn Campbell

Under the revised Community Development Program, which is the government's response to a review by mining giant Andrew Forrest, activities include anything meaningful that contributes to the needs of the community, such as home cleaning, childcare or gardening.

The program will require all adults not in work or study to complete 25 hours of work a week, all year round. Employers will be offered incentive payments of $7500 after a job seeker has been employed for 26 weeks.

Senator Scullion said job opportunities were rife in remote Indigenous communities, but not many Aboriginal people had work. 

Carpenters Robert Yurrkrrwuy (left) and Jason Wanambi in the furniture and coffin workshop. Photo: Glenn Campbell

"There is work all over the place and … there are a lot of jobs that people outside the community have got. But it's time we put every [Indigenous person] on a pathway to finding a job," he said. 

"It just throws it back in the face of those cynics who say, 'Oh there is no work here.' That is absolute and utter garbage."

The unemployment rate in the Northern Territory is one of the lowest in Australia at 4.5 per cent, but the latest jobless figure from the Bureau of Statistics for Aborigines  and Torres Strait Islanders in the Territory is 13.5 per cent.

Work-for-the-dole schemes have been criticised for an inability to tackle unemployment rates in Indigenous communities, but Senator Scullion said this program was different.

"The previous program had some 60 per cent of participants exit and go onto passive welfare and [they] haven't returned. So this is a re-empowerment," he said.

Speaking at a work fair on Milingimbi, he said communities would now have the power to look at what skills were needed to strengthen employment opportunities.

"There is so much work that needs to be done. We need better aged care, we need better childcare," he said.

Milingimbi leaders were also behind the changes, saying the new program moved beyond a welfare handout scheme.

Local community liaison officer Keith Lapulung Dhamarrandji said the program was building a relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in which there was real commitment and real employment.

"Milingimbi is a seed of hope," he said.

"What you have just seen is the closing of the gap, by engaging and building capacity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people working together. 

"We need to engage 100 per cent in supporting [this] to empower local people." 

Michael Rotumah, general manager of  local contracting company Intract, which is half-owned by Indigenous people, said he was looking forward to  people moving off welfare and into full-time work. 

"In Arnhem Land we've had four Indigenous young men undertake an asbestos licence … and they got trained to move asbestos from the community. From that we moved them to Darwin to give them the opportunity to work," he said.

Back in the furniture workshop on the island, Mr Wurrkrrwuy, who has five children, said his family was proud of him having a job.

"I'm very proud of all the guys who are leaving all the negative part and coming to the positive side; there are no words to describe it," he said.

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