In a small tin shed in the remote Arnhem Land community of Weemol, six men, including 37-year-old Justin Moore, try their best to be enthusiastic about making coffee tables and graveside crosses out of old wooden pallets.

"We don't have electricity in this little shed. We only have one hammer between us," he said.

They are required to work here, for four hours a day, in order to get the dole under the Federal Government's Community Development Program.

The Government touts the program as its plan transitioning 32,000 job seekers into work in 1,000 remote communities in five states.

But their supervisor, John Dalywater, is scathing about what CDP offers.

"There's no training at all for the boys. They turn up to do the activity during the day, just cutting grass, picking up the rubbish, that's it," he said.

"What we want is a course like welding, to give us new skills so we can encourage other boys to come and work," Mr Moore said.

Participant Hebrew Kelly said: "I used to have a full-time job, with good wages, but now I'm just doing an activity. It makes me feel it's not worth it," he said.

'It's just setting people up to fail'

From the 1970s to 2009, then called CDEP, the Federal Government's remote jobs program offered subsidised full-time jobs, for which employers paid award wages to workers on top of the dole.

"You worked the whole week, and you got top-up money on top of the dole, it made people feel: I've got a job and I'm getting a good amount of money, it made them feel important," John Dalywater said.

"Nowadays it's different. It's not leading into anywhere, it's just setting people up to fail."

Supervisor John Dalywater wants to see a course like welding brought to the program.

The Coalition started the process of requiring all remote job seekers to work for the dole without top-up wage opportunities.

Federal Labor continued it under its rebadged RJCP program in 2013.

In 2015 the Coalition increased the CDP working requirements to 25 hours a week, five days a week.

It required CDP participants to work all but six weeks a year, more than under the mainstream work-for-the-dole scheme, Jobactive.

Joseph Brown, an Indigenous leader from the nearby community of Beswick, is among those who have watched the accompanying penalty regime make families go hungry.

Many participants have had their welfare payments cut for up to eight weeks if they don't attend regularly enough.

"It's pretty hard because with us mob, we have to help family that need it, you carry them until they get their dole money back," Mr Brown said.

'I wanted to create 6,000 jobs'

The retiring Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion said he has been listening to the community's concern, and so in February the Government made changes including reducing the mandatory work hours to 20.

"A hundred per cent of the CDP providers are now Indigenous organisations, and we are creating 1,000 real jobs, that is being rolled out now," Senator Scullion said.

He has promised that the Coalition, if re-elected, would make more changes.

"I wanted to introduce legislation that would have created 6,000 award wage jobs annually, subsidised by the Commonwealth," he said.

"And we've said to those who remain (on CDP), Centrelink will be out of your life, the provider in that community will have the capacity to make decisions."

Senator Scullion is blaming Federal Labor for blocking his plan at the 11th hour before the election.

"The Labor Party have whinged and bitched about this for some time, and when we hand them the solution, they say: we just want to play politics for a while, we'll come up with something later," he said.

Regional assemblies plan

Federal Labor's former Indigenous health minister and Northern Territory MP Warren Snowdon has accused Senator Scullion of "reinventing history".

"I've been in discussions with Nigel for three years. We thought we were getting somewhere, where we might see an outcome that would look a little like the old CDEP, well that didn't come anywhere near fruition," he said.

Northern Territory Labor MP Warren Snowdon is promising to abolish the CDP. ( ABC News: Shuba Krishnan )

If Labor wins the election it is promising to abolish and replace the program.

"I hope we would deal almost immediately with the penalty regime, but I think there would be an interim arrangement whilst we're developing a new policy," Mr Snowdon said.

He said Labor's plan would involve more community consultation.

"We've got proposals to set up regional assemblies, we'd use those regional assemblies as a place for consultation and discussion."

Asked how many regional assemblies Labor is planning, Mr Snowdon said: "They'll be sufficient for us to be able to carry out the important discussions that need to take place around a range of issues including CDP."

Indigenous community leaders including Joseph Brown are not hopeful the promises from either side will deliver substantial improvements soon.