After a discussion paper released by employment and workplace relations minister Kevin Andrews in February, it was found members of CDEPs across Australia had concerns about the number of non-indigenous participants.

As a result the Federal Government released a paper Building on Success CDEP – Future Directions which outlined what direction the program would take.

"DEWR believes that it is not in the best interests of the CDEP program to have so many non-indigenous participants and will ask each CDEP organisation to work towards a goal of having a maximum of three per cent non-indigenous participants. DEWR will negotiate with each CDEP organisation about how they will move towards this goal beginning in 2005-2006," the report said.

Lightning Ridge CDEP manager Sharon Mahoney said there was some initial concern from members.

"At the start some people were worried, but since then we have conducted some meetings and everyone is quite happy with things at the moment," she said.

Ms Mahoney said the Lightning Ridge CDEP would not be putting people out on the street.

"We can't put them off," she said.

Ms Mahoney said if non-indigenous members left the program they would not be allowed to come back in and would be directed towards Centrelink or Best Employment.

"We have to get our non-indigenous numbers down, I do not know how we are going to do that," she said.

Lightning Ridge CDEP currently has more non-indigenous participants than 3 per cent but Ms Mahoney said the process of changing the CDEP would be gradual.

"This is not going to be an overnight change," she said.

The Department of Employment and Workplace Relations said it would negotiate with individual CDEPs on how they would conduct this change, but have not made public a time span in which it might take place.

The department was unavailable for comment.