Renewing the National Partnership on Remote Housing: seasons such as these

Poor naked wretches, whereso'er you are,
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,
How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides,
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you
From seasons such as these?

King Lear Act 3, Scene 4

A number of recent developments make it timely to provide further commentary on the hugely important policy issues around remote Indigenous housing which will be determined by the Government over the coming few months. Previous blog posts (link here and link here) are relevant and provide crucial contextual background to the issues confronting the Government in the remote housing policy space.

In mid-2016, the Government revised and rebadged the National Partnership on Remote Indigenous Housing as a new National Partnership on Remote Housing (sometimes referred to as the new Remote Housing Strategy). (There is a link to the NPA and associated schedules here). According to the PMC website (link here):

The Government is working to refocus housing delivery in remote Indigenous housing. The new National Partnership on Remote Housing (NPRH) ensures local indigenous people have the opportunity to contribute to their housing through employment, Indigenous business engagement and better links with the Community Development Programme (CDP). The NPRH will also continue to address overcrowding by funding $774.131 million to the construction of new houses and refurbishments in larger, sustainable remote Indigenous communities.

While the Government has indicated that there will be $774m spent over these two years, this funding is essentially the funds which were originally allocated in the original NPARIH established in 2008. See the PMC website for the new targets for the period 2016-18. The webpage outlines national targets for three categories of expenditure: new builds, refurbishments and employment and education housing (EEH), and provides a breakdown by jurisdiction against each category. The national targets are 785 new builds, 207 refurbishments and 58 EEH units respectively.

The revised National Partnership Agreement provided for a review of the NPRH and its predecessor NPARIH to be undertaken. The Minister announced the review into remote housing in November 2016 (link here). During the most recent Senate Estimates hearings, and in answer to a Question on Notice (QoN) (number 186), the Minister indicated that the review had been provided to the Government in May 2017, but that a decision on release had not been taken and was a matter for the Government. The Minister also indicated in answer to QoN 104 that ‘future arrangements for the expiring National Partnership Agreement will be considered in the Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook in the year preceding expiry of funding’ That is, in the late 2017/early 2018 MYEFO.

The Indigenous Advisory Council met on 10-11 May 2017, and in their communique dated 19 May (link here) made a number of comments on Indigenous housing and the recent (as yet unreleased) review of remote housing.  On housing, they noted:

Council acknowledged the findings of the Remote Housing Review and expressed concern that despite significant reductions in overcrowding investment is required to meet unmet need and maintenance of housing stock. Council emphasised adequate housing is critical to ensure positive outcomes are maintained in health, education, employment and community safety. While acknowledging the challenges highlighted through the Review Council indicated there are opportunities to develop innovative housing solutions. It was recommended Government explore options for local governance and community management of housing, international best practice and ongoing investment and flexible shared funding arrangements between the Commonwealth and states and territories to allow solutions at a local level.

The most recent developments were comments made by the Minister in an ABC Q&A program at Garma (link here), where in response to a question about overcrowding and the impact on peoples’ lives, he foreshadowed a number of likely policy directions:

We’re deadly serious about this. We’ve invested $5.4 billion over the last decade, and I think everybody would agree we could have done a lot better. We have reduced overcrowding from 52% to 37% – it’s still in the margins, and that took a fair while to do. So, the next rollout, which we are now negotiating with the states and territories about the National Partnership on Remote Indigenous Housing, we’ll be negotiating on the basis of what the communities have asked us to negotiate on.

So, Indigenous employment is non-negotiable. Indigenous procurement is non-negotiable. And we’ll be asking the states to match those funds. Because we need a pulse. Sometimes we can just trickle along and we’ll be just catching up, just getting ahead, but we actually need a significant injection of funds. So, that’ll be the basis of our negotiation with the states. But those houses cannot be built by whitefellas getting off planes with nail bags. Those times have to go.

Local Indigenous people maintaining their own houses, local Indigenous people building their own houses and actually managing the tenancy of their own houses is the only way this is gonna work, and I assure you, those are the changes I intend to make.

So, in terms of the policy architecture for remote Indigenous housing, where does all that leave us?

First to the positives:

The commitment of $5.4bn for remote social housing over the ten years to 2018 has delivered a step change in the quantum and quality of housing in remote communities. In round figures, NPARIH/NPRH will have delivered around 4000 new houses and at least 10,000 refurbished houses over the decade, off a low and worsening base. That is a good thing.

The National Partnership also drove policy reform on a range of fronts: Indigenous employment, clearer tenure arrangements to lock in landlord responsibilities, and a stronger focus on managing the existing and new asset base through sustained Property and Tenancy Management (PTM).

The level of overcrowding will have reduced considerably over the ten years, using the Minister’s figures, from 52 to 37 percent, a reduction of 15 percent.

The Minister appears committed to continuing some level of funding by the Commonwealth for remote housing, and is keen to strengthen further Indigenous employment, Indigenous procurement, and local involvement.

Notwithstanding these achievements, substantial policy challenges remain, and it is far from clear that the Government is prepared to address them. Listed below are six issues of most serious concern.

First, notwithstanding the progress on overcrowding, a situation where 37 percent of Indigenous citizens resident in remote Australia live in overcrowded condition is on any objective assessment a national crisis. It feeds disadvantage, and demands an open and transparent public debate. It would be useful if the general public were advised what the cost of reducing these levels of overcrowding to levels comparable to the Australian norm would be. This would help to build support for the necessary funding.

Second, a key contributor to the low level of public discussion around these issues is the lack of transparency in relation to key metrics about the situation in remote communities and the key metrics about the program. While there are myriad ‘data points’ available to a diligent researcher, compiling them into a coherent whole which is both accurate and understandable to the wider community (including the Indigenous community) is almost impossible, and constitutes a serious impediment to community discussion and understanding. There is in my view an onus on government to lay out in a clear and succinct way the current state of play in relation to this issue, particularly a government which argues that there is a need for more evaluation of government programs.

The Department obtains six monthly reports from each of the funded jurisdictions, and the agreements specify that the Commonwealth may release data and information in relation to the operation of the program, yet it doesn’t happen in any coherent form.

The level of information available on the Department’s website in relation to what is one of the three major government programs for Indigenous Australians is extremely poor, reinforced by the rebadging of the program in 2016. The decision to withhold the recent review, without offering any reason, merely serves to reinforce the Government’s tactic of micro-managing and constraining public discussion and debate on this issue rather than encouraging greater understanding in the wider community.

Third, if the Government is interested in pursuing the PM’s Advisory Council recommendation for improved local governance and community management of housing, a good place to start would be in the provision of a much more robust program management data set in a format which is automatically updated and publically accessible. In addition, careful design of local arrangements based on both upward and downward accountability, a focus on capability and continuous improvement, and default arrangements for when local structures break down or are subject to a crisis will be required. In other words, there is considerable devil in the detail in the Advisory Council’s advice which requires upfront attention fi the Government intends to take it seriously.

Fourth, my major concern relates to the Minister’s call for matching funding from the states and the NT. In particular, I am concerned that the Government may be using this argument as a ploy to reduce investment levels in the remote housing sector. While I have no in principle objection to jurisdictions being required to invest in the remote housing sector, there are a series of practical constraints which will constrain their capacity to commit.

The new NT Labor Government went to the last election committing to spend $1bn over ten years, but I am sceptical that it will manage to meet this commitment. The NT carries a huge debt burden in Commonwealth borrowings (which went to building their social housing system in the 1960s and 1970s) and has a large number of ‘locked in’ financial commitments relating to metropolitan based infrastructure developments.

In addition, in Indigenous policy contexts, it has major financial pressures in relation to expanding serviced lots in most remote communities; many remote communities have met the limits of their essential service infrastructure (thus limiting new housing investment until it is expanded); and the National Partnership Agreement does not cover smaller communities and outstations nor essential services in remote communities (which the Commonwealth has offloaded to the states in recent years).

These are all pressures the Commonwealth does not co-invest in, so why should the states and the NT be required to suddenly co-invest in the remote housing program when the Commonwealth refuses to meet them half way on other key remote community investment needs.

The stark reality hidden by debates about financial burden sharing with the states is that remote communities continue to face a deep-seated and structurally serious crisis in terms of housing quantum and conditions. Any solution will require both robust and innovative policy design and significant ongoing investment. In this context, the fiscal capacity of the Commonwealth far exceeds that of the states and the NT. By all means incentivise the states to do more, but the bottom line ought to be that the Commonwealth does not reduce its overall funding commitment of around $550m per annum. Indeed, in a world where comparative need rather than political powerlessness determined funding allocations, the case for taking the opportunity of this second ten year National Partnership Agreement to increase funding levels over what was allocated in 2008 would be irrefutable.

My fifth concern follows on from, and in a sense mirrors the fourth. The Minister’s rhetoric on Indigenous employment and local involvement in housing management contracts plays to deep seated Indigenous community concerns about ‘owning’ what happens in their communities: ‘But those houses cannot be built by whitefellas getting off planes with nail bags. Those times have to go’. I wholeheartedly agree that maximising Indigenous employment is an important policy objective, but it must not be pursued to the point where it places housing outcomes at risk.

Yet what the Minister’s stated approach implicitly requires is the rejection of the reality that fixing the structural and systemic issues in remote housing in a timely and cost effective way across scores of major communities requires major system wide investments managed as a very small number of major infrastructure projects rather than a disaggregated program funding hundreds of micro projects. To be blunt, the capability for major project implementation does not exist in remote communities. It probably doesn’t even exist in the Minister’s Department. 

Major projects involving complex legal, engineering, survey, hydrological, commercial and technical issues require specialist capabilities. This is not about some ‘whitefella with a nailbag’. The risk Indigenous remote residents face is that the Minister will regress the program into a pre-NPARIH form, where available funds are split into hundreds of project splinters, involving a myriad of players, contractors, architects, builders and the like, all of variable quality, and where effective regulatory oversight is virtually impossible. In this scenario, effective outcomes would be fundamentally compromised.

Of course, in a hypothetical world where a Government decided to strip substantial levels of funding out of the remote housing program, one way to manage the politics of that would be to develop and give prominence to the rhetoric of Indigenous employment and business engagement, and actively reshape the program as a myriad of locally managed micro projects with only lose regulatory oversight.  

My sixth and final concern relates to maintaining investment in both the current and additional asset base. Property and tenancy management is an essential component of the remote housing system. It was an essential element in the reform design of the original NPARIH. Without effective PTM, the remote housing system will run down, asset life spans will shorten, and the cost of necessary repairs will rise exponentially. What has become clear in recent years is that the quality of tenancy management by the states and the NT continues to fall far short of what is required to protect the asset base, and what is required by the relevant tenancy legislation in the various jurisdictions. A major shortcoming of NPARIH and potentially of the current NPRH is that there was no effective line of sight by the Commonwealth to implementation of PTM by the states and the NT. This needs to be fixed urgently.

There are encouraging signs that the 2016 NPRH Agreement recognises this in principle, but in practice, the Minister’s 2013 decision (described in more detail here) to cut $95m from PTM under NPARIH continues to reverberate. The Minister should ensure in any refinancing of the remote housing program that in addition to continuing the current levels of Commonwealth funding under the National Partnership, that the PTM funds of $95m he cut are reinstated.

Alcohol policy reform: addressing the underlying economic incentives

In the previous post on the recent Australian Law Reform Commission Discussion Paper, I pointed to the failure of the Discussion Paper to canvass options to address the taxation of alcohol, notwithstanding the underlying incentives to consume some forms of alcohol over others, and the potential to constrain overall consumption of alcohol through use of price based incentives which might be imposed through increased taxation of alcohol.

More generally, the ALRC had in my view ignored the economic costs of high rates of imprisonment which were in turn a product of high rates of alcohol abuse by the minority of Indigenous people who drink.

I was pleased therefore to come across the recently released report from the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE): ‘The Price is Right: Setting a Minimum Unit Price on Alcohol in the Northern Territory’ (link here).

The core argument is summed up in the first paragraph:

Relative to wages, the cost of alcohol has reduced considerably in the Northern Territory (NT) over the past 20 years. Lower prices and the resulting increase in demand has contributed to unacceptable levels of harm in the community. With rates arguably among the highest in the world, the harm caused by alcohol is more prominent in the NT than in any other Australian jurisdiction. While the Commonwealth Government remains uncommitted to reforming a defective alcohol tax system, which has driven the proliferation of cheap alcohol, it is incumbent on the NT government to explore options to stem alcohol’s harm. A minimum unit price, which would set a price per unit below which alcohol cannot be sold, is one such measure.

This report is short, succinct, well researched, outlines the harm caused by alcohol abuse, explores options for utilising the tax system to address the issue, and is admirably focussed on arguing for a practical and achievable policy change which will drive myriad benefits across the NT if implemented.

I strongly recommend readers to have a look at it. You will almost certainly learn something new.

I want to note just two points in relation to the report.

The first is that the report notes in passing the failure of the Commonwealth to reform the ‘defective alcohol tax system’. It doesn’t explore the reasons for this reluctance. Those who wish to understand the reasons for this reluctance would do well to look into the resources allocated towards advocacy, lobbying and political donations by the alcohol industry in Australia. Taxpayers are the losers. Rent-seeking is alive and well in Canberra, including by the alcohol industry, with terrible consequences for those affected by alcoholism, and insidious implications for our democracy (link here).

Second, nowhere does the report explicitly mention Indigenous people. This is clearly deliberate insofar as the report is arguing for a mainstream policy intervention which will impact all alcohol consumers. Yet the exceptional status of the NT as subject to the most disproportionate alcohol harm in the nation (see Figure One in the report) is due in very large measure to the high proportion of Indigenous people in the NT, and the high levels of alcohol abuse amongst those Indigenous people who drink.

Taking these two points together provides a clear example of how mainstream policy (or more accurately lack of policy) can operate to disadvantage Indigenous Australians economically, socially, health wise, and ultimately in terms of high mortality rates.

Of course, alcohol abuse is not solely an Indigenous issue. Nevertheless, the high levels of harm identified in the NT are also likely to be present in areas with high concentrations of Indigenous people in other jurisdictions. While the Northern Territory Government appears to have a greater incentive to adopt the policy approach advocated by FARE, other jurisdictions also face increasing costs in their health systems, their justice systems, their social housing systems, their welfare systems, and their child protections systems. These costs are all linked either directly or indirectly to alcohol and other substance abuse.

And of course, the highest costs fall on those directly affected by alcohol abuse, either as a drinker or as a family member of a drinker. The impact in terms of constrained and reduced life opportunities is enormous, and demands action. It is time for some national leadership.

ALRC Discussion Paper on Indigenous incarceration

.

Thou shouldst perceive my passion, if these signes
Of prisonment were off me

The Two Noble Kinsmen, Act Three, Scene One

In a recent post (link here), I canvassed a small number of the complex issues contributing to the over-representation of Indigenous people in Australia’s prisons.

Last week, the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) released a Discussion Paper as part of its review of the laws relating to Indigenous incarceration (link here).

The report is over 200 pages and full of interesting analysis, summaries of the key legal issues which influence incarceration rates of Indigenous people, and interesting insights into how the structure of laws and the overall justice system pipeline operates to influence incarceration rates.

The sheer volume of analysis and the complexity of the issues defies easy summary. So I won’t try. The report is structured to allow those interested in particular issues (eg the role of fine defaults in driving incarceration, or the role of alcohol laws) to focus on those particular interests. The report is also a source of interesting information about the approaches of various jurisdictions, both inside and beyond Australia. For example, there is an interesting analysis of the policy history of minimum prison terms in Western Australia, the only jurisdiction to explore this strategy. And an extensive discussion of the Canadian approach to sentencing which allows a much stronger focus on the impact of colonial policies on individuals in the justice system.

The Discussion Paper is structured to elicit feedback from the general community (submissions are due by 4 September) and thus it is not entirely clear what the Commission will ultimately recommend. Nevertheless, this is without doubt an important and highly useful source document for those interested in the issue of Indigenous incarceration rates, and reflects an enormous amount of detailed high quality research work by the Commission.

Notwithstanding this excellent work, I think there are some major shortfalls arising from the Commission‘s work on this topic. Some are specific to the terms of reference, others relate to the role of the ALRC more generally.

My major concerns are threefold:

First, the very volume and complexity of the issues raised in the Discussion Paper (and we can safely assume in the Final Report) work against their implementation. This issue is exacerbated by the reality (acknowledged in the Terms of Reference and the Discussion Paper) that the bulk of the laws under review belong to the states and territories. Of course, complexity is grist for the mill in the work of policymakers, and there is an argument for laying out in a comprehensive and succinct way the key issues which potentially impact on Indigenous incarceration. But there is a sense here that the Federal Government may have adopted a strategy of commissioning this inquiry as a substitute for focussed action. Indeed, it is clear from the detailed terms of reference that the policy experts in the Attorney General’s Department already have a pretty good idea of the key drivers of Indigenous incarceration. By commissioning this inquiry, the Government has bought space and time. When the report is finally delivered, it will likely point to the need for joint action by states and territories, and the very complexity of the issues raised will mean that the Commonwealth will be under minimal pressure to drive a coordinated and sustained law reform policy agenda through COAG.

Second, the record of Law Reform Commission Reports providing the basis for major reform processes in the Indigenous policy domain is poor. I have in mind the largely unimplemented 1986 Report on Aboriginal Customary Law (link here), which included a draft Bill which was never considered by the Parliament, and the more recent Commission report on native title, ‘Connection to country’ which to date appears to have been relegated to the ‘too hard’ basket (link here and here) This is not a criticism of the Commission, but of the commitment of Governments to follow through once they receive a report. In the light of this sorry history, (and I suspect it is an issue beyond the Indigenous policy domain), there is in my view a requirement on the Commission to structure and shape its advice in ways which make implementation more likely.

Accordingly, I was disappointed that nowhere in the Discussion Paper was there any   discussion of the economic cost of incarceration both on taxpayers and Indigenous people themselves. It may be that this is a matter which will be addressed in the Final Report, but it is in my view disappointing that while the Report manages to discuss issues such as whether the courts might take into account the impact of past dispossession on Indigenous people in the sentencing process, it makes no attempt to consider and discuss at any length measures to counter contemporary structural forces (such as mandatory sentencing laws and broader ‘tough on crime’ policy approaches) which operate to exacerbate Indigenous incarceration. The rapidly rising financial and social costs of incarceration generally and Indigenous incarceration in particular, is a potential countervailing factor. So too are doubts about the effectiveness of imprisonment in encouraging rehabilitation. A recent Victorian Ombudsman report into rehabilitation and reintegration of prisoners in Victorian prisons was critical of the inattention to this issue in the management of prisons generally, and pointed to the significant economic implications of short-sightedness for the state in this area. There is no a priori reason to believe that the Victorian system is any better or worse that other jurisdictions in Australia (link here).

The response to this critique may well be that I have misunderstood the nature and purpose of the ALRC, and that its Terms of Reference mean that it is narrowly focussed on identifying the technical changes to laws and justice processes which might reduce over-representation. My point however is that laws are not made nor administered in a vacuum, and it is underlying political and societal forces which shape them. An effective reform agenda needs to acknowledge, understand and ideally address these structural forces.

My third concern relates to the Chapter on alcohol in the Discussion paper, which fails to mention the potential for taxation law reform to address the supply of alcohol. It is clear that alcohol is a key driver of behaviours which lead to criminal behaviour, and thus to incarceration. The costs of alcohol abuse fall not only on individuals and their families, but also on taxpayers. The tax regime on alcohol is both complex and highly variable in terms of the volumetric incidence of taxation on different products, undermining the capacity of alcohol taxation to effectively drive reductions in consumption of alcohol, notwithstanding the significant health, social and economic costs of alcohol abuse (link here). There is a strong consensus amongst researchers concerned about the implications of alcohol abuse by Indigenous drinkers that tax reform is an underutilised policy lever (link here). It is somewhat surprising therefore that the ALRC chose to ignore completely this issue in its Discussion Paper.

So where does this leave us?

The ALRC will finalise its report to Government by December this year. The likelihood of an election in 2018 suggests that it will not be the ‘right time’ for the Commonwealth to enthusiastically pursue implementation of the report’s findings. Later this year the Commonwealth will likely gain COAG approval for the introduction of an Indigenous incarceration target as part of the Closing the Gap targets, which will be a step forward. The states and territories will continue to struggle to find political narratives and policy responses which effectively balance the contradictory forces at play in this area: increasing community concerns about the impact of crime, the apparently intractable and irresistible pressures towards incarceration once vulnerable individuals enter the justice system, the spiralling costs of prisons and the justice system across most jurisdictions, and the extraordinary statistics demonstrating extreme levels of incarceration for Indigenous people.

In such an environment there is much to be said in favour of incremental reforms driven by policy entrepreneurs in the various jurisdictions. The challenge however is to find the policy space in crowded policy agendas, and to find the political and policy commitment to sustain reform. More often than not, incrementalism degrades into policy stasis.

The argument against incrementalism is based on a growing sense of foreboding that incarceration is being normalised amongst many Indigenous citizens, and that it plays a key role in cementing the alienation and disempowerment of a significant proportion of the Indigenous community. The costs on individuals and their families are considerable. But perhaps just as significant, the existence of an alienated and disempowered segment of Australian society will eventually spill over into the mainstream. It has to be said however that the prospects of a full throated and sustained campaign to address extreme Indigenous incarceration rates seems highly unlikely.

The absence of strategic leadership by the nation’s political elites is the real gap which we need to close.