Select Committee on the effectiveness of the Government’s northern Australia development agenda

On 4 July 2019 the Senate agreed to the establishment of the Select Committee on the effectiveness of the Australian Government’s Northern Australia agenda.

The committee is due to report on the last sitting day of 2020.

Information relating to the Select Committee including membership, the terms of reference and copies of submissions are available on the Committee’s web page.

A link to Committee home page can be found here

The Terms of Reference state:

That a select committee, to be known as the Select Committee on the effectiveness of the Australian Government’s Northern Australia agenda, be established to inquire into and report on the effectiveness of the objectives, design, implementation and evaluation of the Australian Government’s Northern Australia agenda, with particular reference to:

facilitation of public and private investment in infrastructure and economic development;

economic and social benefit arising from that investment for Northern Australians, in particular First Nations people;

funding models and policy measures that capture the full value of existing and emerging industries;

measures taken to develop an appropriately skilled workforce;

emerging national and international trends and their impact on the Northern Australia agenda; and

any related matters.

Submissions of particular relevance to Indigenous issues (link here) include:

#13 by Jon Altman and Francis Markham,

#58 by the Cape York Aboriginal Land Council,

#62 by the North Australia Indigenous Land and Sea Management Alliance (NAILSMA), and

#67 by Michael Dillon (the author of this blog).

Submission #80 by the Western Australian Government  is also worth reading, not least for the information it includes relating to the Indigenous Reference Group on Northern Australia (IRG) (see section (b) of the WA submission) where the WA government notes that the Commonwealth and relevant state and territory jurisdictions are developing a ‘Northern Australia Indigenous Development Accord’ aimed at capturing the extensive and collaborative work of the IRG’ and providing ‘a framework for Forum Government’s to align efforts to advance Indigenous economic development in northern Australia’. As far as I am aware, neither Minister Canavan nor Minister Ken Wyatt, nor their departments, have announced or discussed the proposed Accord. Certainly neither Minister’s departmental website provide any information on these proposals.

The key issue from my perspective will be to assess the extent to which the proposed Accord includes substantive policy initiatives, particularly in relation to land reform and native title, funding of PBCs, social and community housing in remote communities, and of course, access to public and private sector development finance for economic activities in remote communities. These are all issues I have argued for in previous blog posts. The WA submission goes on to advocate adjustments to the Investment Mandate of the NAIF to better support Indigenous economic (and hopefully social) investments in northern development. This is an issue that I have argued for over the past year or so in this blog and elsewhere.

To sum up, the Select Committee has the potential to both re-set the agenda in terms of Indigenous social and economic development in northern Australia, and to re-energise the Government’s current policy framework, which to my mind is big on rhetoric, but very short on substantive initiatives.