Systemic myopia: Public investment challenges in remote Australia

 

When clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks;

When great leaves fall, then winter is at hand;

When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?

Richard III, Act 2, scene 3.

 

My previous post focussed primarily on the social cataclysm engulfing remote communities through the primary lens of social and property violence and the impact of anti-social accelerants such as alcohol. Rather than focussing on spelling out the inevitable and significant implications for families, children, and the social stability of the communities, I sought to argue that there was a shortfall in the capabilities of governments to ensure citizens were able to live peaceful lives, thus raising questions regarding the legitimacy of governments.

 

In this post, I turn my attention to some of the sustained and systemic shortfalls in public investment in remote communities, and particularly capital investment requirements. While it would be foolhardy to argue that adequate public investment is all that is required (sufficient) to meet the complex challenges facing remote communities, I would ague that it is a fundamental prerequisite (necessary) for doing so.  Of course, even so, public investment must be well targeted, sustained, and be well designed. Accordingly, if we turn the proposition on its head, long term absence or under-provision of high quality public investment can be seen as a fundamental precursor, if not a major cause, for ongoing social dysfunction within remote communities. We cannot expect to address the social challenges in remote communities without ensuring that public investment is adequate and high quality.

 

Of course, the overwhelming majority of Australians have minimal experience of the conditions of remote communities. Families resident in remote regions constitute only 2.3 percent of Australian families (link here). While we may complain about the quality of government services, we expect, and mostly receive, a first-world level of government service provision from three levels of government. This is far from being the case in remote Australia.

 

A number of recent reports relating to infrastructure provision illuminate this observation.

 

Infrastructure Partnerships Australia (IPA), a body not previously on my radar, has recently released an extraordinarily useful report titled Remote Communities: Improving Access to Essential Services (link here).

According to its website, IPA is

Australia’s longest standing infrastructure think tank, formed in 2005 as a genuine and enduring policy partnership between Australia’s governments and industry. We exist to shape public debate and drive policy reform for the benefit of the national interest.

Our public sector membership is drawn from Commonwealth, state and territory infrastructure, planning, environment, finance and treasury departments, as well as government-owned corporations.

Our private sector members include major financiers, law firms, contractors, consultants, equity and debt investors, infrastructure technology providers, super funds and operators.

 

The IPA Remote Communities report is extraordinarily accessible, setting out key data points and utilising clear and striking graphics. I recommend readers take a look at it (not least because I cannot do it justice in this brief post). The report seeks to do two things. First, it lays out in stark terms the essential services shortfalls facing remote communities: communities ‘consistently experience poor water quality services’, ‘electricity supply is often unreliable’, and ‘have limited access to telecommunications services’. Contributing factors include ‘isolation’, ‘lack of meaningful engagement with communities for service delivery’, ‘inequality barriers’, lack of resources’ to utilities charged with delivering these essential services; a ‘systematic lack of transparency and reporting’, ‘skills and education shortages’, and inconsistent regulation and poor governance continue to impede improvements’. This is a pretty challenging set of constraints. The report then goes on to identify a range of technological possibilities, noting that ‘There are a variety of established technologies and governance approaches being applied across all jurisdictions — but they are coming at a glacial pace for most remote communities.

The Report’s second aim is to lay out the way forward. It argues for establishing a national minimum service baseline based on government commitments to National Cabinet, and a process whereby governments are accountable for meeting the baseline. It suggests existing Community Service Obligations should be ‘evolved’ or transitioned into Community Infrastructure Partnerships which lock in obligations to innovate, improve transparency, provide a social licence and facilitate collaboration and coordination between sectors. Funding and financing mechanisms for remote infrastructure should be reviewed and updated and regulatory reform undertaken to support community infrastructure partnerships.

 

The report appears to be unaware of the recent moves (yet to be included in the Productivity Commission Information Repository) to establish a new Closing he Gap target for community infrastructure (link here and link here ). The new target is framed as follows:

Target 9b: By 2031, all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander households: Within discrete Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities receive essential services that meet or exceed the relevant jurisdictional standard; In or near to a town receive essential services that meet or exceed the same standard as applies generally within the town (including if the household might be classified for other purposes as a part of a discrete settlement such as a “town camp” or “town based reserve”.

 

The new target 9b differs from the IPA recommendation insofar as it accepts current jurisdictional essential services standards (which may in fact require strengthening – see below), whereas the national approach advocated by the IPA Report would ensure both uniformity and reduce the likelihood that some jurisdictions standards will lag national expectations. One would hope that the forthcoming Productivity Review of the National Agreement (link here) would recommend that the Joint Council consider amending target 9b to ensure appropriate/strengthened national standards for remote essential services are applied.

 

The IPA report is an exceptionally comprehensive and far sighted assessment. It proposes an extremely ambitious agenda; one which will be highly susceptible to governments’ reluctance to commit to new expenditures, and governments’ propensity to baulk or fall at the implementation stage. Nevertheless, this is an extraordinarily important report, and deserves wide circulation and attention across the Indigenous policy domain.

 

Notwithstanding the vision and focus the Report’s authors have brought to this analysis, I do have one criticism. The focus on water, power, and telecommunications is in my view too narrow. The policy reforms advocated by the Report should be broadened to include sewerage, roads, cadastral and related land surveys, and most importantly, housing in remote communities. The vast bulk of housing in remote communities is public housing, and it is a core component, a core foundation, for the associated essential services that we normally see as infrastructure. As the largest public housing peak body in the US notes on its website (link here):

Public housing plays a critical role in our nation’s public infrastructure, providing families with a stable home and helping them gain access to other services, including education and health. When we invest in public housing, we help low-income families achieve self-sufficiency and improve life outcomes, but we also generate economic growth, bolster productivity, and positively impact support services while significantly decreasing costs.

 

Of course, the IPA is not alone in Australia in failing to see social housing as infrastructure. Infrastructure Australia was very slow to acknowledge that social housing is infrastructure (link here and link here) and when it did, it never really gained traction within the bureaucracy and beyond.

 

Indeed, in the last year of the former Government’s term, it took steps to explicitly ensure that Infrastructure Australia did not consider social housing. In April 2022, the Shelter WA website reported (link here) that the former Deputy PM and Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development, Barnaby Joyce, issued a Statement of Expectations to the Board of Infrastructure Australia (link here) that omits inclusion of social infrastructure such as social and community housing in IA’s list of priority sectors.

 

The Shelter newsletter states:

…As reported by Community Housing Industry Association (CHIA), regrettably, the new statement of expectations removes social infrastructure from the list of priority sectors despite its inclusion in IA’s 2021 Infrastructure Plan, and affordable housing being the most frequently cited infrastructure gap in regional areas. This is step backwards in efforts to treat housing as essential infrastructure.

 

What the Shelter website does not mention is that housing shortages are endemic in remote and regional Aboriginal and Torres State Islander communities, and that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are over-represented in waiting lists for social and community housing in regional and urban locations. Moreover, if one were to aggregate the outstanding remote community housing needs across regions or jurisdictions and treat addressing them as individual projects, the financial costs would exceed the capital costs of many of the major economic projects that Infrastructure Australia recommends (and the North Australia Infrastructure Facility funds: link here).

 

The failure to gain traction is evident in the recent release of the Independent review of Infrastructure Australia, and the associated Government Response to the Review (link here). The Independent Review recommended (pages21-22) that Infrastructure Australia’s remit be expanded to include social infrastructure, albeit without seeking to define or stipulate just what such a term covers:

The Review recommends that Infrastructure Australia’s remit be expanded to include social infrastructure (where it is relevant to the infrastructure investment project, or place and precinct in question) as well as future investment challenges where Infrastructure Australia’s position as the national advisor best enables it to incorporate those challenges in its advice and analysis.

 

Disappointingly, (particularly given the Government decision to make Infrastructure Australia a more influential adviser on infrastructure matters) the Government Response adopts the Barnaby Joyce approach, and effectively set this recommendation aside:

Support in part. The Government considers Infrastructure Australia’s focus should be on nationally significant projects relating to transport, water, communications and energy infrastructure, in support of Australian Government functions.  From time to time, it may be appropriate for Infrastructure Australia to consider social infrastructure implications where it is part of broader network analysis or place-based project advice. Where required, the Government can request this work through the Statement of Expectations. The Government notes that this approach minimises any duplication with regional and urban policy and program functions within the Australian Government…

For those who require a translation from bureaucratic parlance, this means ‘not on your nelly’!

 

Yet the Infrastructure Australia Regional Strengths and Infrastructure Gaps Report released recently (link here: Overview report) identifies the availability, diversity and affordability of housing as the most common identified gap across regional Australia (page 11) and in relation to Indigenous communities’ concerns, noted (para.4.7.7 page 38):

The availability, affordability and quality of housing was highlighted across consultations as being a key issue for First Nations communities. The 2019 Australian Infrastructure Audit (Challenge 126) identified that housing is not meeting the needs of First Nation communities across remote Australia, exacerbating health, education and well-being outcomes. Overcrowding is leading to poor outcomes for First Nations peoples in Remote Areas, which is also identified on our Infrastructure Priority List.

 

It is worth contextualising these persistent shortfalls. This week, Infrastructure Australia released its 2022 Market Capacity Report which identifies significant risks and pressure on the infrastructure pipeline currently in place across the nation. But more saliently for Indigenous citizens in remote Australia, the report notes that the current 5 year pipeline of major public infrastructure projects ‘is valued at $237 billion - an increase of $15 billion in the last 12 months and equivalent to 6.7% growth’ (link here). Or to contextualise the Commonwealth’s effort in relation to remote housing, where it has allocated $100m for the NT over five years, this represents on my calculation 0.04 percent of the total five year public infrastructure pipeline.

 

Taken together:

• v  the IPA Report outlining the extraordinary remote infrastructure challenge (albeit narrowly focussed);
• v  the current inability of the Productivity Commission’s Closing the Gap Information Repository to provide information on housing progress (target 9) in remote areas — it is listed as future reporting (link here); and
• v  the deliberate decisions to narrow the remit of Infrastructure Australia to exclude advice on disaggregated remote social housing needs  in favour of geographically focussed commercial infrastructure;

all provide a rather pessimistic insight into the longstanding systemic challenges driving under-investment in public infrastructure within remote communities. These challenges are exacerbated by the deliberate decision of the former LNP Government (not reversed by the current ALP Government)  to not continue the public investment in remote housing provision in the 2008 National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing (link here;  link here and link here).

 

Yet the public investment shortfall is deepening as the challenges of climate change are rising (link here).

 

A recent research note in the Medical Journal of Australia by Simon Quilty, Norman Frank Jupurrula, Ross Baillie and Russell Gruen (link here) is titled: Climate, housing, energy and Indigenous health: a call to action. The authors first paragraph states:

Most Australians take safe housing and uninterrupted electricity for granted. Yet in remote Indigenous communities, low quality poorly insulated housing and energy instability are common. Most houses require prepaid power cards, resources are meagre, financial literacy is low, and people often have to choose between power and food. New evidence reveals extreme rates of prepaid electricity meters’ disconnection in these communities, making people with chronic diseases who depend on cool storage and electrical equipment particularly vulnerable. The convergence of excessive heat, poor housing, energy insecurity and chronic disease has reached critical levels in many parts of northern Australia, and a multisectoral response is needed to avert catastrophe. Medical professionals have a key role to play.

 

The article is short and highly recommended. Among other things, it argues for the strengthening of building codes and housing standards in remote settings, not the acceptance of existing standards.

 

To sum up, over the past two decades at least, public funding in core capital investments related to essential services, social housing, and community infrastructure has been severely deficient. This has undoubtedly reduced the levels of recurrent funding by governments in remote settings, and also limited the opportunities for local employment, and stronger economic development and progress. It is undoubtedly one of the key contributors to limiting the opportunities available to the rapidly growing youth cohort within communities. While reversing the sustained under-investment is not sufficient to address all the challenges facing residents of remote communities, it is a necessary element in any viable transition to a more stable future for remote communities. The onset of climate change is making addressing these challenges even more urgent.

 

Yet relevant policymakers appear to be both deaf and blind to the systemic and structural nature of the crisis their predecessors have initiated and for which they have the current responsibility to address. It is past time for the Commonwealth to step up, commit funding and ensure that the states and Territory are focussed on these priorities, which after all are core responsibilities of governments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cataclysm and crisis: the two sides of the policy tragedy engulfing remote northern Australia

 

This bodes some strange eruption to our state

Hamlet Act 1, scene 1.

 

Over the past two years, it has been increasingly apparent that remote communities across the north have been struggling. There has been an ongoing surge in youth crime across East Kimberley communities, particularly in Halls Creek , Fitzroy Crossing, Derby, Kununurra and elsewhere. A recent article in WA Today (link here) states:

A surge in crime across the Kimberley has been partly attributed to social media, with youths filming themselves stealing cars and challenging others. More than 300 children have been charged with offences in the region during 2022, according to figures tabled in parliament.

 

According to a January 2022 ABC news story (link here):

A surge in alcohol-fuelled crime across the Kimberley during the New Year's Eve long weekend has pushed frontline workers to the brink and angered residents who woke up to violence outside their homes. A steady stream of injuries and arrests from a night of relentless brawling in Kununurra overwhelmed paramedics, hospital staff and police officers for hours on New Year's Eve.

 

The same article reported:

In Derby, police attended more than 50 alcohol-fuelled family violence and assault incidents on New Year's Eve alone. Senior Sergeant Dave Whitnell took to Facebook the following day to announce temporary alcohol restrictions, barring the sale of spirits and full-strength beer. He told ABC Radio the restrictions had an immediate impact, giving frontline workers some respite for the rest of the long weekend.

 

In May 2022, the WA Government sent and extra 24 police to the region in Operation Regional Shield ‘to address soaring youth crime rates and criminal violence in the region’. The Operation identified over 600 ‘at risk’ children (link here). Just last week, a crisis meeting in Halls Creek of senior WA Government officials and the Halls Creek Shire met to discuss option to address the ongoing crime wave (link here). The headline says it all: ‘Kimberley crime wave prompts more police and youth 'social hub' to be built’.

 

Yet these issues are not limited just to the Kimberley nor to Western Australia.

 

In late April 2022, ABC news reported (link here) that in Wadeye in The NT:

dozens of homes have been destroyed in recent weeks, amid widespread unrest. Police said 37 homes have been extensively damaged in the past three weeks, with efforts underway to "support and relocate some of the vulnerable". About 400 people, who were living in the overcrowded homes, are seeking refuge in the bush on the fringes of the community,

 

In July, the ABC reported (link here) that the NT Government had established a Task Force to assist the 545 people who had been displaced and  oversight repairs to the 125 houses that had been damaged since March (including at least 35 destroyed). Yesterday (9 December 2022), ABC news reported (link here) that the NT Police Commissioner stated that:

around five per cent of the community of just under 2000 people is currently in jail, following police operations both in Wadeye and Darwin.

The article also commented on the role of alcohol in contributing to the ongoing unrest:

As part of a four-week operation beginning in October, police roadblocks were set up to crack down on alcohol being smuggled into the dry community….Since the police roadblocks were removed, Thamarurr Development Corporation chief executive, Scott McIntyre, said he believed alcohol-fuelled violence had increased again. "[The operation] had a big impact on reducing the amount of alcohol coming into the community," he said.

 

According to the ABC, in November, for the second time in a month, access to the Alice Springs CBD was closed off by police due to an uncontrolled surge in vehicle thefts and misuse within the CBD (link here). The NT Police Commissioner sent in 40 additional police to manage the situation.

 

Last week the Joint Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs held public hearings in Darwin and Alice Springs as part of its Inquiry into Community Safety, Support Services and Job Opportunities in the Northern Territory. The Hansard transcript is not yet available. An ABC news article (link here) reported that the Committee heard evidence of an upsurge in alcohol related domestic violence, an increase in hospital presentations involving alcohol and violence, and calls for the reinstatement of alcohol bans that were lifted earlier this year.

 

A written submission to the Committee from the Alice Springs community advocacy group, the People's Alcohol Action Coalition presents persuasive data backing up the evidence provided to the Committee (link here).Amongst other things, this submission demolishes comprehensively the disingenuous rationale provided previously by a number of NT Ministers that the continuation of the previous alcohol restrictions would breach the Racial Discrimination Act.

 

Clearly, the crisis engulfing northern Australian remote communities and towns is widespread, long lasting, and ongoing. Its causes are undoubtedly complex and the consequences for the victims of violence and social chaos far reaching and serious.

 

Yet the media reports listed above (and many I have not cited) rarely reach national attention, and if they do, they do not lead to more than a transitory response by governments aimed at downplaying their significance and more often than not framing them as isolated instances of aberrant behaviour. Rarely is there any detailed Government commentary or policy analysis seeking to explain the deeper causes, and to deepen community understanding of the conditions facing most remote Indigenous communities. This reluctance reinforces the apparent incapacity or unwillingness of governments to pursue policies directed to ameliorating underlying and systemic issues and to adequately fund the sort of services required. Instead, governments appear determined to sequestrate the social and economic chaos and insulate mainstream communities from any detailed understanding of what is transpiring effectively out of sight and out of mind.

 

Stepping into the grandstand, it is apparent that this ongoing crisis has multiple facets. It has been developing for at least two decades, and the gross levels of under-investment in basic services by governments within communities (along with active policy antipathy to supporting remote communities) has seen an inexorable shift in population towards towns and away from the bush.  While the crisis is geographically dynamic, waxing and waning in particular locations, it is also functionally dynamic, exhibiting different characteristics (symptoms if you like) and concomitantly having multiple repercussions and ramifications. To give readers just a sense of this, I thought I would list the various posts I’ve written on different aspects of the remote crisis over the past two years. I don’t claim that this is any where near a comprehensive account, reflecting as it does my own interests and limited expertise.

 

Over the past two years, I have written numerous posts on this blog on the following topics (in bold) related to remote Australia. I have included underneath the title of each post (without context or attribution) key points made in that post:

 

Deflection and inaction: the Australian Government’s formal response to the Productivity Commission Review on Expenditure on Children in the Northern Territory 27 May 2021 (link here).

… What is crystal clear — even from a cursory reading of the report — is that the system for funding and delivering children’s services in the NT is not fit for purpose….the Government’s response is deflection rather than action. It reflects the deep-seated inability of governments to come to terms with the deep structural issues confronting disadvantaged Australians in remote regions.

 

Regulating Alcohol in the Northern Territory: in whose interest? 9 June 2021 (link here).

My recommendation to the NT Government is that they should take the opportunity of the publication of this report to undertake a fundamental reconsideration of their policy approach to alcohol regulation. To do otherwise will be to deepen their complicity in an entirely preventable scourge that is taking a terrible toll on many Territorians, including a substantial proportion of Indigenous Territorians.

[In relation to the Australian Government] Silence and sitting on the fence is not an adequate response to the ongoing health crisis linked to alcohol abuse across the NT and beyond.

 

A strong start for every Indigenous child: early childhood policy and deep disadvantage 9 August 2021 (link here).

Nonetheless, almost all trends pertaining to child health and well-being in Australia are worse for Indigenous Australian children (Wise, 2013[38]). In addition, a clear gradient is evident of increasing disadvantage the further children live from major cities (Bankwest Curtin Economic Centre, 2017[39]). …  Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in remote Australia are more likely to experience a lack of access to appropriate services, known to mediate the impact of adversity in early childhood (SNAICC, 2020[40]).

 

Energy insecurity in remote Australia 13 January 2022 (link here).

Indigenous communities in remote Australia face dangerous temperature extremes. These extremes are associated with increased risk of mortality and ill health …. Poor quality housing, low incomes, poor health and energy insecurity associated with prepayment all exacerbate the risk of temperature-related harm … We find that nearly all households (91%) experienced a disconnection from electricity during the 2018–2019 financial year. Almost three quarters of households (74%) were disconnected more than ten times. …

 

See How We Roll [book review] 24 January 2022 (link here).

In the perilous movement of people through time and space, both places and kin are made and remade. A primary driver of movement is the opportunistic pursuit of resources: a meal, an adventurous ride, the numbing release of alcohol or ganja, the conviviality of assembled kin … All of these forms of Warlpiri movement, no matter their diversity, never seem to be in search of a destination per se.

 

Indigenous land and economic development in northern Australia 14 February 2022 (link here).

The bottom line arising from a closer reading of the Joint Standing Committee on Northern Australia’s report, …. is to reinforce how little the government has done since coming to office in 2013 to encourage the inclusion of Indigenous landowners and communities in economic activity.

 

The Commonwealth is taking us headlong into a remote policy chasm: but who cares? 18 February 2022 (link here).

In relation to alcohol, such an outcome would remove the alcohol regulation framework currently in place, and implicitly shift regulatory responsibility to the NTG. The SFNT policy framework was primarily focussed on harm minimisation. Any shift of responsibility to the NTG will introduce a number of levels of uncertainty.

 

The ANAO performance audit of the NIAA NT Remote Housing program 2 March 2022 (link here).

Of course, the more fundamental issue here is that the Commonwealth is the underlying owner of the assets, that are scheduled to revert to direct Commonwealth control in 2023. Yet it is deliberately underinvesting in the PTM, which means that the assets degrade faster than they should, will need to be replaced earlier than should, and the tenants (real families with real needs) will continue to live in sub-optimal conditions longer than they should. These are the nuts and bolts of structural racism, laid out in plain view by the ANAO, but not reflected in its findings or recommendations.

 

The ongoing social and governance catastrophe in remote Australia. 8 May 2022 (link here).

Remote Australia requires a ‘new deal’. It requires significantly increased government investment. Most importantly, it requires greater and more effective engagement with remote residents based on acknowledging their prior ownership, their violent dispossession, and an acknowledgment that mainstream Australia is the source of the fundamental disruption that is creating ongoing chaos. The ubiquitous assumption amongst mainstream Australia’s institutions dealing with remote Australia has been that the past is irrelevant and that we should all just look forward. This assumption has not worked and mainstream Australians need to be smart enough to rethink our fundamental approaches to the interaction of the nation state with remote communities.

 

Neil Westbury article on regressive changes to remote alcohol laws in the NT 3 June 2022 (link here).

In these circumstances, the current NT Government appears to have decided that rather than maintaining a system — based on their own reluctance to effectively regulate alcohol in towns — where remote residents who wish to drink have an incentive to come into town, they have decided to shift the problems back to remote communities.

 

Paying the rent: policy or politics? 26 July 2022 (link here).

…the structural issues that pervade the remote housing sector. These include gross and longstanding underinvestment by governments in addressing overcrowding, and in ensuring that existing remote housing assets are adequately managed and maintained…. In my view, the responsibility for addressing these issues falls primarily to the Commonwealth for three reasons. First, housing is central to much of the structural dysfunction that exists in remote Australia, and involves complex interaction between functional responsibilities of all three levels of government. In particular, the social security system is central to the administration of social housing in remote Australia…

 

Alcohol policy reform in remote Australia: a potential roadmap 14 August 2022 (link here).

…corporate alcohol interests have a stranglehold or veto over policy initiatives designed to address or mitigate the consequences of alcohol misuse. Notwithstanding the Commonwealth’s reluctance to engage with these issues, the Commonwealth does have a policy responsibility. It is clear that the issues involved are structural and extend beyond any one state or territory. On its own this suggests that Commonwealth action may be necessary.

 

Conclusion

 

The succession of media reports over the past two years (and in fact the previous twenty years) makes it clear that there is an ongoing cataclysm across remote northern Australia. I hope my posts over the past two years commenting on a succession of more detailed policy reports, documents and events makes out a persuasive case that from a normative policy perspective, governments are failing to coherently and comprehensively address this ongoing cataclysm. The inability of governments to envisage, understand and put in place effective strategies to address the multiple facets of the economic and social cataclysm facing remote communities amounts to a massive and fundamental failure. This failure is in and of itself a crisis; a crisis of governance capability, a crisis of will power, and ultimately a crisis of government legitimacy.

 

The implication that inevitably follows is that the solutions (for they will inevitably be multiple) must go beyond focussing on a single issue (housing, or health or food security or alcohol, or crime, or education, or incarceration, or unemployment or economic development, or land tenure, or dispossession or the impact of colonisation). The solutions if they are to be effective must simultaneously and comprehensive make significant inroads into all of these issues. This is an enormous and extraordinary challenge confronting the nation. It is a challenge that appears to be either incomprehensible or inconceivable to governments and policymakers, yet it is extraordinarily real nevertheless not least to the lives of thousands of Australian citizens it adversely impacts.

 

Addressing it will require a national effort that starts from a premise of constructive engagement with Indigenous citizens and their representative and advocacy organisations, that renounces the use of simplistic and punitive policies, and that emanates from a consensus that transcends the limited imagination of governments and included civil society more generally.