Alice Springs crisis: observations on remote policy

 

Tis much when sceptres are in children's hands,

But more when envy breeds unkind division:

There comes the ruin, there begins confusion.

Henry VI, Part 1, Act 4, scene 1

 

Yesterday, the Prime Minister, the Minister for Indigenous Australians, and three Indigenous Labor MPs (Patrick Dodson, Marion Scrymgour, and Malarndirri McCarthy) visited Alice Springs to meet with the NT Government, and local community interests.

 

I am loathe to write too much about the unfolding situation in Alice Springs given the amount to material being published in mainstream media. I don’t propose to set out a comprehensive account or summary, and instead would refer readers to the front page reports in the Australian, the ABC and the Guardian over recent days. Below is a quick snapshot of my posts in relation to alcohol policy in remote Australia over the past year or so. I include them to both provide some deeper background, and more importantly to make the point that for close observers of this policy realm (are there any in Government?) it has been very apparent for a considerable time that business as usual was not sufficient and would eventually lead to disaster. Bad as things are, it is not clear that they will not get worse before they improve.

 

In February 2022, I posted a blog reporting on what amounted to a clear decision by the previous Government not to extend the Stronger Futures legislation related to alcohol (and some other issues such as remote stores licencing which has implications for food security in remote communities). That post was titled The Commonwealth is taking us headlong into a remote policy chasm: but who cares? (Link here).

 

In May 2022, I published a post outlining the ongoing social and governance catastrophe in remote Australia (link here). That post dealt with alcohol issues only tangentially, but reinforced the deep structural and systemic underpinnings of the current crisis.

 

In early June 2022, the NT Government announced its approach to loosening the controls on alcohol regulation across remote communities and town camps. I published a post linking to criticism of this approach, and explored the likely rationale for the NTG decision (link here). I argued that the NTG decision was a cynical exercise in encouraging drinkers to remain in remote communities and out of Darwin and major towns. In the case of Central Australia, the systemic incentives to leave underfunded communities are much greater than mere access to alcohol; hence the current issues in Alice Springs.

 

In August, I published a post titled Alcohol policy reform in remote Australia: a potential roadmap. This post dealt with remote Western Australia (link here), and made the case for the Commonwealth to inject itself into the remote alcohol policy arena.

 

In December 2022, I published a post titled Cataclysm and crisis: the two sides of the policy tragedy engulfing remote northern Australia (link here). That post was headed with a quotation from Hamlet: ‘This bodes some strange eruption to our state’. The post concluded as follows:

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). 

 

I recommend reading those previous posts to obtain an inkling of the systemic underpinnings of the current situation in Alice Springs.

 

Below, I lay out a series of observations that are not getting much critical attention in the current media tumult. They are not intended as a comprehensive analysis of the current situation nor are they in any particular order.

 

First, there have been statements by both Government, the Opposition, and the NT Government seeking to blame their political opponents for the flow on from the decision to allow the Stronger Futures legislation that curtailed access to alcohol across many remote NT Aboriginal communities. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton called on the Government to reinstate the alcohol bans that expired in July last year (link here and link here). Yesterday, the Prime Minister argued (link here) that the Stronger Futures legislation had expired before the first parliamentary session under the new Government (elected in May 2022). While technically correct, the new Labor Government always had the option of moving to reinstate the legislation, or proactively engaging with the NT Government to ensure alcohol controls were not loosened. In the final analysis, the new Government could have announced an intention to reinstate the Stronger Futures legislation in the event that the NT Government failed to legislate in similar terms. The NT Government spent months mischaracterising the Stronger Futures legislation as racially based and thus discriminatory (link here and link here) while ignoring the fact that it was designed as a special measure under the Racial Discrimination Act which allows ostensible discrimination that is designed to benefit the people of a particular race. The Albanese Government, the former Morrison Government, and the Labor NT Government all had the opportunity to ensure that the Stronger Futures legislation continued with a zero or miniscule interregnum. Rewriting history to blame political opponents while seeking to avoid responsibility merely serves to signal that politics continues to play a major role in managing the response of our political elites to the situation in Alice Springs.

 

Second, as my previous posts made clear, the current issues in Alice Springs are (i) symptomatic of underlying structural and systemic policy challenges; and (ii) are constituent elements in a much more geographically expansive crisis that has been ebbing and flowing across remote Australia for decades, and had become significantly worse in the past three to five years. Alcohol abuse is a significant element in this crisis, but it is far from the only factor in play.

 

Third, the media reports on social dysfunction across remote Australia invariably focus on events in particular places and at particular times, but rarely do reporters step back and provide a holistic and coherent narrative that joins the dots both geographically, and in terms of the multiple sectors impacted. Media hype, however accurate, rarely provides the full picture, and is not adequate for policy formulation. Yet increasingly, Governments have abdicated on their responsibility to prepare and publish comprehensive, accurate and and coherent policy relevant analyses across the breadth of public policymaking. Analysis has given way to propaganda and public relations. This abdication of responsibility is particularly costly in relation to remote Australia given the thin levels of public discussion and knowledge of what goes on in remote places and communities.

 

Fourth, in the context of the present tumult around alcohol regulation, and the promulgation of a confusing amalgam of geographically constrained temporary and ongoing policy proposals by both the Federal and the NT Government, no media outlets have asked the PM, the Leader of the Opposition, or the NT Chief Minister, to reveal the level of political donations to their party organisations from interests associated with the alcohol industry. Given the crisis of legitimacy surrounding the quality of governance in relation to these current issues, it seems an obvious question to ask policymakers and politicians: how does the community know that you are not conflicted in proposing policy solutions that should be in the public interest. Political donations are theoretically made public, albeit after a considerable delay. However, there is nothing stopping any of the political players shaping policy in relation to the social crisis rolling out from compiling and publishing in a clear and transparent form the donations received from alcohol industry corporations over say the past three years. The absence of such a transparent statement from policymakers and their political opponents should provide cause for concern in relation to the policy solutions that are being proposed.

 

Fifth, there appears to be a correlation between the substantial pull back and withdrawal of the Commonwealth from the remote policy arena over the past decade and increasing levels of dysfunction. The NT Government does not appear to have the policy and financial capability to make a difference, and nor does it appear to have the political will power. The State Governments of Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland are too focussed on managing the complex issues of urban development in their respective major cities to give the particular needs of remote regions the priority they require. The 1967 referendum gave the Commonwealth a legislative and policy remit for Indigenous affairs for a reason, yet the Commonwealth’s role is being incrementally dismantled without any public debate or consideration.

 

Sixth, this morning on ABC Radio National, Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney recounted visiting the Alice Springs Hospital last night in the company of Marion Scrymgour, the member for the seat of Lingiari. The Alice Springs hospital has 16 beds in its Intensive Care Unit. Minister Burney mentioned that she was shocked to learn that last night, 14 of those beds were taken by women who had been the victims of violent assaults. This window into the lived experience of too many remote women and their families is more than a warning of the seriousness of the rolling crisis across remote Australia. It is more than a prompt for governments to take action. It is more than an indictment on the quality and legitimacy of our systems of governance across northern Australia. It is damning evidence of the complicity and responsibility for these outcomes of those Australians (myself included) who take an interest in public policy. 

We owe it to our children and our grandchildren to solve these issues. If we are don’t, future historians will write about us and the policies we implemented as no better than those of the perpetrators of colonial violence. Solving these structural and systemic issues, borne of sustained and ongoing exclusion and inequality, is in the public interest and the national interest.

[This post was revised on 29 January to correct a small number of typographical and grammatical errors]

 

Demographic dynamism demands targeted policy responses

 

Simply the thing I am

Shall make me live.

All’s Well That Ends Well, Act 4, iii.

 

I’ve written previously about the demographic trends shaping Australian Indigenous policy and drawn out a series of policy implications (link here). One of the points made by the ABS spokesperson quoted in that post related to the explanation for the substantial growth in the Indigenous population between 2016 and 2021 (185, 000 or 23 percent, compared to a 5 percent increase in the general population). The spokesperson noted that the Indigenous population changes were ‘partly explained by changing identification over time’. She gave no estimate of the relative significance of new identifiers in contributing to the ongoing population growth.

 

In their 2018 research paper Indigenous identification change between 2011 and 2016: evidence from the Australian Census Longitudinal Dataset, ANU researchers Nicholas Biddle and Francis Markham (link here) estimated that in 2016:

The net increase from identification change was therefore estimated to be 84 607, or 13.7% of the in-scope Indigenous population in 2011.

 

One of the points I made in my earlier blog post was that:

no Australian Government appears seriously focussed on exploring the linkages and implications for policy of the rapidly changing demography of Indigenous Australia. Over the past two censuses the ABS has provided a window into what amounts to an ongoing revolution in the demographic shape of Indigenous Australia, but the response from policymakers on what this means and how they intend to respond has been determined silence.

 

A recent academic discussion paper titled American Indian Casinos and Native American Self-Identification (link here) shines a light on the relationship between population dynamics and economic opportunity through an analysis of the relationship between the flow of benefits from casino ownership and the  incentives to self-identify as native American. This paper, by economists Francisca Antman and Brian Duncan of the University of Colorado reinforces the potential significance of institutional policy incentives in shaping demographic change, albeit in the US context.

 

The paper is of interest to Australians not for any direct analytic correlations (the institutional contexts in the US and here are significantly different), but for the deeper implications that are raised by the analysis. In particular, it examines the possible drivers of the significant shifts in self-identification amongst Native Americans over the past few decades. In turn, this raises the question, what is driving the parallel shifts in self-identification in Australia (noting that there are no casinos on Indigenous owned land in Australia).

 

The abstract of the paper states (inter alia)

This paper links Native American racial self-identification with the rise in tribal gaming across the United States. We find that state policy changes allowing tribes to open casinos are associated with an increase in the probability that individuals with American Indian ancestors will self-identify as Native American and a decrease in the probability that individuals with no [documented] American Indian ancestry will self-identify as Native American. … These results are consistent with a conceptual framework in which we tie racial identification to economic motivations as well as social stigma associated with affiliating with a racial group for those without documented ancestral ties. Our results underscore the importance of economic incentives and social factors underlying the individual choice of racial identity.

 

The conclusion notes (inter alia):

By linking Native American self-identification rates with the rise of tribal gaming, this paper offers one explanation for the dramatic changes observed in the number of individuals identifying as Native American since 1990. We find that the signing of the first tribal-state gaming compact is associated with a significant increase in the probability of self-identifying as Native American for individuals with American Indian ancestry... At the same time, we find that the same policy change is associated with a decrease in the probability of self-identifying as Native American for individuals without [documented] American Indian ancestry…

… While the magnitudes of our estimates are large, so are the overall changes in racial identification of the Native American population which have been documented elsewhere (Liebler et al. 2014; 2016, 2017). This suggests that the economic factors explored here may play an important role in this important demographic shift…

… Nevertheless, these results break new ground in linking racial identity and economic incentives, and should raise concerns for policymakers and researchers alike given widespread interest in monitoring the persistence of racial gaps in socioeconomic outcomes and how they are impacted by changes in policy. Not only can racial self-reports change over time, but, as seen in this study, dramatic demographic responses to policies are possible over even a relatively short period of time. It is also important to note that while we have focused on casino openings that confer positive net economic benefits on populations with strong ties to minority groups and thus increase their likelihood of identifying with the group, we expect that the opposite result would hold if negative economic effects were predominant. Thus, in contexts where discrimination in employment, education, and mistreatment by society overall prevail, the affected populations of self-identified racial groups could actually fall.

 

The paper identifies limitations to the analysis and potential alternative explanations (social rather than economic factors) for the extraordinary growth in self-identification amongst Native Americans since 1990. Nevertheless, the data on the growth in casino compacts on native American land since 1990 is enormous, totalling 780 new approvals (see Figure 1, page 48), and the parallel shifts in self-identification over the same period are difficult to ignore. The authors quote research that suggests that around 40 percent of the self-identified native American population in 2000 had not identified in 1990 and that the native American population almost doubled between 2010 and 2020 (pages 2-3). These dynamics mirror the demographic shifts underway in Australia.

 

So what insights and conclusions should we take away from this comparative analysis of US demographic developments and the demographic shifts underway in Australia?

 

First, there is to my knowledge no recent detailed research exploring the underlying causes of the demographic shifts underway across Indigenous Australia. There is a strong case for policymakers in Australia to commission research that seeks to understand these dynamics better. The US research suggests that we should look for economic explanations as well as social and political explanations.

 

Second, the US research persuasively makes the case for native American demography being much more dynamic than is generally recognised (especially amongst policymakers). The same conclusion probably applies here in Australia.

 

Third, the US research argues that while the incentives for self-identification are currently positive, they are not fixed, and under different circumstances — where discrimination in employment, education, and mistreatment by society overall prevail —  might also operate in a negative manner. This conclusion has considerable intuitive appeal, but raises a paradox in the Australian context at least. The 2022 Reconciliation Barometer reports that the percentage of the First Nations sample in their survey who have not experienced at least one form of racial prejudice in the last six months has steadily dropped from 61 to 40 percent over the past eight years (link here: page 15). Yet if increasing discrimination drives non-identification, why is the trend in Australia towards greater identification?

 

Fourth, notwithstanding its appreciation of the innate dynamism of demography, the US research arguably under-emphasises (ignores) the likelihood that new identifiers are the descendants of individuals and families that previously hid or downplayed their native American ancestry. In other words, the recent spike in identification may be a delayed correction to an earlier fall. This may well be a factor in Australia as well.

 

Fifth, if economic factors are at play in driving greater identification in Australia, what institutional shifts might be at play? One possibility may be the adoption of Indigenous procurement policies by Australian Governments. While they appear to have had a significant impact, I am not aware of any independent research or evaluations that demonstrate this unequivocally. It is probably time for governments and policymakers to commission a truly independent assessment of these policy initiatives to ensure that the various schemes can move to the next stage. See this 2015 blog on the IPP (link here). Alternatively, if the causes are social in nature, it is not immediately obvious what might be driving this shift. Perhaps the most plausible candidate may be the increased role of identity in our multicultural society?

 

Sixth, the most important implication of the cross national evidence for significant demographic dynamism within Indigenous populations is to point to the importance of policymakers incorporating an appreciation of ‘denominator effects’ in assessing and analysing statistical indicators in policy frameworks such as closing the gap. In particular, there is a risk that the political imperative for policy action related to poor and disadvantaged Indigenous citizens will be attenuated by a growth in the number of middle class ‘new identifiers’. In turn this suggests that looking forward, there will be an imperative for both policymakers and Indigenous advocates to focus greater attention on cohorts within the Indigenous population who are vulnerable to extreme disadvantage, rather than focussing on data and indicators that are framed as averages or adopt overarching perspectives.

 

Indigenous Australia is heterogenous with substantial differences deriving from geographical location, income distribution structure, age structure, and family structures to name just a few of the sources of internal difference. Increasingly, good policy will be defined by its capability to simultaneously address heterogeneity as well as the overarching shared experience of indigeneity. This is an important policy agenda for the future. The most obvious area requiring greater focus by policymakers is the intersection of disadvantage in its various forms and remoteness as this is the area most at risk from the current shifts in the demographic characteristics of the Indigenous policy domain.