All
the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women
merely players
As
You Like It, Act two, scene seven
A consistent theme on this Blog has been the social,
economic and environmental crisis facing remote Australia, and in particular,
remote Indigenous communities (link
here, link
here, link
here, link
here and link
here).
It is perhaps time for me to chance my arm and lay out a
high level outline of a potential policy strategy along with the accompanying
rationale to address this crisis, albeit one that will take time to devise and
implement, and longer to gain traction. Nevertheless, the alternative is to
keep muddling on, at serious and ongoing cost to the life opportunities of the
150, 000 remote Indigenous residents across Australia.
Before doing so, hopefully sometime in the next month, I
thought I would present a random and non-prioritised assembly of key remote ‘data
points’ or markers that I have been collecting over the month or so. In laying
out the data points, I will add some brief contextual commentary. My point in
approaching this issue in what is a deliberately adventitious way, without
suggesting an order of priority, importance or significance, is to provide a
sense of the breadth and interdependence of the policy challenges facing remote
Australia and its residents as well as the temporal cycles that permeate this
domain.
I am hoping readers think about the underlying implications
of each data point, but also consider what it means if the data point is
replicated more widely. While it is clear that not every remote location and
community faces the same circumstances, it is also clear that individual data
points are replicated more widely, albeit to an unknown extent, creating
notional data sets. Moreover, the interactions of the totality of different notional
data sets operate are not independent or constrained, but reinforce each other
in ways that resist the constrained and limited policy horizons of governments
and policymakers confined by self-imposed bureaucratic silos. The implication
of this insight is that policy responses must also be designed and implemented
as assemblages of reinforcing initiatives.
Remote
data points
Data
point one: A recent ABC news article reports that in Halls Creek in
the Kimberley region of WA, school
attendance at the District High School has dropped from 38 per cent in 2021
to 26 per cent last year, compared to 80 per cent across Western Australia's
public schools (link
here). An earlier August 2022 ABC news article (link
here) reported that the Western Australian Coroner had found that poor
school attendance was a common factor in the deaths [by suicide] of young people in the town between 2012 and
2016.
Data
point two: In 2022, ANU researchers finalised an extensive 140 page report
on Groote Eylandt for the Anindilyakwa Land Council titled Social Indicators and Data Governance to Support Local Decision Making
in the Groote Archipelago (link
here). It is worth reading in full for the contextual background. Three
sets of issues from the report caught my attention for their policy
implications:
The first issue relates to
overcrowding: The report notes (pages 87-88) that in 2006, 39% of the
community-controlled housing stock was uninhabitable ...The number of
Indigenous occupied dwellings in the Archipelago as defined by the census has
increased by more than 50% over the past 15 years ….The percentage of
census-identified dwellings that are
overcrowded declined from 49% in 2016 to 37% in 2021 (pages 87-88). My comment: What the report does not do
is to explicitly draw out the policy implications of this data. Notwithstanding
the improvements over the past 15 years, overcrowding is clearly a significant
issue with a third of houses overcrowded. Yet clearly the substantial
investment included in the now discontinued National Partnership on Remote
Indigenous Housing had a positive impact. What is unclear is whether the
current NT Housing program at a considerably lower level of overall investment
will have the momentum to overcome the ongoing rate of housing asset
deterioration (in a worsening climate) and continue to eat into the
overcrowding backlog. As an aside,
the ANU report does not address the quantum and allocation of mining royalties by the ALC on Groote: in many
respects, Groote is unique amongst remote communities in northern Australia,
and it is the major driver of royalty equivalent payments that fund the
operation of all four NT Land Councils plus the ABTA. Royalty allocation
decisions are an important issue on Groote as mining will not last for ever. The
allocation of royalties must be directed to capital investment (including
private housing investment) rather than recurrent expenditure if it is to have
a lasting impact. That is an issue for separate consideration and study.
The second issue relates to
health: the Report notes (page 106) that for residents of Groote Eylandt, hospitalisation rates are higher now than
20 years ago for all leading causes, except in the case of genito-urinary
diseases which includes renal failure …. Other notable increases in the rate of
hospitalisation have occurred for external causes and alcohol-related diseases.
The latter have been much higher over the decade 2011–2020 compared to 2001–
2010 … Intentional self-harm hospitalisations have also been much higher over
the past 10 years, with the rate for females double that for males. My comment: the important, but
unanswered question here is what has caused these retrograde developments. It
may be a reduction in the quality of health services, but my intuition is that
the problem lies more in the area of the social determinants of health.
The third issue relates to
education: on school attendance, the report notes that the overall attendance
rate at Groote Archipelago schools (% of those enrolled attending only some of
the time) has been consistently low at 40–50% since 2011. The overall
attendance level (those attending >90% of the time) has been consistently
very low at <10% since 2011. In effect, this means that a large share of the current generation of
school aged children have missed an effective education. My comment: this is an extraordinary indictment
on the NT Government and its education policies.
Data
point three: A recent academic article on the
organisational depth, robustness and footprint of political parties in remote
Australia, authored by Griffith University political scientists Duncan
McDonnell and Bartholomew Stanford, titled The
Party on Remote Ground: Disengaging and Disappearing? (link
here and link
here). This research documents the
weakening and extremely thin footprint of organised political parties in remote
electorates such as the Barkly in the NT and the Kimberley in WA, and
points to the adverse implications for democratic participation and engagement,
including amongst Indigenous citizens. My
comment: what the authors don’t say, but perhaps should have, is to
emphasise the crucial role of political parties in shaping public policy, and
the concomitant consequence that political party remote disengagement risks exacerbating
the ongoing remote policy vacuum. See the discussion in my submission to the
Joint Select Committee on the Voice Referendum (#65 at link
here). I previously posted on the low voting turnouts in remote Australia (link
here).
Data
point four: in a recent Submission (link
here) to the Standing Committee on Community Affairs Legislation Committee
Inquiry into the provisions of the Social
Security (Administration) Amendments (Income Management Reform) Bill 2023,
ANU researchers Matthew Gray and Rob Bray used ABS and AIHW data to track Indigenous imprisonment rates in the NT
over the past twenty years against non-Indigenous rates in the NT and
nationally (see Figure 1) and Indigenous school attendance rates in the NT over
the decade from 2009 to 2020 (Figure 4).
In relation to incarceration, they observe that compared to
non-Indigenous adults, Indigenous
imprisonment rates have dramatically widened since 2000, exceeding 2700 per
100, 0000 in 2020, up from just under 1000 per 100, 000 in 2000. Non-Indigenous
incarceration rates have remained stable throughout these decades at about 200
per 100, 000.
In relation to school attendance, they report declining school attendance across the NT
over the past decade, reaching mid sixty percent levels for remote schools and
mid forty percent levels for very remote schools. To which I would add two comments: this data is consistent with the
Groote statistics cited above, suggesting Groote is not an outlier; and second,
the statistics in Figure 4 do not cite the most educationally significant data,
namely, the proportion of students who attend 90 percent plus of the time. These
data are consistent however with the extraordinary conclusion that a
substantial proportion of remote Indigenous students over the past decade are
missing out on an education, and there is no policy initiative on the horizon
to suggest this will change over the coming decade.
Data
point five: the Gray/Bray submission referred to above, along with a
number of other submissions, comprehensively demonstrates that the continuation
by the current Commonwealth Government of universal
compulsory income management across remote communities in the NT lacks a robust evidence base. The
submission points out that policy breaches Labor’s pre-election promises, and
points to departmental efforts to ignore or not publish relevant data. My own comment on this situation is as
follows: the underlying rationale for continuing this selective policy can only
be a blunt and indirect attempt to limit expenditure on alcohol by remote
residents in circumstances where the NT Government is incapable and unwilling
to impose robust regulation of the alcohol sales across the NT. This policy is
increasingly at risk of tipping into being racially discriminatory, as its
status as a ‘special measure’ under the Racial Discrimination Act requires it
to have a beneficial impact. Yet if the evidence does not support this, the ‘special
measures’ rationale falls apart.
Data
point six: a recent research publication by ANU researchers (led by
my CAEPR colleague Bradley Riley) and representatives of two Central Australian
Aboriginal organisations documented the impact of COVID on energy security amongst remote NT residents. Titled Disconnected during disruption: Energy insecurity
of Indigenous Australian prepay customers during the COVID-19 pandemic (link
here), the research reported
that:
The
risks associated with the regular de-energization of prepay households have
long been overlooked by government reporting and this contributed to a lack of
visibility of energy insecurity and available protections for this group during
the pandemic response. In contrast to the rest of Australia, energy insecurity
in the form of disconnections remained unrelentingly high or worsened for
prepay households during this time. COVID-19 magnifies pre-existing health and
socio-economic inequities.
I have previously posted about this issue, and the
potential destructive interplay of high levels of pre-pay disconnections and
rising temperatures (link
here). The recent publication pays particular attention to the lack of
comprehensive data. The paper concludes:
While
the national moratorium on disconnection provided to post pay customers during
COVID-19 meant that experiences of energy insecurity decreased for most
Australians, remote living Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prepay
customers did not receive commensurate protections …. While there are few
published metrics relating to avoiding or reducing the frequency and duration
of involuntary self-disconnection events experienced by prepay customers, what data
there is shows that frequent
de-energization of Indigenous prepay households continued and, in many cases,
worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Data
point seven: In early February, the ABC had reported that
‘Data reveals 50 per cent spike in alcohol-related
emergency presentations after lifting of bans in Alice Springs’ (link here). These bans related to the consumption of alcohol on town camps around
Alice Springs, and numerous other remote communities.
On 20 April 2023, NT Chief Minister Natasha Fyles issued a
media release which stated in part:
The
Northern Territory Government will extend takeaway alcohol restrictions in
Alice Springs. Over the past three months we have seen these alcohol
restrictions work, and support our community and frontline workers.
Alcohol-related
emergency department presentations at Alice Springs Hospital have almost
halved, and domestic violence has dropped by a third in the month since the
takeaway alcohol restrictions were reintroduced into the Northern Territory
town.
While the Chief Minister appears to be shifting the
narrative away from the earlier across the board alcohol bans which she initially
opposed, and reluctantly agreed to re-introduce after pressure from the
Commonwealth, the points to note for present purposes are first the
extraordinary human toll of alcohol abuse, and second, the direct link between
alcohol consumption levels and hospital presentations. The latest available
published data on the NT Government website (link here)
is for the fourth quarter of 2022, and indicates 1299 alcohol related hospital emergency
presentations. There were a total of 4145 alcohol related emergency
presentations at the Alice Springs hospital for the 2022 year. To put this in
context, a 2018 Deloittes Report (link
here) noted that there had been a total of 46, 785 alcohol related
emergency presentations across Australia in 2016-17 (table 2.1). Clearly, alcohol
abuse levels in the NT and in Alice Springs have been at extraordinary levels
for a considerable time.
Data
point eight: on 28 April 2023 Guardian reported (link
here) on the ABS release of updated socioeconomic
indexes based on 2021 census data which take into account census data on
income, education, occupation, housing, employment and family structure, among
other factors, to rank each of Australia 547 local government areas
(LGAs). The data is used to create a score
with an average of about 1,000. Lower scores indicate areas of relative
disadvantage. Unsurprisingly, by my rough reckoning, the 33 most disadvantaged LGAs in Australia all have a substantial
majority of Indigenous residents. Of course, even more advantaged LGAs can
include pockets of extreme Indigenous disadvantage, but these index scores are
moderated by the population mix within the LGA. According to the ABS, “disadvantaged
areas tend to be in regional and remote communities, while advantaged areas
tend to be in major cities”.
Conclusion
I am conscious that these random data points, and
particularly the associated notional data sets, largely represent shortfalls in
the performance of governments, and are biased towards issues that have
received media coverage which in turn is likely to be a proxy for policy
attention from governments. Issues that are in my view significant, but are not
listed here, include wider health issues (including for example the long
lasting effects of FASD); employment / unemployment, and in particular the
interaction with the Community Development Program which delivers income
support to some 35, 000 remote citizens; environmental management including the
operation of Indigenous Protected Areas and ranger groups; the impact and
operation of land rights and native title legislation; and issues related to
commercial and economic development. Each of these policy domains along with
others I have not mentioned undoubtedly interacts with and contributes to the
quality of life for remote citizens, along with the policy issues I have addressed.
Nor have I focussed on institutional structures such as the operations and
effectiveness of Indigenous organisations, or the impact of federal governance.
What is clear however is that given the synergistic
interactions of multiple policy domains, the current model of policy design and
implementation has not worked. This raises the potentially unsettling prospect that,
at a fundamental systemic level, governments and policymakers are not
incentivised to take the policy decisions that are required to make a
substantive difference to the policy challenges that exist. Instead they are
incentivised to manage difficult issues, oil squeaky wheels, and engage in a
performative ritual designed merely to persuade an electorally significant non-Indigenous
constituency (and a less electorally significant, but more animated, Indigenous
constituency) that they are doing what is required to address the policy
challenges that surface periodically in the public consciousness.
A recent review of a book on Boris Johnson (link
here) described his motto for governing as ‘dodge, duck, dip, dive and
dodge’. As it turns out, this is an extraordinarily apt description of the systemic
approach of Australian governments to remote policy challenges.
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