The semiotics of the 2023 Intergenerational Report

 

But thou didst understand me by my signs,

And dids’t in signs again parley with sin…

King John, Act four, Scene two.

 

The Commonwealth recently published the 2023 Intergenerational Report (link here). The thumbnail description on the Treasury website states:

The 2023 Intergenerational Report projects the outlook of the economy and the Australian Government’s budget to 2062-63. This is the sixth report. Its analysis and projections of the key drivers of economic growth will help inform and improve public policy settings to better position Australia for the next 40 years. The report considers 5 major forces affecting the coming decades:

·         population ageing

·         technological and digital transformation

·         climate change and the net zero transformation

·         rising demand for care and support services

·         geopolitical risk and fragmentation.

 

The Treasurer’s Foreword states (inter alia):

The Albanese Government’s first Intergenerational Report provides a big picture view of the forces that will shape our economy and fiscal position over the next 40 years as we work to create prosperity, expand opportunity, and build a stronger, more sustainable and more inclusive nation. Digitalisation and the adoption of new technologies, shifts in our industrial base, the energy transformation, demographic change, and serious geopolitical uncertainty are already changing the shape of our economy and this will continue over the coming decades. 

 

There has been a plethora of commentary over the past week which I do not propose to replicate. Instead, this post will focus on what the Report says (or does not say) regarding Indigenous people, and what this means for future policy directions.

 

The Report makes a series of passing mentions of Indigenous policy issues: life expectancy at birth for First Nations people are about 8 years lower than the mainstream population (p. 43); First Nations people have a ‘significantly younger’ age profile than the general population (p. 49); and participation rates for First Nations people are low:

The share of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in employment remains lower than for other Australians. Census data suggest that the gap in employment rates has narrowed slightly from 25 percentage points in 1991 to 22 percentage points in 2021 (Chart 3.11). The employment rate of First Nations people is lower in more rural and remote areas (pp.72-3).

 

It seems likely however that the uptick in participation rates noted above are the result of higher levels of identification rather than any underlying policy response. Even so more than four in ten Indigenous persons between ages 25 to 64 are unemployed, a level of under-participation that has existed for over thirty years.

 

The Report asserts the Commonwealth ‘is making significant investments in closing the gap’ (p. xvii). In this statement, the word ‘significant’ is bearing all the weight, and is open to varying interpretations. An amended version, stating the Commonwealth is making ‘significant but not adequate’ investments would perhaps better reflect the reality.

 

In a discussion of critical minerals, the Report notes that 80 percent of the continental land mass is under-explored for critical minerals and that this might offer ‘opportunities’. There is no mention of the fact that the Indigenous estate comprises around 57% of the continental land mass (not all in direct Indigenous ownership: link here), and thus there is no discussion of the implications either for the supply of critical minerals nor for the economic and other impacts on First Nations communities of this sui generis institutional framework.

 

In relation to pre-school enrolment, the report notes (p. 181) that 99% of First Nations children in the year before school age cohort are enrolled in preschool, a 225 increase since the 2016 census. The report also reports encouraging school retention rates for all Australian students including First Nations of 97 percent (p. 182) but falling mainstream and First Nations attendance rates since 2015, with First Nation student’s attendance being some 12 percent below mainstream rates (p.182). Not mentioned are the geographic differences, with remote attendance rates and levels being much lower than the national figures. For example, the most recent ACARA national report on schooling in Australia (link here) contains data suggesting in very remote regions, Indigenous attendance levels (ie the proportion of students who attend more than 90 percent of available school days) is only 8.7 percent nationally and drops to only 4.4 percent in the NT. The gap between very remote non-Indigenous students and Indigenous students’ attendance levels is 33 percent. Unsurprisingly, Indigenous educational outcomes are sub-optimal. Along with the recently released NAPLAN figures, ACARA (the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority) released a two page short commentary on the results for each of the years 3, 5, 7, and 9 (link here). Each commentary included the same text:

Non-Indigenous students’ average NAPLAN scores are substantially above and significantly different from those of Indigenous students in all 5 testing domains.

 

The most consequential mention of First Nations in the Intergenerational Report comes in the very last paragraph of Chapter Seven on Government Spending. The Chapters major points are summarised at the front of the chapter (p. 143):

Total Government spending is projected to increase by 3.8 percentage points over the next 40 years, rising from 24.8 per cent of GDP today to 28.6 per cent in 2062–63.  Major spending pressures include health and aged care, the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), defence and interest payments on Government debt. These are projected to rise from 8.8 per cent of GDP today to around 14.4 per cent in 2062–63.  Demographic ageing alone is estimated to account for around 40 per cent of the increase in Government spending over the next 40 years.

In a discussion of non-modelled ‘other payments’, the report notes (p. 187; emphasis added):

Non-modelled payments includes spending on all other areas not elsewhere included in this chapter, including environmental protection and conservation, national parks and world heritage area management, supporting First Nations people and communities, the arts and the film industry, and the Australian Public Service. Payments that are not modelled are assumed to grow in line with GDP so are held as a constant share of GDP over the projection period.

 

Of course, in the scheme of things, these payments are comparatively minor, and arguably any variations will not be statistically significant. Yet there is also an inference here that notwithstanding the significant shortfalls in health, education, infrastructure, housing, and justice outcomes, and the consistent failure to make a dent in closing the gap, that there is no substantive pressure to increase the proportion of GDP that is allocated to these issues.

 

Moreover, notwithstanding the Report’s silence, the salience of mainstream programs in addressing (or not addressing) Indigenous disadvantage is increasingly acknowledged in policy circles, not least in the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, and in particular in its Priority Reforms. Considering the five major forces shaping the future, it is worth considering how those forces might impact Indigenous interests and communities.

 

An ageing mainstream population is not aligned with the current and likely continuing youthfulness of the Indigenous population, and will likely engender a shift in the political pressures shaping governments’ policy priorities towards the concerns of an older mainstream community, and at the expense of younger cohorts. This is a potential risk for Indigenous interests that is rarely mentioned let alone considered in depth. There is a related issue of the surging growth in the national Indigenous population, driven by increasing self-identification. The report makes a glancing reference to ‘changing First Nation identification rates’ in a footnote (p.49), but does not consider whether the recent trends will continue into the medium term, nor what the implications then might be.

 

The coming technological and digital transformation will adversely impact the least educationally qualified segments of the Australian population, and Indigenous interests are over-represented in that cohort.

 

The accelerating impact and risks of climate change and the potential of the net zero transformation will impact remote and regional Indigenous interests significantly. The increasing salience of energy insecurity in remote communities is just one example (link here). The commercial and economic opportunities are significant, but rely on the development of widespread (not isolated pockets) commercial and economic expertise amongst Indigenous communities as well as the structural and systemic changes to the institutional frameworks designed to facilitate the taking up of those opportunities. The existence of the potential will require sustained and complex policy engagement by all governments, but particularly the Commonwealth. Unfortunately I see little evidence that policymakers are prepared (in both senses of the word) to focus on making these opportunities realities. Moreover, the risks of climate change, especially if global temperatures rise to 3 degrees or above (as the Report canvasses and as many scientists are predicting) will have huge and adverse consequences for the viability of many First Nation communities across remote and regional Australia, and perhaps for the medium to long term viability of human habitation in these areas.

 

The rising demand for care and support services will impact Indigenous interests severely given their existing vulnerabilities in the health, mental health, disability and other sectors. There may be a silver lining in terms of increasing employment opportunities for Indigenous people in these sectors, but it is difficult to suggest that the net impact will be unequivocally positive.

 

Finally, the increasing strains of geopolitical risk and fragmentation will impact Indigenous interests in variable ways. The biggest risk of rising international tension will be to distract policymakers from focussing on the needs of the most disadvantaged and to divert funding away from social and ‘soft’ priorities towards military spending aimed at enhancing our strategic priorities. While there may be opportunities for Indigenous interests in some of this activity, the risks are considerable and the shift towards sophisticated and technologically complex military systems (including support systems) does not bode well for the least educationally qualified members of society, a segment where Indigenous interests are over-represented.

 

Conclusion

The Intergenerational Report is designed not as a definitive prediction of the future, but as a mechanism for building support for the policy reforms required to address the challenges the nation faces over the coming forty years. It is also deliberately framed so as to lay out a narrative that makes the Government’s current policy priorities appear rational and necessary. In doing so, it is inevitable that it unintentionally provides signposts to the Government’s underlying priorities, and to the pace at which it wishes to prosecute those policy agendas.

 

In terms of the Indigenous policy domain, the Intergenerational Report appears to signify a deep-seated complacency, and preparedness to merely keep kicking issues down the road. There are a plethora of systemic policy challenges that have been around for decades and continue to remain under-addressed and under-acknowledged. Moreover, the future trends identified by the Report are (on the whole) going to impact far more seriously and more adversely on First Nations than on the mainstream community. In other words, without systemic reform, the trends identified will contribute to greater social and economic inequality between First Nations and the mainstream community.

 

Implicitly, the policy settings of the current Governments appear to signify a commitment to business as usual. Clearly, the efforts to establish an Indigenous Voice is the major exception to that assessment. The proposed Voice is clearly important and would be a major institutional reform if the referendum succeeds. Yet notwithstanding the merits, importance and potential of the Voice, there remains a responsibility on governments to govern and to invest in desperately needed infrastructure and services.

 

The deep-seated comparative shortfalls in First Nations lifespans, education outcomes, in First Nations incarceration levels, in remote housing, in health issues such as FASD and suicide and mental illness, in alcohol and drug abuse, in domestic violence and the extraordinary levels of First Nations children in out of home care are all scandals in their own right. Taken together, they represent a human catastrophe which will endure well beyond the timeframe covered by the Intergenerational Report. In these circumstances, the inaction and lack of substantive policy focus by governments appears incompetent at best and malign at worst.  It is incomprehensible that any government focussed on advancing the public interest could in good faith merely assert these issues must wait while a mechanism is put in place that will itself inevitably call on governments to act on these very issues. Yet this is the underlying signal that the Intergenerational Report sends First Nations, and the wider community.

 

1 September 2023