Our doubts are traitors, and
make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."
Measure for Measure, Act I,
Scene 4.
Francis Markham, one of the most insightful and competent data
and policy analysts in the Indigenous policy domain has just published a short
blog post on the case for reforming the remote area allowance (RAA). His post (link
here) is titled: The Poor Pay More: Why the Remote Area Allowance Needs
Urgent Reform, and is highly recommended.
The post links to a 2020 Productivity Commission (PC) study
(link
here). The Executive Summary of that report is also worth reading.
I don’t propose to summarise Markham’s arguments which are
succinct, persuasive and data driven.
What struck me as I read his post however is that it raises
broader issues regarding remote employment, and in particular the need for
radical reform of the Community Development Program (CDP).
In 2019, in response to the PC’s Issues Paper, I published
a short post (link
here) identifying a number of issues that would also come into play. Unfortunately,
I failed to review the PC report when it was finally published in 2020….I must
have been asleep at the wheel.
Below is an extract from that earlier post which in my view
is still relevant, notwithstanding that the punitive tone of the CDP program
appears to have moderated under the current Government:
A further potential issue
relates to the impact of conditional welfare in remote Australia (ie the CDP
program: link
here) and the increasing evidence that as a result of punitive penalties,
significant numbers of remote Indigenous residents are not accessing their
welfare entitlements and thus not accessing RAA.
One of the challenges is
assessing the utility of these policy measures, is that they were primarily
devised to assist and benefit mainstream interests, particularly mainstream
taxpayers and businesses. Consequently, it can be easy to overlook Indigenous
perspectives in assessing the changes in underlying rationales over time. As
the Commission notes:
A range of justifications have
been advanced for special assistance for people living and/or working in remote
areas (box 3), although many of these are contentious. For those justifications
drawing on the isolation and arduousness of life in the outback, the changes in
transport, communications and living conditions over the past seventy years
mean that their strength has diminished (at least in many parts of the
country). Such arguments have also been challenged on the basis that
‘individuals have a free choice whether or not to live or work in remote areas
and to compensate them, if they so choose, would lead to resource misallocation
and reduced growth for the country as a whole’ (see Cox et al. 1981, p. 15).
While there have been
improvements in the circumstances of remote citizens, the circumstances of
remote Indigenous citizens are still highly disadvantaged. Moreover, they may
not have the same level of flexibility in their choice of residence as mainstream
citizens.
Markham’s arguments on reforming the RAA and the comments I
made in 2019 together strengthen the argument for a radical reconsideration of the
Community Development Program (CDP). In December last year, I published a post
on employment issues where I endorsed what in effect amounted to a
recommendation for a pilot employment creation program to be established (link
here). Upon reflection however, the case for moving decisively to reform CDP
is overwhelming: lives are not just at risk but will be drastically shortened
unless action is taken.
It is time Governments looked seriously at shifting the totality
of the 30,000 CDP participants across remote Australia into real Government
funded jobs focussed on working on country, housing maintenance, NDIS support
roles, construction, language and cultural advice within the education system, climate
change readiness, disaster readiness, and community health. I mentioned some of
these options when my views were sought for a recent article by Michelle
Grattan in The Conversation (link
here).
The rationale for such a radical reconceptualisation of the
CDP is an amalgam of a number of factors: the existence of market failure in
job creation in remote regions; the opportunity costs of not providing
opportunities for real employment, the reduction in social security payments
that would go some way to offsetting the costs of job creation; and the very
real benefits to individuals, families and communities that would flow not just
over the short term, but the long term.
I think of this as a macro-economic intervention across
remote Australia in response to what is an ongoing economic, social and
environmental disaster across remote Australia. It would be aimed at creating
the foundations for a viable remote Australian economy. It would require
vision, and sustained commitment from Government, as the present crisis (link
here) is rooted in deep-seated market failure. In effect, it would be akin
to an Australian version of Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Of course, the meta-issue worth considering is how is it
that Governments have done nothing following the PC’s 2020 report on RAA, and more
concerningly, have been incapable over at least four decades in ensuring that real
employment opportunities are available for remote residents.
My own view is that Indigenous interests just do not have a
sustained and powerful advocacy capability that governments find it impossible
to ignore. Moreover, the Indigenous advocacy capabilities that do exist are
both overwhelmed by competing mainstream interests whose claims on government effectively
limit the funds available for investment in indigenous priorities. This is the
fundamental reason that Government do not listen to Indigenous interests; they are
just too busy listening to other interests.
Finding the solution to that challenge is the real
constraint on closing the gap, even for just 30,000 unemployed citizens across remote
Australia, a cohort that totals less than 0.3 percent of AUstralias employment
base, and which Francis Markham describes as ‘the most economically
disadvantaged groups within Australia’.
12 February 2024
