A shaft of sunlight: the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee 2024 Report

                                                 Men judge by the complexion of the sky

The state and inclination of the day…

King Richard II, Act 3, Scene 2.

 

The 2024 Report of the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee (link here) chaired by Jenny Macklin was released on 26 April 2024, some two weeks before the 2024 Budget is due to be delivered. In my view, this is an excellent report, extremely well argued, quite technical at times (reflecting a bias towards identifying the evidence for its recommendations), and as one might expect, encompassing an admirable mix of ambition and pragmatism.

 

The report makes 22 broad recommendations across the span of the social security policy domain, and identifies five policy priorities for 2024:

1. Substantially increase JobSeeker and related working age payments and improve the indexation arrangements for those payments.
2. Increase the rate of Commonwealth Rent Assistance.
3. Create a new employment services system to underpin the goal of full employment and ensure a more positive focus on supporting Australians seeking work.
4. Implement a national early childhood development system that is available to every child, beginning with abolishing the Activity Test for the Child Care Subsidy to guarantee all children access to a minimum three days of high quality early childhood education and care (ECEC).
5. Renewing the culture and practice of the social security system to support economic inclusion and wellbeing.

 

In this post I propose to point to the areas of the report, and the specific recommendations, that have salience for First Nations policy outcomes.

 

Of course, while the reports overarching focus is on mainstream policy, it must be remembered that First Nations citizens will be impacted by mainstream policies as much as indigenous specific policies, and perhaps more so.

 

There are I think three elements of the Committee’s report with particular significance for Indigenous interests.

 

The first element relates to the Committee’s discussion of the Remote Area Allowance and recommendation 4. They base their analysis on work undertaken by Francis Markham from the ANU, and which I published a post about in February (link here). In that post, I extended the argument to argue for an overhaul of the Community Development Program, an issue that the Inclusion Committee has not addressed directly but see the second element below. The Committee recommendation states:

Recommendation 4. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) or an appropriate researcher or research centre in partnership with remote communities should be funded to undertake analysis of the additional costs of living in remote areas, but the case for an immediate increase in the Remote Area Allowance (RAA) seems particularly strong.

 

This recommendation, if adopted and implemented, would lay out in detail the case for much more targeted cost of living support for remote communities, including in relation to food security, energy costs, transport costs, and rent costs. At a strategic level, it begins the process of developing an evidence base for a more comprehensive policy approach to remote Australia, an issue I have been advocating for over 25 years.

 

The second element relates to employment services reform and is perhaps the most significant of the Economic Inclusion Committee’s recommendations for First Nations interests. The recommendation states:

Recommendation 6. The Government commit to a full-scale redesign of Australia’s employment services system by adopting the recommendations in the report from the Select Committee on Workforce Australia Employment Services. As a priority the Government should: a. Finalise an implementation plan and enact necessary legislative changes in 2024. b. Commit to a full redesign of the mutual obligations and compliance settings in the Workforce Australia system that focus on building capability and confidence to support people into work, consistent with the directions outlined in the Select Committee’s report. c. Build and refine a new practice model that genuinely meets the needs of people furthest from the labour market, including through: [details omitted; refer to page 10 of the report].

 

I published a post on the Select Committee’s report last December (link here) where I spelt out the specific elements that were of relevance to First Nations interests. I recommend readers look at that post. While the Economic Inclusion Committee has not framed its discussion and recommendation on these issues as mainstream, there are enormous, embedded implications for remote Indigenous interests, particularly in the Inclusion Committee’s comment about the needs of people furthest from the labour market. The elephant in the room here is the issue of direct employment creation by the Commonwealth. The Prime Minister in his comments upon the release of the most recent Commonwealth Closing the Gap Implementation Plan described the Community Development Program (CDP) as a failure, announced (link here) the creation of the Remote Jobs and Economic Development Program, and funding for the employment of 3000 CDP participants by organisations working in remote regions. Yet the result was to leave around 27,000 CDP participants in a ‘failed program’.

 

The third element relates to First Nations Housing, and in particular building a better evidence base for assessing both need and ongoing management of housing stock. Again, this is a hugely significant policy issue for Indigenous interests, with implications for disability policy, educational outcomes, the social determinants of health, child welfare outcomes, the prevalence of domestic violence, and not least, economic inclusion. Again, while not limited to remote Australia, it has long been clear that housing need for Indigenous interests is most acute in remote regions, not least because there is a limited private market in housing provision. The Committee’s recommendation (edited) is as follows:

Recommendation 10. The Government urgently commit substantial investment to address need in public housing and homelessness for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, including maintenance and upgrades, community infrastructure and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander housing sector.

To improve the economic efficiency of investments, the Government should fund a National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Data Register to improve data availability, quality and sharing… To better target existing investment, including from the Housing Australia Future Fund and Social Housing Accelerator Fund, the Government should: a. Negotiate improved performance reporting and data sharing within intergovernmental agreements and arrangements. b. Undertake rapid needs assessments of homelessness and overcrowding, maintenance, repair and community infrastructure requirements in remote hotspot areas. c. Commission a redesigned Community Housing Infrastructure Needs (CHINS)- like survey, which considers limitations of earlier iterations and subsequent advancements in data collection…

 

The import of this recommendation is that it explicitly focusses on establishing a much better and transparent evidence base for this most crucial area of policy. It will mean that Indigenous advocates such as the Coalition of Peaks and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Association will have the means to make a much more persuasive argument for needs based assistance into the future.

 

The Economic Inclusion Committee report appends an excellent detailed consultancy report addressing First Nations Housing issues. That report is too detailed for me to summarise here, but I commend it to readers as an excellent summary of the state of play in relation to First Nations housing policy in Australia today.

 

Conclusion

The Economic Inclusion Committee has made an excellent contribution towards sharpening the policy agenda for First Nations interests. Clearly there are a swathe of other issues of relevance to Indigenous interests that deserve attention by the Commonwealth Government. But there are limits to what governments, and their advisers, are prepared to take on and prioritise. From my perspective, I consider that the Inclusion Committee has done an excellent job in highlighting key areas that deserve prioritisation and continuing attention. Of course, the real issue will turn on what the Commonwealth Governments response will be, and whether they allocate the intellectual and financial resources to deliver on whatever commitments they do make.

 

In any case, the publication of this report provides a shaft of bright sunlight that bodes well for the days ahead.

 

26 April 2024