RIP Dick Kimber

 

He cannot but with measures fit the honours

Which we devise him.

Coriolanus Act two Scene two.

I did not know Dick well, but our paths crossed regularly while I was working in Alice Springs in the early 1980s. My most vibrant memory is of walking down a street and seeing Dick riding his bicycle towards me, waving enthusiastically as he shouted a greeting and passed by. His travels into the desert with Aboriginal people were legendary.

As I mentioned to a friend who emailed me, Dick lived life to the full; a life brimming over with enthusiasm and good humour.

His Wikipedia page (link here) gives a sense of his considerable achievements, but understates his extraordinary affability, sense of humour, and determination to understand and then explain to the wider Australian community the sophistication of desert life and culture.

A reader emailed me with the folllowing comment:

You have expressed it very well, Mike.  Dick Kimber was a great fellow - worthy of all the honours we could devise for him.

Like you, I did not know him well, but I would over the years typically meet him on the street and he would always invest generously in conversation.  He seemed to know the remote places out west of Alice Springs as well as anyone, and from all accounts to be highly regarded by the relevant countrymen.

I last saw him at a Strehlow Conference event in 2018.  His health was at that time already significantly impaired, but he was nonetheless making every effort to engage and to contribute - a gracious and knowledgeable man.

The ongoing attendance crisis in remote schools

 

… when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeit of our own behaviour—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars, as if we were villains by necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion…

King Lear, Act one, Scene two.

 

Recent media articles have pointed to a continuing decline in school attendance in remote primary schools and the secondary high schools in the Kimberley. Yet this has been an issue for decades.

A 28 June 2017 ABC news article (link here), headlined WA schools hardest hit by remote disadvantage, nationwide study finds reported on a Curtin University study which found, inter alia, that:

just 40 per cent of children in disadvantaged areas [ of WA] were attending the benchmark 15 hours of preschool per week, compared to almost 70 per cent nationally.

In July 2022, the ABC published an article (link here) with the headline WA government accused of failing at-risk Kimberley students over plans to address school truancy. The article stated inter alia that the Kimberley is in crisis, and that:

A 2019 coronial inquest had found poor school attendance to be a common factor in the deaths of the children, who died between 2012 and 2016. Two of the deaths were in Halls Creek, where truancy is chronic.

That article interviews a mother who complains about the lack of follow up by the Department in relation to an attendance plan for her son but fails to acknowledge or focus on the apparent incapacity of the parent to ensure the son attends school. While mainstream Australia largely sees parents as having an overarching responsibility for their adolescent children, it is apparent that parents from traditional backgrounds do not share this perspective. They consequently place the entire responsibility for ensuring children attend whitefella schools onto governments.

A March 2023 article (link here), headlined Kimberley student attendance drops again as 95 percent of public schools record significant falls, flags the ongoing crisis. In a box titled Key Points, the article states:

21 out of 22 public schools in the Kimberley have seen a decline in attendance over the past two years. Some schools' attendance rates have been below 50 per cent. Community leaders say the Department of Education needs to do more to engage students.

While the governments have significant responsibilities, not least because the range of likely causes go much wider than anything parents can do, it does seem clear that community leaders must have a role in finding solutions and shifting community views on the roles of parents.

A more recent article dated 6 September 2024 and headlined Fewer than half of students in WA’s Kimberely attend secondary school (link here). The key points box states:

In short: Newly-released statistics show primary and secondary school attendance rates dropped significantly in the Kimberley for 2023. Secondary school attendance was 41.6 per cent, while primary school attendance was 62 per cent.

What's next? The Kimberley region's education chief concedes school attendance is "an ongoing challenge".

It seems clear that there is has been a long-standing crisis in school attendance in remote communities in the Kimberely and WA, and there is strong evidence that these issues also have traction on other remote settings, including the NT and South Australia (link here).

Having identified the attendance problem as one particularly prevalent in remote settings, there is a need for caution insofar as there is increasing evidence of an anxiety epidemic amongst young people correlated strongly with the ubiquity of social media. A recent article in the UK Guardian (link here) addresses the issue of school attendance (without ascribing causes beyond peer bullying) and argues against any policy moves to exercise punitive measures on parents or children. The article cites the following official data for a recent week of schooling across the UK (link here):

The attendance rate (proportion of possible sessions attended) was 89.8% across all schools in the week commencing 15 July 2024. The absence rate was, therefore, 10.2% across all schools…

… Across the academic year 2023/24, 20.7% of pupil enrolments missed 10% or more of their possible sessions and are therefore identified as persistently absent.

This suggests that whatever the causes and contributors to low remote community school attendance rates, there may also be much deeper systemic issues in play with a global reach and impact. As an aside, the access to live data in the UK is virtually unknown in Australian contexts. We shouldn’t think that we always do better than the poms!

The consequences of limited education for individuals are dire and include severely constrained life opportunities especially in more modern and cross-cultural contexts, reduced lifetime earnings, and predispositions to alcohol and drug abuse, and perhaps domestic violence and criminal offending. While tragic for individuals, there are macro impacts on the wider Aboriginal communities where school attendance issues are entrenched, and broader impacts on communities affected by youth violence. These impacts are beginning to seep into the larger towns and cities adjacent to remote Australia and thus the consequences of poor school attendance are structurally and systemically both economically significant and politically challenging for the relevant state and territory governments.

These outcomes are not a surprise to me ( I have been warning of the consequences of policy neglect across remote Australia since at least 2007 when with Neil Westbury we published our book Beyond Humbug (link here). Those warnings were largely not heeded by governments, and the result is that we now confront a widespread and worsening catastrophe across remote Australia (link here). Notwithstanding some welcome additional funding for remote housing in the NT, the outstanding needs across remote Australia continue to outweigh the efforts of governments (link here). The appalling unemployment situation across remote Australia and the Commonwealth Government’s entirely inadequate response raises for individuals the unanswerable question: what is the point of an education if the future involves a working lifetime spent on social security arising from the structurally determined absence of employment opportunities -see the comments on CDP reform in this recent post (link here).  

The policy vacuum in relation to remote Australia has become endemic, deep-seated and is long-standing. The political implications are clear: the recent NT election rout for the NT ALP, notwithstanding its strong focus on law and order and advocacy of more punitive policies, are an obvious outcome. Nothing proposed by either party in the NT would have or will come close to addressing the deep systemic issues in play. In short, neither side of politics in the NT is offering a solution. And yet, the Commonwealth too has vacated the policy arena.

What is required?

I will keep this brief. In relation to remote attendance, there is a need for the Commonwealth to step up and acknowledge it for the national crisis it is. There will be a need first and foremost to acknowledge the crisis and devise a robust and proactive strategy that goes well beyond the local band-aids that have been the unthinking default approach to date (and yes I am referring to the current Federal Government’s response to the Alice Springs situation).

The Commonwealth should work with the states cooperatively on these issues, but devise incentive-based payments to the states and territories rather than indulging in the politically driven negotiation that currently predominate. Robust support to Indigenous community leaders aimed at encouraging and assisting them to raise expectations of parental involvement within their communities are essential. But so too are getting financial resource allocations for schools better targeted, and if necessary increased. Rewarding effective teachers much better and ensuring that the curriculum is focussed on the needs of the least capable cohort of students are both — to use a colloquial expression — ‘no brainers’. This suggests that the adoption of curriculum methodologies (such as Direct Learning) that do not allow any student to fall behind must be a priority.

The bottom line is that there must be a quantum leap in the levels of governmental concern and policy engagement. There may well be a case too for a return to the use of proactive truancy officers designed to ensure no child can avoid attending without a truancy officer engaging with the child and his/her parental guardians though I am not advocating a punitive policy approach.

Reforms to the education system alone in remote Australia will neither be enough nor adequate. The structural drivers of low attendance must also be addressed. While there may be some impact from the Commonwealth Government’s proposed legislation to constrain access to social media for adolescents under 16, my intuition tells me that whatever its impact in mainstream contexts, there will be a more muted impact in remote community contexts merely because of the existence of other drivers of low attendance.

Those drivers include the poor state of housing, the low levels of employment, and the all too ready access to cheap alcohol and drugs. It follows that there must be a sustained increase in investment in remote housing supply, and in adopting management approaches focussed on high quality housing asset management.

And perhaps most importantly, the government must move beyond its paltry commitment to reform of the CDP program, and substantially expand the number of jobs it is fully funding across remote Australia. The trick here will be to devise delivery models that focus on productive and culturally informed employment: caring for country; devising ways to employ community members as disability service providers in association with the NDIS and state provided foundational supports; aged care employment; employment in schools teaching languages, providing infrastructure support, and perhaps as teachers’ aides and ultimately local teachers. All these roles are real jobs often funded by government, but there has been a lack of vision to ensure that they are delivered through culturally informed organisational models.

Intuitively, an expansion of housing investment and infrastructure across remote communities and of socially valuable employment will have a constraining impact on anti-social behaviour such as drug and alcohol abuse, which in turn are prime drivers of the sorts of behaviours that lead to incarceration and community violence. Governments should also focus attention on regulating and controlling the supply of drugs and alcohol in remote communities and regional centres.

The experience of the last decade has been that neither the ALP nor the LNP at a federal level have the political will nor the policy vision to deliver on such an admittedly ambitious agenda. However, there is increasing talk of a minority government scenario post the forthcoming election, and it seems likely that whatever the outcome the Teals and Independents will have greater influence. They are well placed to drive such a policy agenda if only they have the vision and energy to take on what will inevitably be a challenging, but nationally significant reform agenda.

The absence of any policy discussion regarding such an agenda, and the absence of the agenda itself, reflect the lack of a national vision amongst our political elites. They are also the source of ongoing economic and social costs imposed directly on First Nations remote communities, but inexorably leaking across to mainstream fiscal contexts. These social and financial costs represent a substantial (and presently underappreciated) risk to our aspirations to be a cohesive, inclusive and socially mature nation.

 

10 September 2024

The deeper corruption at the heart of the governance issues on Groote Eylandt

 

He draweth out the thread of his verbosity

finer than the staple of his argument.

Love's Labour's Lost, Act 5 scene 1

 

The Minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy has released the review into the Anindilyakwa Land Council commissioned by the former Minister in February 2024 (link here).

The Minister’s media release (link here) refers to the review as ‘the Independent Review’, however this is complete spin as the review which was ostensibly prepared by accounting firm Bellchambers Barrett, was clearly undertaken with close oversight by the NIAA (who arguably are not independent given their previous funding of projects associated with the proposed Winchelsea  mine), and in conjunction in many respects with the ALC. The final report is signed and approved by three individuals: Cherelle Wurrawilya, Chair of the ALC, Sean Worth, Group Manager integrity NIAA, and Russell Livermore, Partner Bellchambers Barrett.

The report avoids providing a clear statement of the formal terms of reference provided to BellChambers by NIAA, and provides only general information on the dates from which the review began work. The time frame covered by the review is limited to the date of publication of the ANAO Audit and extends to July 2024. It is apparent from the context that the review is focussed entirely on the progress (or lack thereof) in implementing the ANAO recommendations which as I pointed out in previous posts was itself focussed on process and not outcomes, and limited to the operations of the ALC. The Review was not focussed (except in an indirect manner) on the ways in which the ALC has been utilising the various related entities in receipt of royalty equivalents (which are required to be CATSI corporations) to bypass the legislative constraints on ALC actions and/or to obscure financial flows directed to various commercial projects (such as the proposed Winchelsea mine and perhaps retail activities of various kinds on Groote).

What is missing from the Bellchambers Review is any context. There is no explanation of the role of the Minister and her responsibility for ensuring that statutory entities within her portfolio are complying with both their establishing legislation and various other Commonwealth governance requirements such as those set out in the PGPA legislation. There is no explanation of the role of land councils in the NT, of the way in which the royalty regime operates, of the significance of the ABA, nor of the regulatory frameworks in place in relation to distribution of royalty equivalents and other mining related payments. There is no mention of the substantial dissatisfaction amongst numerous residents on Groote with the ALC’s operations as evidenced by the petition signed by some 200 people and tabled in Parliament earlier this year. There is no mention of the fact that a Commonwealth entity (and I am reliably informed a number of other individuals) have lodged complaints with the National Anti Corruption Commission. I was reminded of the episode of Fawlty Towers ‘Don’t mention the war’ (link here).

Instead, what we have is a technical exercise in bureaucratic pedantry focussed on the extent to which various processes recommended by the ANAO have been implemented.

I am not proposing to undertake a detailed critique of the analysis by Bellchambers related to the ALC’s compliance with process requirements. They conclude that the ALC response to the ANAO recommendations relating to various governance process requirements remains deficient. Focussing on process is useful, but it no substitute for focussing on outcomes. The allegations of outcome deficiencies (potentially involving tens of millions of dollars) demand a regulatory response. It is not good enough to say that this is an issue for the ALC nor to say that the NACC is investigating.

I will make some short comments on the recommendations of the Bellchambers Review set out in section three under the anodyne heading Identified Enhancements to Governance.

Under theme one dealing with conflicts of interest, the Bellchambers Review recommends inter alia:

1. The ALC Board and Management should review all roles for Board members and ALC Management and assess whether: a. It is possible to effectively manage identified conflicts of interest for: i. the dual remuneration CEO positions for ALC and Winchelsea Mining Pty Ltd. ii. related party entities / ORICs that are beneficiaries of funding decisions made by the ALC Board. b. Management strategies for declared conflicts by ALC Board members or Management, including conflicts relating to immediate family members, are appropriate and operating effectively.

My comment: this is extraordinary. Bellchambers and the NIAA appear to believe that an entity whose key members are the subject of multiple allegations involving financial impropriety and are the subject of a current NACC investigation should be trusted to decide how to manage the conflicts of interest identified by the ANAO and more than a year later are still in place. Do Bellchambers and the NIAA believe that the systemic networks of conflicts were put in place by accident or oversight? Get real! Furthermore, the recommendation explicitly accepts that the ALC CEO, who as a statutory office holder is paid a salary determined by the Commonwealth Remuneration Tribunal (based on the fact that the CEO is employed full time), should also be the recipient of a private sector salary, and by implication will not be providing full time services in his role as the CEO.

The ALC response includes, after some anodyne pabulum:

The Board has commenced this review for the ALC CEO position. On 22 August 2024 the Board resolved to give in principle support to the draft NIAA report finding that the ALC CEO no longer also be the CEO of Winchelsea Mining. Specifically, in an ordered way, the ALC Board resolved to give in principle support to the current ALC CEO’s proposal that he cease in the ALC CEO role and commence as a consultant for Winchelsea Mining and Groote Holding Aboriginal Corporation matters, which consultancy is anticipated to include other pressing matters particularly the GEMCO mine closure and Transition Steering Committee. A final decision about the current CEO’s proposal will be made by the incoming ALC Board (ie after current elections) after receiving the NIAA’s final Independent review report.

My comment:

The CEO is proposing to resign as CEO of Winchelsea Mining but remain as a consultant and presumably a Director. Given the small size of Winchelsea, its tight Directorship structure, and its low staff numbers, it beggars belief that Mr Hewitt would exercise any less influence as a consultant than as CEO. Furtehrmore, there are real questions as to why the CEO is on the Board and not any members fo the corporation who actually own the stake in Winchelsea (see below). Moreover it also beggars belief that the Minister and the NIAA are prepared to openly countenance what is in effect double dipping by a statutory office holder employed in a statutory corporation.

ERRATUM: It has come to my attention that I have probably misinterpreted the highlighted text above and that the proposal from the ALC is that the ALC CEO will resign as CEO of the ALC (and not as I had read it as an ALC representative Director on the Winchelsea Board). 

While this would be a signfiicant imporvement on the status quo, to the extent that the current CEO excercises substantial informal influence, it may make no difference whatsoever. It is unclear why Mr Hewitt would need to take up the role of consultant on Winchelsea given that he is already a Director. Presumably the issue of remuneration (potentially funded by the ALC or AAAC (the corporation which owns the Indigenous equity in Winchelsea) provides part of the reason. END ERRATUM

Under theme two, the Belchambers Review recommends:

The ALC should collate information for all remuneration, benefits and related party transactions for ALC Board members, ALC Management, immediate family members and related party entities / ORICs to support enhanced transparency and information for Board members. The remuneration, benefits and related party transactions should be subject to periodic review and update and used to ensure that all remuneration, benefits and relathed party transactions are appropriately authorised and monitored. 

My comment: As the ALC response points out, it is unclear that the ALC has the formal powers to collect this information. Again this is an entirely passive and anodyne. More importantly, where is the critical engagement by the NIAA Integrity Group?

Under theme three, the Bellchambers Review recommends:

3. The ALC should establish an Independent Board Advisor Role with direct responsibilities to the Board including: a. Understanding Board matters, papers and forward workplan agenda b. Governance matters, including monitoring of conflict of interests and associated management strategies c. Governance training d. Supporting attendance / participation by the full Board….

My comment: apart from the logistical and communication challenges, this is precisely the role of the CEO of the ALC. It implicitly accepts that the current CEO has been incapable and unwilling to provide the level of independent advice required by the Board. There is a simple and clear solution to that problem which for some reason entirely evades the Minister and her NIAA advisers.

Under theme four, the Belchambers Review recommends a closure process for the ANAO recommendations.

My comment: this is core business for the ALC Audit Committee which is chaired by the partner in an accounting firm whose services in relation to the Audit Committee the ANAO identified as being the most expensive by far of the four land councils, and which is itself heavily conflicted by virtue of the provision of other services to corporations which are controlled indirectly by the ALC. The ALC response foreshadowed requests for additional funding to cover off a function which is already overfunded and which is clearly compromised and ineffective. None of this appears to be on the radar of the NIAA Integrity Unit!

The Real Story

Minister McCarthy’s media statement identifies only two substantive actions arising from the review:

I have written to the ALC Board to ensure the Board and voters are aware of the review’s findings ahead of the ALC Board elections next week.

I have taken the unusual decision to withhold approval for the ALC’s 2024/25 budget, instead approving an operational budget until 1 December 2024. The full budget will only be considered when ALC has demonstrated to the NIAA that it is sufficiently prioritising and implementing the recommendations of the review and the ANAO audit.

These are worthy steps, create an impression of diligent oversight, and are completely irrelevant to addressing the fundamental governance issues confronting the ALC and impacting the future  financial security of Groote’s 1200 residents (and their descendants).

In my view, the Bellchambers Review was from the start designed as a diversion to avoid addressing the deeper and systemic governance challenges that have emerged on Groote since the current CEO was engaged by the ALC. The previous posts related to Groote on this blog have primarily dealt with the widespread allegations of substantive governance and accountability failure and the concomitant adverse policy implications. I wont link to those posts here. They deal with inter alia the significant diversion of mining related financial payments towards the development of a proposed mine on Winchelsea Island; the financial arrangements related to the ownership of Winchelsea Mining Corporation; discrepancies between the investments being allocated towards Winchelsea and the value of the identified manganese deposits on Winchelsea; the governance and potential financial implications of the ALC’s apparent control of the financial affairs of key corporations in receipt of royalty equivalents; the conflict of interest implications involving the CEO, his spouse, the chair of the ALC Audit committee; and the extraordinary financial benefits made available to former ALC Board members at the discretion of the Board (which raises questions regarding potential for co-option and undue influence). And much else besides. Many of these issues have been raised either directly or indirectly in Senate Estimates Hearings, in a number of substantial investigative reports in the SMH and the Saturday Paper, and have been the subject of correspondence to Ministers from concerned parties.

While the formal response from the ALC has been to reject some (but not all) of the allegations or argue that they are misdirected, the response from Ministers has been to ignore these issues, except insofar as a review of ALC processes, not substantive allegations was commissioned. Until this week, the Bellchambers Review (whose terms of reference have still not been released) in effect served as the foil to avoid having to respond to the substantive issues.

So in addition to the complex and myriad issues related to the ALC and its governance, it seems to me that there is a fundamental questions to be asked and answered: why has the Government not been prepared to address the substantive allegations and issues related to the ALC and its governance?

My initial thought was that this was a case of politics overwhelming good policy. Yet upon reflection, I do not think the facts fit such an explanation.

A better explanation is that the ALC, or elements within it, have in effect captured the Commonwealth and probably the NT Government in relation to issues on Groote Eylandt. How else to explain the ALC’s extraordinary hold over successive Ministers, the extraordinary outcomes that have become normalised (such as the ALC Chair and CEO being on both sides of a mining agreement that requires Ministerial approval; or of the salary double dipping; or of the fact that the Aboriginal Corporation which owns 70 percent of Winchelsea has no Directors on the Winchelsea Board, but the ALC Chair, CEO and CEO’s spouse are represented).

It is unclear to me whether the mechanism of state capture involving extraordinary influence over the political elites in the NT and to a lesser extent Canberra is  driven by the corrupt co-option of those political elites, or gross administrative and political incompetence. I should note that the complicity and co-option extends to the Opposition parties in Darwin and in Canberra. In one of my earliest posts analysing the Estimates questioning following the ANAO report, I commented upon the current Federal Opposition’s apparent disinterest in digging into what was occurring on Groote. In Canberra, the former coalition ministers apparent inability to rein in the ALC was facilitated by the then Labor Opposition’s disinterest in pursuing issues of accountability in the Indigenous policy domain. Whether it is corruption or gross incompetence, the accepted standards of political and administrative accountability would normally demand that the responsible Ministers and perhaps those bureaucratic advisers who knowingly ignore their legal obligations should have their employment terminated.  

Of course, I don’t hold out much hope that the current Prime Minister will be prepared to take action. I am surprised that these issues are not on the radar of the Secretary of Prime Minister and Cabinet. I am certain of two things however: first, this is not going to end well; and second, the longer governments prevaricate, the worse the fallout will be. Unfortunately, as is the way with these things, the most severe impacts will likely fall on the people of Groote Eylandt.

Finally I should note that the ABC provides an informative overview in an article dated 29 August which places the review in a much broader context. Unfortunately it has the rather misleading headline Commonwealth freezes funding to Anindilyakwa Land Council as chief executive Mark Hewitt flags resignation (link here). It is misleading insofar as the minister has not frozen the ALC’s funding (and probably never will) but has merely deferred providing approval for ongoing expenditure beyond 1 December, and the CEO has not resigned from the ALC (as the headline suggests), but is proposing to resign as CEO of Winchelsea Mining but remain as a consultant and presumably a Director (as discussed above). ERRATUM: this last statement is probably incorrect; see the erratum above.