The 2026 Report of the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee: implications for Indigenous disadvantage and exclusion

 

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."

Measure for Measure, Act one, Scene four

 

The Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee: 2026 report to Government has been published on the DSS website (link here). The separate Appendix is of particular salience in relation to the consideration of reform priorities and options in the Indigenous policy domain as it includes a letter to the Treasurer and Minister for Finance (link here) signed by Jenny Macklin (Chair of the Advisory Committee) and Pat Turner (Lead Convenor of the Coalition of Peaks) summarising the outcomes of a December 2025 roundtable convened by the Advisory Committee on Indigenous economic inclusion.

In 2024, I published a post on this Blog in relation to that year’s Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee Report (link here). There is a direct line of sight from the recommendations in that report to this most recent one. The Committee (and its Chair) is nothing if not persistent!

Writing recently in The Conversation, Advisory Committee member Peter Whiteford, and economists Jenny Gordon and Roger Wilkins, provide a highly useful and accessible summary of the Advisory Committee Report (link here). I recommend interested readers of the report begin with this overview which provides a useful contextual background to the impressively comprehensive span of the Report. Here is a short extract from their article:

Disadvantage is a concept that goes beyond income poverty to encompass people’s outcomes, including deprivation and social exclusion….

… By far the highest rates of deep social exclusion in 2022 were experienced by people who are unemployed (38.8%), public housing tenants (36.5%), people receiving income support (20.5%), people with long-term health conditions or a disability (16.3%), people with low educational attainment (16.3%), lone parents (15.7%), and Indigenous Australians (15.5%).

For public housing tenants, people who are unemployed, people receiving income support and those with low educational attainment, rates of deep disadvantage have increased significantly.

For Indigenous Australians, rates of deep disadvantage nearly doubled between 2010 and 2014, but then fell back, although still higher than in 2010.

Turning to the issue of the salience and significance of exclusion (or low levels of economic inclusion) for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander citizens, the Report is an extraordinary resource, filled with insightful, analytically valuable and policy relevant data. However, (and this is not a criticism) the Report mirrors the reality of mainstream politics and policy insofar as the bulk of its analyses and discussion relates to the broad span of mainstream policy issues relevant to poverty, deep disadvantage and economic exclusion. There is a focus on programs and policies that deliver benefits to individuals either universally or based on needs-based criteria of one sort or another. This leads to an implicit bias against policies and programs for corporate interests (eg the diesel tax rebate) and/or focussed on capital investments such as infrastructure of defence investments. This is a function of the Committee’s terms of reference but does mean that there is a potential blind spot in terms of the incidence or impacts of these latter policies on citizens. For example, defence or infrastructure expenditures create employment ― and opportunity costs ― which have an impact (for better or worse) on equity and inclusion. While the Report’s analysis only occasionally mentions or utilises Indigenous specific data points, the focus of the analysis is invariably on issues where Indigenous citizens are over-represented amongst those most disadvantaged.

An important, but unstated element of the Report’s analysis arises from the reality that the most significant drivers of deep disadvantage for Indigenous citizens are primarily reflected within the statistics cited in the Report on mainstream unemployment, mainstream health, mainstream education, and mainstream housing. This would also be the case with the extent of economic exclusion of disabled citizens or any other group of citizens (though these are not generally mentioned as a separate category unlike the treatment of the category ‘Indigenous Australians’). My point is that Indigeneity per se is not a driver of disadvantage or poverty, but rather, that the drivers of poverty and disadvantage affect Indigenous people disproportionality. The Report (and the extract above from The Conversation) is potentially confusing on this issue. This is not merely an academic argument; it has real world consequences. The solutions to addressing Indigenous disadvantage (in the main) lie in applying needs based (or means tested) reforms to mainstream drivers of disadvantage (while of course not being blind to the incentives we might be creating in doing so).

The point I am making was recognised by the Indigenous negotiators of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap when they insisted on the inclusion of the Priority Reforms in the Agreement, and in particular Priority Reform One directed to reforming mainstream institutions to make then more inclusive.

The major exception to this point is where mainstream institutions (policies / programs) have, for one reason or another, been supplemented or replaced by Indigenous specific programs. These are a comparatively small proportion of Commonwealth outlays and are generally (but not always) utilised in remote regions where mainstream institutions have not been developed, or where the rights of Indigenous peoples are sui generis such as cultural heritage protection and native title. The classic example combining both remoteness and cultural rights relates to communal and inalienable land tenure which make individualised ownership difficult (but not impossible) in many remote communities.

The import of this discussion is that Indigenous interests and their peak bodies should be focussed not just on those elements of the report which identify an Indigenous aspect, but they have a strong imperative to support and advocate for the entirety of the Advisory Committee Report’s reform recommendations. Improving the effectiveness and needs basis of mainstream policies and programs will inevitably benefit disadvantaged Indigenous citizens, because Indigenous citizens are over-represented amongst the poorest and most in need clients and beneficiaries of mainstream policies and programs.

Bearing in mind the lengthy caveat above, I now turn to several issues identified in the Report as being of specific interest to Indigenous interests.

The Remote Area Allowance

The first issue worth mentioning is the discussion on pages 11-12 and 37-39 of the Remote Area Allowance. The Committee notes that most RAA recipients are Indigenous Australians.

The Committee acknowledged the Government has moved to subsidise food in remote stores where grocery prices are some 40 % higher than in urban and regional Australia, but points to a continuing gap in the cost of living in remote regions. Recommendation 4 states:

Substantially lift the Remote Area Allowance: • Substantially lift the Remote Area Allowance by indexing it in line with Consumer Price Index growth since its introduction in 1984, lifting the single rate to $54.20 per fortnight. • Fund the Australian Bureau of Statistics to develop a remote area index that will guide ongoing indexation of the Remote Area Allowance, in partnership with remote communities and informed by remote area costs data. Once developed, the payment should be benchmarked at a rate that reflects remote area costs and regular ongoing indexation to this new index applied. • Review and adjust the payment’s geographic boundaries to ensure it is available to people living in remote and very remote areas.

Second, the Committee makes a sustained and detailed argument in favour of Employment Services Reform (pages 16-19 and 39-40). It states, inter alia,

Effective employment services can be a powerful policy lever for creating a more inclusive society. But Australia’s employment services system has become harmful and punitive. It has been badly underperforming for some time and major reform is needed. Delayed for far too long, employment services reform must now become a national priority. The system needs to be made fit for the future and must be regarded as a necessary component of national economic reform.

While this discussion is focussed on mainstream Employment Services, the NIAA remote employment programs, the Remote Jobs and Economic Development (RJED) program and the Remote Australia Employment Service (RAES) which have their own issues not considered by the Committee (link here) are effectively a subsidiary element of the mainstream programs. They too require reform.

Third the potential for reform of the Indigenous Housing sector

On page 52, the Report reproduces an extract from a letter arising from a roundtable with the Coalition of Peaks and other Indigenous (published in full in Appendix 3). This argues, inter alia, for the ring fencing of a dedicated allocation from within all mainstream social housing allocations by the Commonwealth for Indigenous housing. The Committee limits its recommendation in the housing area to arguing for increases in mainstream Commonwealth Rental Assistance (CRA). For my part, I have previously argued against ring fencing these programs and instead relying on needs-based allocations (link here).

Fourth: the analysis of nationwide Disadvantage

Chapter Six of the Report comprises a detailed and sophisticated analysis of the composition of disadvantage across the nation. The discussion at the beginning of this post is relevant here. The Report considers a range of analytic measures to measure disadvantage including income poverty, deprivation, social exclusion, but makes no specific recommendations. One salient point is that the Report notes (page 151) that the data in the HILDA survey utilised to compile the Report’s analysis of disadvantage is not reliable for remote and very remote regions, and this may lead to an undercount of the level of disadvantage among Indigenous Australians.

Fifth: the summary of the Roundtable with Indigenous interests

Appendix 3 to the Report comprises a letter sent to Ministers from the Chair, Jenny Macklin and the (then) Convenor of the Coalition of Peaks Pat Turner (link here). The summary of the outcomes of that Roundtable is as follows:

The Roundtable emphasised that economic inclusion for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is underpinned by four key interrelated enablers:

• Adequate and accessible social services and income support, so people can meet immediate material needs, address poverty, and safely access the right income support payments when they need.

• Stable, secure, appropriate and affordable housing, as a foundational requirement for participation in employment, education and community life.

• Affordable, accessible, high-quality and culturally safe early childhood education and care, to support children’s development and enable parents and carers to participate in work and study.

• Education, training and employment opportunities that empower people, support flexible employment participation and offer meaningful career pathways, including within the community-controlled sector.

I strongly agree that these priorities are crucial to addressing Indigenous economic inclusion. However, as is often the case, the devil is in the detail. Will the quantum of support underpinning these priorities be adequate, and will implementation be effective and target those most in need. These are matters beyond the scope of this post to address.

Discussion

At 178 pages plus appendices, this report covers an extraordinary amount of the policy landscape, in varying levels of detail. In Chapter Seven, the Report provides a high-level assessment of Government responses to the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee’s recommendations since its establishment in 2022. This makes clear that this Report is in fact merely one element of a much larger policy project. The headings of the cumulative recommendations made by the Committee which clearly reflect in very large measure the longstanding concerns and priorities of the Chair Jenny Macklin, make clear the extraordinary ambition of the policy project. I list them below:

7.1 Adequacy of working age payments and rent assistance

7.2 Full employment, and reducing barriers to employment and participation

7.3 Supporting children and families

7.4 Addressing disadvantage in the places where it is concentrated

7.5 The culture, purpose and intent of the social security system

7.6 Legislated measures on economic inclusion and poverty reduction

A key characteristic of this ambitious project is that it is, by virtue of its complexity, its combination of technical economic, demographic and statistical components, and its financial and economic significance for the nation’s public expenditures (an element that is barely mentioned in the Report) is in very large measure an insider’s agenda. I can think of very few comparable policy analysts in Australia who combine the technical mastery of their subject matter with the political skill and influence that Jenny Macklin brings to this project.

A careful and (dare I say) critical reading the responses by agencies to the six reform topics listed in Chapter Seven makes clear that the inertia and incrementalism of government is quite extraordinary. The Committee, clearly influenced by Macklin, is very selective in its recommendations, clearly cognisant that this Government (and indeed any recent Australian Government) is risk averse to major reforms that have virtually irreversible budgetary implications. The recent experience with the NDIS merely serves to reinforce the mindset that the key bureaucratic agencies will bring to considering such an ambitious agenda. It is to Macklin’s credit that she doesn’t give up, and as the Report notes at the beginning of Chapter Seven (page 158):

In its first three reports the Committee made a total of 40 recommendations, of which: • 6 have been implemented in full. • 23 are still live and have been implemented in part. • 11 have not yet been advanced.

Three substantial, still live recommendations from reports 1 to 3 are advanced and updated in this report:

 • In all three reports, the Committee has called for the Government to commit to a timeframe for full increases in JobSeeker and related payments. (R3 2023, R2 2024, R2 2025) …

• In all three reports, the Committee recommends the Government commit to a full-scale redesign of Australia’s employment services system to end harm caused by the compliance system. (R4 2023, R6 2024, R7 2025) …

• In reports 1 and 2 (2023, 2024) the Committee called for reform of the way FTB A interacts with the Child Support Scheme. (R33 2023, R15 2024) Recommendation 8 of this report calls for a comprehensive modernisation of the objectives of the Family Payments and Child Support Scheme to guide further reform – these include reducing child poverty and improving economic security for women.

The point I would make related to Indigenous disadvantage and why Closing the substantive Gap is so difficult is that each of the three dot points above where the Committee has made repeated recommendations, the implications for Indigenous Australians are substantial, while simultaneously, the absolute numbers of Indigenous citizens who would benefit are comparatively low. Indeed, Indigenous Australians would arguably be amongst the biggest winners were these reforms to be implemented because they are over-represented amongst those most adversely affected.

In turn, this raises the much larger question: are the current institutional arrangements, and particularly the targets and priorities set down in the National Agreement on Closing the Gap fit for purpose in laying out a pathway to close the substantive gap (as opposed to the rhetorical gap that governments invariably discuss). My intuition tells me that the answer is no, and that a more streamlined and focussed framework built around the high-level priorities identified in the letter to Ministers in Appendix 3 to the Report would be a much better way forward. This is a separate point to the argument I have made elsewhere (link here) that the current framework is not working. But taken together the argument for reform of the Closing the Gap framework is intellectually irrefutable.

Clearly the Committee sees its role as primarily seeking to influence the policy debate on the issues that matter from ‘inside the room’. It doesn’t criticise but merely keeps knocking on the door. When the stars align, the arguments in favour of reform will have been laid out. Ultimately though, it is up to the electorate to elect representatives who are prepared to pick up the baton and run with it.

For both broader mainstream interests advocating for greater equity and inclusion in Australian society, and for Indigenous interests such as the Coalition of Peaks, the Advisory Committee’s cumulative reports offer, albeit in the arcane code of economics and bureaucratic policymaking, both a coherent and persuasive argument for pursuing reform, and (between the lines) a roadmap for how to approach government seeking to influence policy. There is a place for public advocacy, even criticism, but it will be most effective if it is focussed on a limited number of consequential priorities framed around sustained and coherent evidence-based articulation of the agenda they might seek to put forward. Even so, that will often not be enough to overcome the innate inertia that suffuses policymaking in Australia, and success will ultimately depend upon an ‘alignment of the stars’. The alignment of those stars will invariably be a function of politics as well as wider contextual pressures and opportunities.

While this may seem too pessimistic, it strikes me that to one extent or another, it was ever thus. Every major institution in existence today, every major reform, every legal framework, is the result of a good idea being developed, framed and taken forward in a way that persuaded a government to act notwithstanding the political headwinds of those who were opposed. For every institution in existence, the stars in fact aligned.

To be blunt, rhetoric serves some purposes, but it is never adequate on its own to drive reform. There is always a need for hardheaded and detailed policy analysis at all stages of the reform process. I would venture to say that Australia is suffering from a long-term decline in such analysis, and the Indigenous policy domain is not immune from this disease. For this reason, the work of the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee is both inspirational and a roadmap. It deserves to be studied closely by anyone interested in seeing the emergence of a better and more inclusive society.

 

 

Declaration of interest: I was employed as a ministerial adviser in the Office of Jenny Macklin from 2008 to 2012.

 

29 April 2026

Lest We Remember

How many thousand of my poorest subjects

Are at this hour asleep! O sleep, O gentle sleep,

Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee…

Henry IV Part 2, Act three, Scene one

 

I am glad that ANZAC Day comes around only once a year. I find it emotionally and ethically challenging.

It is important that we remember those who fought in past wars, those who died and were injured, and their families. Lives cut short or permanently compromised, families rendered asunder. These are both personal and national tragedies. Not only have wars harmed individual Australians, but the Australian nation has been harmed socially, economically and politically by the wars we have engaged in.

These tragedies are exacerbated by the reality that too often, Australians have fought in senseless wars, in the service of foreign states and interests, defending concepts such as freedom and democracy that have been selectively and unequally implemented and delivered. As a nation, we claim these values as fundamental to who we are, but too often we selectively frame them so that we are blind to their deficiencies and fail to find the will power to make the changes necessary to ensure they are fit for purpose. Increasingly we live in a world where those who claim the moral high ground, and proclaim it from the metaphorical hilltops, who assert they support freedom for all, and the precepts of democracy, are operating with much baser motivations.

For these reasons, I distrust narratives that glorify war and violence, that value hyper nationalism over the shared humanity of all peoples, and that lay the groundwork for political movements that leverage xenophobia and hate based on race, ethnicity, religion, artificial notions of purity and superior intelligence and so on.

There is a place for nationalistic pride and self-confidence, but (if we believe the world should be guided by principles built upon ethical principles and justice) not to the exclusion of respect for universal human rights, and the overarching value of respecting and even celebrating the existence of different societies, languages, cultures and peoples.

There is thus a fine line between on one hand remembering the painful sacrifices and losses involved in past wars and extolling the bravery and prowess of Australian servicemen and servicewomen, and on the other hand, celebrating and advocating the use and application of armed force. Invariably, lauding the use of force requires the concomitant necessity to ignore or downplay the consequences, direct and indirect, of violence on other humans, invariably in the service of some political objective decided by decisionmakers and interest groups that are far removed either by virtue of their wealth or status from the consequences of these policies.

Since the Boer War, many or even most Australians have seen serving in the armed services in a crisis or emergency as an obligation of citizenship. The rhetoric and ideology of nationalism has a strong hold on Australia, as it does on most nations.

Historically (and somewhat surprisingly) many Indigenous Australians have volunteered to serve in our military notwithstanding the history violent dispossession of First Peoples and the more insidious and longstanding adoption of exclusionary policies by the states and the Commonwealth.

John Maynard has an essay in the Conversation titled Aboriginal Anzacs fought for Australia, but returned home to racism. It fuelled their activism  (link here). It is worth reading.

I have previously published two ANZAC day posts on this Blog. The first in April 2016 titled Ben Murray Gallipoli Veteran (link here) remembered an imposing man of Diyari and Afghan descent, who when I met him in the early 1970s was living alone in a ramshackle ruin in the ghost town of Farina in northern South Australia. Ben Murray was captured by the Turks in Palestine and almost bayoneted. The account of his survival is recounted in the various short articles that are mentioned and linked to in my 2016 post. (Updated link here).

Here is a short extract from one of those sources (the original links no longer work):

With the passing of the years Ben has apparently telescoped his memories of the First World War and it is difficult to reconstruct the sequence of events. It seems likely that Ben went on after Gallipoli to fight in Palestine, and that in one of those battles, possibly during 1916, he was captured by the Turks. Ben recalls his unit making an advance on a town and that the Turks counter-attacked, killing Australians and narrowly missing Ben.

 I got a bullet too, the coat here - just missed my guts. And I dropped, I dropped and I lay there then, with the other dead boys. Mates of mine. They never missed them.

The Turkish soldiers were close by now, near enough apparently to finish Ben off if he had made the wrong move. His response was quick, unusual and may have saved his life. For Ben there was little to separate Turks from the Afghans he had known in Australia and so he called out the few words he had learnt from his Afghan cameleer acquaintances - the Muslim prayer uttered by them before they slaughtered a beast - as well as some Afghan names:

I sang out: 'Moosha malad! Akbar! Dadleh! Bejah! [Ben's father's name]’. I said: 'Bejah! Dadleh!' That's what I said. And they take me then. They kept me. Better than getting a bullet! If I didn't sing out...they would have killed me alright! They put a bullet through me - just missed coat [i.e. passed through coat]. But the second bullet didn't come, never come

Ben died in 1994 at the age of 101.

The second post published in April 2023 dealt with (by implication) the insidious pervasiveness of violence and its consequences once it becomes the primary means of engaging with the external world. The post was titled Anzac Day 2023 (link here).

In that post, I referenced recent writing by Kate Auty revisiting the Forrest River massacres in 1926, one hundred years ago this year, and the subsequent Royal Commission.

I wrote in that post

While the myriad issues thrown up by the Royal Commission that followed will never be determined with any certainty, what is clear is that the police party, comprising former soldiers with experience of war took with them over 500 rounds of ammunition. This patrol was just one of numerous similar police patrols that had taken place in the East Kimberley since the arrival of the pastoral industry in the 1880s. Take a moment to imagine the psychological impact on the traditional owners of the country involved. It was a dynamic that had been widely replicated across the continent since the early 1800s.

 Without entering into the debate regarding whether Aboriginal people resisted the invasion of their countries, who can know or account for the distress, pain and suffering visited upon the Aboriginal men, women and children who were innocent bystanders to a process with implications and consequences truly beyond their comprehension, their world turned upside down.

Like Ben Murray in relation to his deceased comrades, we should certainly remember all those who have lost their lives in violent altercations undertaken by nation states, whether in formal wars, or informal conflicts, whether in foreign lands or within Australia.

It seems to me however that remembering must be more than wreath laying on one day of the year (important as that is). Proper remembering requires us to think long and hard about what underlies these conflicts and take action to identify policies and tangible reforms that diminish the likelihood of these tragedies occurring in the future. Unfortunately, as a nation we do not invest enough effort in contemplating what such policies and reforms might look at.

We have our democracy and our freedom, but we appear institutionally incapable of exercising these rights and opportunities in ways which will strengthen our independent capacity to choose our own future. For all the discussion of Australian values, we Australians are remarkably insouciant about protecting our sovereignty, and more importantly, about protecting our ability to protect our sovereignty in a rapidly changing world. In this respect, we settler Australians may have something to learn from this continent’s First Peoples, whose focus on celebrating and respecting the links between people and country is central to their worldview.

The institutionalisation of Anzac Day, and the ubiquity of the phrase ‘Lest we Forget’ are important and valuable, but not if they signify ‘Lest we Remember’.

 

25 April 2026

How governments operate in devising and implementing Indigenous policy

 

… and we’ll talk with them too —

Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out —

And take upon ’s the mystery of things,

As if we were God’s spies.

King Lear, Act five, Scene three

 

Checked like a bondman, all his faults observed,

Set in a notebook, learned and conned by rote …

Julius Caesar, Act four, Scene three.

 

An article of mine titled Selective Engagement: Picking Winners in Indigenous Policy (link here) was published last week in Arena Quarterly No. 25, April 2026.

I asked my AI research assistant Claude to prepare both a short summary and a short critique of my argument in that article.

Set out below is Claude’s response. I do however recommend the full article to interested readers! Readers can assess for themselves whether Claude too has been co-opted or conflicted by the lure of my ongoing subscription!

 

Claude’s Summary

Michael Dillon's article argues that Australian governments — Coalition and Labor alike — have spent more than a decade managing Indigenous policy through a strategy of "selective engagement": rewarding politically compliant Indigenous organisations and leaders while marginalising critics, thereby preventing the emergence of a coherent, independent Indigenous policy agenda.

The argument traces this trajectory from the Abbott government's 2014 Indigenous Advancement Strategy, which expanded ministerial discretion over grants while reducing transparency, through the Morrison government's Closing the Gap negotiations and Voice process, to the Albanese government's post-referendum pivot to Indigenous economic empowerment. Dillon contends that each iteration has maintained the rhetorical appearance of partnership while the Commonwealth has steadily retreated from its post-1967 responsibility for national policy leadership, sheltering behind the states and territories.

The article situates competing Indigenous advocacy voices — the Coalition of Peaks, Voice proponents, and economic empowerment advocates — as "political courtiers" trapped between financial dependence on government and the imperative to criticise it. This structural bind, Dillon argues, explains both the fragmentation of Indigenous advocacy and the recurring abolition of representative bodies that become too uncomfortable.

His proposed remedy is heterodox: rather than pursuing Indigenous-specific policy frameworks vulnerable to government co-option, Indigenous interests should build independent advocacy capacity and align with mainstream economic security coalitions — unions, NGOs, the environmental movement — to advance needs-based policies that address Indigenous disadvantage through broader political alliances.

 

Claude’s Critique

Dillon's article is a serious and substantively informed contribution to the debate about Indigenous policy failure in Australia. Drawing on decades of direct engagement with the policy landscape, it offers an analytically coherent account of how selective engagement operates as a systemic governance strategy rather than merely a series of ad hoc political decisions. The core argument — that governments actively manage Indigenous advocacy to prevent the consolidation of an independent, critical policy voice — is well grounded and consistent with observable patterns across the period examined.

Several of the article's analytical moves are particularly strong. The framing of Indigenous advocacy organisations as structural "courtiers" — financially dependent on the very government they must criticise — elegantly captures a genuine dilemma that afflicts not only Indigenous peak bodies but civil society advocacy more broadly. Similarly, the historical survey of abolished representative bodies (NACC, NAC, ATSIC, National Congress) provides persuasive empirical grounding for the claim that suppression of inconvenient voices is a recurring Commonwealth reflex rather than an isolated political accident.

The article is also admirably even-handed in its attribution of responsibility, resisting the temptation to confine criticism to the Coalition. Dillon's argument that the Albanese government has essentially perpetuated selective engagement — a point reinforced by Megan Davis's 2025 criticism quoted in the text — gives the analysis intellectual credibility and avoids the partisan exemptions that weaken much policy commentary in this space.

That said, the article carries several argumentative weaknesses that deserve examination. The central prescriptive claim — that Indigenous interests should pivot toward mainstream economic security coalitions and needs-based policy framing — is asserted with considerable confidence but relatively thin supporting argument. Dillon does not adequately address why this coalition-building strategy would be more durable or effective than previous reform attempts, nor does he grapple with the substantial evidence that mainstream economic security policies have themselves historically failed Indigenous Australians through structural and administrative exclusions. The strategy's novelty is also overstated: the Coalition of Peaks has, in fact, engaged systematically with non-Indigenous organisations, and the argument does not seriously account for why these existing relationships have not yet yielded the independent advocacy capacity Dillon prescribes.

A second concern is the article's treatment of Indigenous heterogeneity. Dillon acknowledges that ideological diversity among Indigenous leaders and organisations partly reflects genuinely different colonial experiences and political philosophies, but then largely brackets this complexity in favour of the government-as-structural-cause explanation. This risks understating the degree to which strategic fragmentation among Indigenous interests is not merely a product of government manipulation but also reflects real and legitimate differences in values and priorities — differences that any coalition-building strategy must confront directly.

Finally, while the article's comparative reference to Mark Carney's response to Trump-era pressure is evocative, the analogy between a sovereign state asserting economic independence and civil society organisations seeking policy influence is underdeveloped and risks conflating analytically distinct situations.

These reservations notwithstanding, Dillon's article represents a valuable and timely intervention. Its diagnosis of selective engagement as a structural feature of Commonwealth Indigenous policy — rather than a contingent political failing — is the kind of systemic framing that policy debate in this area urgently needs.

I don’t propose to address in detail the specific weaknesses in my argument identified by Claude but would merely note that they are apposite and well made. While they may impact at the margin the case I sought to make, it strikes me that they do not fundamentally undermine the thrust of the argument I sought to make. However, readers are free to make your own assessment !

Addressing family violence: the wider strategic context

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

Hamlet, Act one, Scene five.

In November 2025, I published a post arguing for tangible actions to address the family violence epidemic across the nation, and especially amongst Indigenous families (link here). In that post, I wrote, inter alia:

The deeper problem of course is that governments are adept at creating policy silos, commissions, action plans and advisory committees that provide a defensive fig leaf against criticism when some egregious event hits the headlines but are content to do nothing to address systemic issues facing the most disadvantaged members of the Australian community. 

In recent months there have been two further related policy developments related to family violence policy.

The first policy development was in February when the Government announced, in the words of Minister McCarthy’s media release (link here), the ‘First ever dedicated plan to end violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children’. The plan (link here) is backed up by a funding package, described in Minister McCarthy’s media release as follows:

Our Ways – Strong Ways – Our Voices is backed by $218.3 million in new funding over four years. As an immediate step, the funding will invest in a national network of up to 40 Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations (ACCOs) to deliver community-led specialist support services that help Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and families who are experiencing family, domestic, and sexual violence.

The minister goes on to note that:

This new funding [is] in addition to the record $262.5 million we’ve already invested in addressing immediate family, domestic and sexual violence safety needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and communities through the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Action Plan 2023-2025, and our significant investment of $367 million to more than double funding for Family Violence Prevention Legal Services as part of the National Access to Justice Partnership 2025-2030.

There is more detail in her media release, and I am not in a position to establish the substantive value of these investments. They are surely welcome. I wonder however whether the amounts allocated are commensurate with the overall need for the types of services they fund, and whether the services are themselves effective in reducing family violence rather than assuaging its consequences. These are issues only an effective evaluation could determine, but despite rhetoric to the contrary, program evaluation is not a priority for recent Australian governments.

Unfortunately, I found the Our Ways – Strong Ways – Our Voices Plan to be a deeply disappointing document. If it had been labelled a statement of aspirations, or a statement of values to be applied in devising policies, it could be defended (though even then I consider there are strong grounds for critique). But it is not a plan, and it is definitely not an action plan. It is best described as a plan to develop a plan about a plan.

Reading through the 100 page document, I found only three substantive proposed actions: first, a proposal to develop an action plan and sector strengthening plans (which appear essentially directed to clarifying relationships and roles) outlined in the Implementation section on pages 40; second, the establishment of a Monitoring and Evaluation Framework to measure progress toward [yet to be agreed] outcomes that are to be agreed in partnerships [with unspecified partners] mentioned on page 43; and third, the establishment of a new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peak body for family, domestic and sexual violence [which has recently been established — see below]. In my view, none of these initiatives, either separately or together, amount to an effective plan to end violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families.

Reinforcing my pessimism, in the section on Implementation (page 41), it is noted, without any irony whatsoever, that the plan

will sit alongside and complement the large number of existing policies and plans designed to prevent and respond to violence nationally and in each State and Territory (see Appendix 2).

Appendix Two lists around seventy complementary strategies, frameworks, plans and the like across a range of jurisdictions which will complement this latest national plan. I recommend readers study Appendix 2 closely and ask themselves the question, if the seventy existing plans have not succeeded and are still in place, why should we take any notice of this current ‘non-plan’. While this is worrying on its own, of even greater concern is that this National Plan, which has been drafted by a Steering Committee of experts, has been endorsed in a Joint Ministerial Statement by ten Ministers responsible for overseeing family violence issues across the federation (pages 14-16).

As the Ministers themselves correctly state (with my added emphasis):

Across Australia, the unacceptable reality is that the prevalence of family, domestic and sexual violence remains too high. For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children, the impact of violence is even greater, shaped by the legacy of colonisation, dispossession and intergenerational trauma. Behind every statistic are individuals, families and communities that deserve safety, respect and healing. 

Yet collectively, these ministers are prepared to accept this reality. Their lack of substantive action, and particularly their complete silence regarding the systemic drivers of family violence, which include the insidious impact of alcohol and substance abuse magnified by loose regulation (link here), and widespread financial precarity of the most disadvantaged sectors of the community (where Indigenous families are over-represented) which are magnified by punitive welfare policies, lax regulation of gambling, and sub-optimal financial literacy support. Addressing these systemic drivers is not beyond the capabilities of governments, but effective responses are never considered let alone pursued, and instead a conspiracy of silence is maintained, and substantive action is replaced with the flim flam of (now) 71 plans to make more plans. The word alcohol appears only eight times in the Our Ways – Strong Ways – Our Voices Plan, invariably in contexts which downplay or elide its substantive significance. Clearly governments are subservient to the corporate interests involved in the alcohol and gambling industries. This failure represents in my view an egregious disservice to the wider community.

The existence of this ‘plan’, and the seventy or so other ‘plans’ in effect represents an attempt to persuade the wider community that governments are taking the action necessary to address family violence issues. That in turn ultimately leads the wider community to blame the victim, to avoid the necessity of taking individual action, and diminishes the civic values that we purport to value and cherish. If one needs to understand why the general community is losing faith and trust in governments, one could do worse that consider this case study and think about what it means over the medium and longer term when governments do not address the very real issues that are impacting very real families.

The most recent policy development was the announcement of the peak body referred to above, now known as Our Ways Strong Together (link here) and which comprises the third proposed action in the Our Ways – Strong Ways – Our Voices Plan. Minister McCarthy’s statement announcing its creation (link here) states:

The Albanese Government and the Coalition of Peaks have today launched a new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander National Peak Body for Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence – Our Ways Strong Together. 

Our Ways Strong Together brings together Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community-controlled organisations including specialist family, domestic and sexual violence services, peak bodies and the broader community-controlled sector. 

By amplifying the perspectives and experiences of community-controlled organisations and the communities they serve, Our Ways Strong Together will also play an invaluable role in shaping government policies and programs.  

Our Ways Strong Together also contributes to the Government’s work towards Target 13 of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, to reduce family violence and abuse against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children by at least 50% by 2031.  

The Coalition of Peaks and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander sector leaders worked alongside government to establish the new peak body, drawing on their deep expertise and leadership across their sectors and communities.  

The proposed leadership of the new Peak Body is very experienced and highly regarded, a sentiment I share. I sincerely hope that they can guide the organisation to a position of real and sustained influence. That said, it concerns me that there is, as yet, no detail on the funding for the peak body (membership is free), nor its constitution and its staffing profile. The question that arises then is just how much influence and independence will the government grant this new Peak Body? And how will it sustain its own legitimacy with its Indigenous constituents if that autonomy is compromised? Imagine the response of a firms in a major industry, say chemists or farmers, if the government decided it would establish a new peak body to represent the voices of firms in those industries, and offered some firms or relevant chambers of commerce funding to establish it, funded a secretariat, and asserted the new entity would henceforth be influential in shaping government policy on regulation of pharmacies or agriculture. Deep scepticism would be pervasive. How would individual chemists or farmers be sure that the new peak was in fact truly representing their interests and not being unduly influenced by government?

A second concern related to the Peak Body is that Closing the Gap Target 13 is seriously flawed and in need of revision. I went to some lengths to demonstrate this in my previous post in November last year (link here). Yet the Minister blithely proceeds to argue that the new Peak will contribute to the Government’s efforts to meet this target, presumably by participating in the bureaucratic sludge of planning to plan.

Over and above the deliberate downplaying of the structural and systemic drivers of family violence, one further obvious gap in the whole approach outlined in this ‘First ever dedicated plan to end violence against women and children’ is any focus on system wide policies and initiatives aimed at changing men’s behaviour (noting of course that family violence is not only perpetrated by men). If the new Peak Body is to make a substantive difference in the pervasiveness of family violence, and play an influential role in shaping policy, it will need to engage proactively with the systemic drivers of family violence and find ways to counter the attitudes of entitlement that encourage or allow men to see resort to violent behaviours as being acceptable.  In other words, to succeed, the new Peak body will need to step beyond the limited policy imagination of governments and the Our Ways – Strong Ways – Our Voices Plan.

Conclusion: the wider strategic context

I have long been a supporter of the potential of the Coalition of Peaks as a major addition to the institutional landscape that constitutes the Indigenous policy domain (link here). However, its major internal flaw is that it is not independent of governments and indeed is almost entirely reliant on government funding. Its first convenor, the recently retired Pat Turner, did an amazing job in standing the organisation up from a zero base. In doing so, she almost singlehandedly drove the most significant institutional reform within the Indigenous policy domain in a generation. It represents an extraordinary achievement. To do so she presumably made a conscious decision that to find the necessary funding and obtain the access necessary to establish the legitimacy and credibility of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap and to create the opportunity to work constructively with the Federal Government, she would have to accept the loss of financial independence given that there was no obvious alternative. She had the bureaucratic experience and skills, and the charisma, to work around that constraint. Moreover, she would not be the first successful policy innovator to pragmatically accept the necessity to work with the contradictions that are inherent in engaging with governments in order to gain a strategic foothold or traction on an issue or set of issues.

Unfortunately, her successors may not share her capabilities and will likely be constrained by the major limitation of working from the inside, namely, that the first and only rule is that one must never publicly rock the boat.

The strategic problem however is that eventually, the limitations of working on the inside will become apparent to the Coalition of Peaks constituency — the broader Indigenous population — and the support necessary to sustain it will wane and ultimately disappear. Perhaps of more pressing significance, there is an external threat linked to the internal contradictions of Closing the Gap emanating from the lack of commitment from governments to driving substantive change (link here). The threat is that a change of government or some other trigger will lead to governments walking away from the National Agreement. When that happens (I assess that it is near certain at some point in the coming decade) the Coalition of Peaks will lose its raison d’etre, and the funding essential to its long-term survival will dry up. For both these reasons there is an imperative for the Coalition of Peaks to begin the process of finding ways to become financially independent of government.

The bottom line is that the new Peak body must look ahead, decide how it would like to operate, and devise a strategy consistent with its aspirations and strategic choices. To the extent that it decides to seek to influence policy only from ‘inside the tent’, the prospects of driving the systemic change necessary to make a real difference to the crisis in family violence will be severely circumscribed. Unfortunately, even if the Coalition of Peaks can become more independent, and/or if the Indigenous leadership writ large is prepared to focus its advocacy on reforming these systemic drivers of family violence, the road ahead will be long and hard. And every day, every month, every year for as long as that journey takes, many Indigenous families are at risk of, and subject to, the trauma of family violence. As the Ministerial Statement included within the Our Ways – Strong Ways – Our Voices Plan observed:

Behind every statistic are individuals, families and communities that deserve safety, respect and healing.

 

13 April 2026

 

 

 

 

 

Guest Post: Jon Altman on AINT and the ABA

 

This is the first Guest Post I have published on A Walking Shadow, so a short introductory explanation is in order.

Jon Altman is widely recognised as one of Australia’s pre-eminent scholars on Indigenous policy. I won’t seek to categorise him further as his prodigious output over many decades defies simple categorization. He is an Emeritus Professor at the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) within the ANU College of Law, Governance and Policy. He is also a Director of Karrkad Kanjdji Trust (link here) which operates across Arnhem Land with a diverse focus on supporting ‘healthy country’.

Just one of his abiding interests has been the policy issues around land, culture, traditional use of land resources, land rights, native title, Indigenous economic development, royalties, mining on Indigenous land, and the Aboriginals Benefit Account in the NT.

I first met Jon when I was working for the Central Land Council and he was researching his 1983 book Aborigines and Mining Royalties in the Northern Territory, and subsequently worked closely with him on the Review he chaired at the request of the then Government published in 1985 as the Report on the Review of the Aboriginals Benefit Trust Account (and Related Financial Matters) in the Northern Territory Land Rights Legislation. Since then, we have collaborated formally and informally on various projects and publications related to these wide-ranging issues. A long-winded way of saying that we share a longstanding interest in the policy issues which underpin the financial architecture of the NT Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976, legislation that an academic historian at the ANU described in a seminar last week as the ‘highwater mark of Australian land rights legislation’.

When I published my post yesterday on AINT titled Confusion Abounds (link here), Jon sent me the short paper he had written on the same subject. While our two papers were written independently, they cover much of the same ground, albeit from somewhat different perspectives. In many ways they are serendipitously complementary. Bearing in mind Shakespeare’s observation in Hamlet (V ii): ‘There's a divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough-hew them how we will’, it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. Hence my offer to Jon to publish his short article on this Blog, an offer I am extremely pleased he has agreed to accept. He has asked me to make clear that the views expressed are his alone and arise from his role as an independent academic.  The text below comprises Jon’s paper.

 

Jon Altman: How is NTAIC/AINT travelling three years on?

The ABA or Aboriginals Benefit Account is an institution established by ALRA in 1976 whereby the equivalents of royalties raised from mineral extraction on Aboriginal-owned land in the NT is reserved for Aboriginal, not just landowner, use.

The ABA has a history dating back to 1952 and an earlier fund the Aborigines (Benefits from Mining) Trust Fund or ABTF. This progressive arrangement was initiated by then Minister for Interior Paul Hasluck, the royalties were generated from mining on Aboriginal reserves.

Since 1978, in accord with ALRA, these payments were principally applied in four ways: a proportion (usually 40%) was paid to administer land councils, 30% was paid to the traditional owners of the land where a particular mine was operating, and the balance was either paid as grants to or for Aboriginal people (via incorporated organisations) in the NT.

For some unclear reason never properly explained, from 1978 payments out of the ABA were levied a mining withholding tax set at 20% of the base tax rate, a current impost of 4%. This amendment to tax law was imposed after land rights law was passed.

A summary table that I have compiled of the income and expenditure of the ABA 1978-79 to 24-25, a period of some 46 years, indicates that an estimated $5.3 billion in MREs have been paid to the ABA from consolidated revenue, with an additional $512 million earned in interest giving the ABA a total income of $5.9 billion. Note that MREs are then reduced by 4% through the levying of the mining withholding tax.

Of this amount a total of $1.58 billion (30%) has been paid to traditional owner organisations in areas affected by mining as required by law. $1.6 billion (30%) has been paid to the four NT land councils to claim and then administer Aboriginal-owned land that now covers 50% of terrestrial NT; and $928 million has been paid in grants to or for the benefit of Aboriginal people in the NT. This last amount constitutes about 15.7% of total ABA income as grants have generally been paid from interest income to avoid the MWT. The balance was held in reserve and by the end of the 2021-22 financial year this totaled $1.4 billion.

This arrangement has prevailed for much of the last 50 years since the passage of ALRA with two exceptions.

In 2007, ALRA was amended to allow the leasing of townships for 99 years with lease payments to be made to organisations representing traditional owners of townships. Since 2007-08 $108 million has been paid to the traditional owners of a handful of townships that have adopted these arrangements. The $108 million is to be repaid with $28 million (26%) returned to the ABA to date.

In 2021, ALRA was again amended with the establishment of the NT Aboriginal Investment Corporation or NTAIC that has subsequently been renamed Aboriginal Investments NT or AINT.

This new arrangement has had a long gestation.

The original statutory arrangements under ALRA legislated for the establishment of an ABA Advisory Committee that would make grant recommendations to be approved by the Minister for Indigenous Affairs.

A review of the ABA completed in 1984 that I chaired criticized these arrangements as paternalistic and counter to the principle of self-determination and recommended that in five years’ time, that is by 1989, the ABA Advisory Committee be delegated full granting powers.

This proposition was revisited from 2016 in negotiations between Ministers Scullion and then Wyatt and the four Aboriginal land councils and incorporated in amendments to ALRA in 2021.

However, and there is always a however, what eventuated has been somewhat different from what was envisioned in 1984.

In establishing NTAIC as a corporate Commonwealth entity, the amendments did not guarantee the new body a future flow of MREs but rather made it a one-off allocation of $680 million. This amount represented 49% of the $1.4 billion the ABA held in reserve in 2021-22.

In effect, the government with the support of the four NT land councils was establishing a new body that would take over by and large the somewhat cumbersome granting functions of the ABA. I say be and large because the ABA still holds $800 million (at 30 June 2025) that the Minister for Indigenous Australians can allocate at her discretion.

And the board of the new authority includes two independent members nominated by land councils and two members nominated by government, with the other eight being representatives (at two each) of the four land councils.

The new authority is subject to scrutiny under the the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 (PGPA Act) established to ensure a coherent system of governance and accountability for public resources, with an emphasis on planning, performance and reporting.

This indicates that whether MREs raised on Aboriginal owned lands are public as argued by government or private as argued by Aboriginal interests, an issue that was hotly debated in 1984 when the ABA was reviewed, has been resolved in favour of the government’s position.

It is early days, just three years on from the operationalization of NTAIC in April 2023 it is difficult to make any definitive judgments on how effectively the new arrangements are operating and whether they are superior to the old arrangements.

NTAIC has published two annual reports for 2022-23 and 2023-24 and AINT somewhat belatedly a report for 2024-25 that was published on its website and then removed.

Arguably, the new arrangements are just in the ‘bedding down’ phase and AINT is proceeding cautiously given its operations under the PGPA Act carapace.

But in my opinion, there are already some worrying signs, some of which I predicted in my critical submission to a parliamentary committee that briefly scrutinized the amendments bill in late 2021 (link here).

The AINT (let’s stick to its most recent name) website provides quite a few documents: annual reports for 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25 (for a time) and three corporate plans (the latest for 2025-2029). There is also the Strategic Investment Plan required before $500 million was released from the ABA and to invest; and a summary of all grants made by NTAIC then AINT to 31 March 2026, with many being legacy grants from the ABA.

I have scrutinized these documents that aim to ensure a high degree of transparency and accountability.

The central message is that AINT is ‘Backing Aboriginal led development through innovative investment’.

Simultaneously, there are two broad objects that are not necessarily compatible: to deliver self-management and economic self-sufficiency to Aboriginal people living in the NT; and to ensure the social and cultural wellbeing of Aboriginal people living in the NT.

Note that these objects refer to Aboriginal people living in the NT not traditional owners of land or Aboriginal people (and one assumes Torres Strait Islanders) born in and of the NT.

These are AINT’s interpretation of ALRA’s requirement that s64 (4) grants are applied to or for the benefit of Aboriginal people in the NT.

As noted earlier, prior to the amendment of ALRA $928 million has been allocated as grants since 1978-79 and in recent years have totaled in the region of $60 million (2020-21) growing to $97.7 million in 2023-24.

To deliver on these goals AINT’s strategy is to make three types of grants – community quick response grants (up to $20,000 each), community impact and innovation grants and business grants – alongside in a Future Fund.

When ALRA was amended and NTAIC was created as a corporate Commonwealth entity it was allocated $680 million from the ABA, $60 million per annum for three years to maintain grants more or less at existing levels (in recent years) and $500 million for a Future Fund that would generate annual sustainable allocations in perpetuity from which to make grants.

The publicly available information on AINT’s grant making is difficult to interpret.

Audited financial statements verified by the ANAO indicate that no grants were made in 2022-23, $9.1 million in 2023-24, and $19 million in 2024-25.

But a 26-page document on the AINT website that lists NTAIC grants made between 2022 and 2025 (actually to 31 March 2026) tells a somewhat different story.

It shows that 30 quick response grants with a total value of $310,171 were approved; 15 community impact and innovation grants totaling $11.86 million; and 83 business grants totaling $8 million. Additionally, 131 grants totaling $38.7 million are listed as approved under NTAIC’s grants program guidelines 2022-2025 are listed (with 4 double-counted). On can only assume that most of these grants were made under the ABA rather than NTAIC/AINT banner?

This list matches, more or less, the message of the headline summary (link here): 250+organisations supported with grants totaling $60.3 million. This total figure over three years to 31 March 2026 (at an average of $20 million per annum) is significantly less than the 64 (4) grants made in each year since 2021-22.

I make just a few comments about immediate issues of concern.

First, to date, the granting operations of AINT appear expensive: in 2023-24 $9.2 million was granted with wages and salaries and directors’ annual fees totaling $5 million; in 2024-25, the ratio was better at $19 million in grants at a cost of $6.2 million. Admittedly these figures are inclusive of activities beyond grant making undertaken by AINT, but it is noteworthy that prior to the amendment of ALRA in 2021 these costs were borne by government not the ABA. Apparent independence comes at a real cost.

Second, much of the published strategic investment and corporate planning of AINT including its ‘theory of change’ seems to over-promise: AINT might articulate a vision to ‘back Aboriginal led development through innovative investment’ but it is far from clear what resources it will have at its disposal to do this, especially as its risk-averse goal is to earn a minimum 3% (+CPI) on its Future Fund of $500 million: even a doubling of this rate of return will only provide $30 million per annum, less than granted by the ABA in recent years. I suspect with such lofty goals expectations will be increasingly difficult for the AINT board of directors to manage.

Third, and perhaps most worrying, is the relationship between AINT and the ABA. When the ABA review of 1984 recommended Aboriginal-led independence for the ABA’s granting function it envisioned that MREs would continue to flow to be applied to or for the benefit of Aboriginal people in the NT. The current arrangements fall way short of that historical proposal. Not only does the Minister currently control a larger financial pool than AINT, but her pool will grow with annual injections of MREs, while the AINT pool has no guarantee of growth irrespective of how much resource extraction occurs on Aboriginal-owned land in the NT.

It strikes me that the immediate struggle to gain some Aboriginal control of some ABA funds has been successful. One could argue optimistically that ‘from little things big things grow’ and with time AINT will persuade future governments to transfer a greater proportion of MREs to AINT on an ongoing basis. Less optimistically one might argue that some of the structural shortcomings in the ALRA amendments foreshadowed in 2021 will undermine any attempt to productively deploy a share of MREs ‘to or for the benefit [and unquestionable need] of Aboriginal people in the NT’. It beggars belief that during five years of negotiation to amend ALRA between 2016 and 2021 some of these fundamental problems were not considered and resolved.

 

JCA 8 April 2026