Government Response to the National Infrastructure Plan: Omission and Obfuscation

Our very eyes / Are sometimes like our judgments, blind

Cymbeline Act IV, Scene 2

The Government has recently released its response to Infrastructure Australia’s Australian Infrastructure Plan. Here is the Prime Ministers speech to Parliament. Here is the link to the response.

The Government Response is primarily focussed on mainstream issues and challenges and I make no serious attempt to assess the adequacy of the document in relation to those issues. However, in relation to Indigenous policy, the Response highlights two areas of significant challenge and policy underperformance in Indigenous affairs – in one case by obfuscation, in the other by omission.

The Infrastructure Australia Infrastructure Plan included a section on Remote and Indigenous Communities (Chapter 8, pp53-56). I commented on the release of the Plan in February in this post.  Much of the critique in that post stands.

The Government’s Response is a classic government response to a review or evaluation. Very carefully worded, often vague to the point of meaninglessness, caveated throughout with the annotation that “this is an area of state and territory responsibility”. Embedded in this caveat is an issue of general concern, namely, the reluctance of the Commonwealth to take seriously its overarching stewardship role (to use a term adopted by the Productivity Commission amongst others) for the results and outcomes of Commonwealth investments delivered by third parties including the states and territories.

While it is crystal clear that the Government is focussed on improving transport policy particularly in major urban centres, the actual substance of their response in relation to Indigenous citizens is much less clear. The Prime Minister did not mention Indigenous issues in his speech listed above.

It is also useful to focus on the recommendations which were not supported (a number of others were supported “in principle”, a classic bureaucratic response which opens the way to back away, or slow implementation).

The three recommendations not supported were recommendation 2.2 which recommended the development of a 50 year National Population Policy; recommendation 5.9 which proposed that Treasury should merely evaluate the viability of reporting debt under a more transparent structure at all levels of government; and recommendation 6.12 which proposed working with the states and territories to establish an independent national water body to deliver a National Water Plan and drive market reforms across metropolitan and regional water sectors.

The refusal to develop a national population policy will potentially reinforce the structural blindness in relation to Indigenous citizens, across urban, regional and remote locations. The decision to avoid improved transparency of debt, particularly at state and local government levels, will reinforce the structural blindness in relation to the capacity of those levels of government to service their citizens effectively, particularly in relation to capital investment. The decision on the National Water Plan will benefit regional interests aligned with the National Party at the expense of urban mainstream interests.

In relation to Indigenous citizens, the Response will impact in a very general sense on the majority of Indigenous people who live in South Eastern Australia. As the Response notes, over the next thirty years, the proportion of the population in the four biggest cities will grow (and the centre of gravity of the national Indigenous population is likely to remain concentrated in these locations too). To the extent that infrastructure for the regions where they reside improves, they will benefit. While there is no easy way to measure these benefits, it is important to acknowledge them, and to acknowledge that Indigenous policy challenges extend beyond remote Australia.

Important general recommendations supported by the Government which have potential applicability in key Indigenous programs – though this ambitiously assumes program managers take active steps to implement them – included:

• ·        the pooling of programs to ensure more effective prioritisation (rec.1.6);
• ·         investing in leveraging existing infrastructure through improved asset management (rec 1.7); and
• ·         targeting policy to the shape of community needs (rec 4.3).

Turning to the Response to the recommendations on Remote and Indigenous Communities, I don’t propose to undertake a point by point analysis. Rather, I will make some general comments which respond to the recommendations and response.

The issues around essential service provision remain fraught. This post dealt with the current state of play in WA. While the Commonwealth appears to have vacated the field, it has not put in place any policy oversight mechanism which provides an assurance that state and territory governments will pick up the responsibility and implement their responsibilities to provide essential services equitably or effectively. Another instance of a failure to recognise a ‘stewardship’ role for the Commonwealth.

This is a major gap in the Commonwealth policy framework on this issue, and will over time inevitably lead to incremental pull backs in state and territory service delivery provision. 

For example, the Jumbun Community in north Queensland appears to have been a casualty in this Commonwealth – State game. The Howard Government used the army to construct the community’s sewerage system in the 1990s, but now neither the Commonwealth nor the Queensland Government are prepared to accept responsibility for funding municipal service provision in Jumbun.

The North Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) is touted as a major source of Commonwealth investment, but its focus is clearly intended to be on “economic” infrastructure, and it operates through the provision of concessional finance to major projects. Notwithstanding NAIF’s ‘engagement’ with Indigenous stakeholders, it is far from clear that it will lead to any specific Indigenous outcomes.

Finally, recommendation 8.4 proposes that Governments should consider infrastructure investments that support reforms to increase the economic independence of remote Indigenous communities.

The single most effective infrastructure investment in remote communities which would support economic development would be to top up the current NPARIH/RHS program with a further $6bn over ten years for remote social housing. This previous post refers.

Unfortunately, the Government’s Response makes no mention of housing, and instead focusses on three issues: employment and Indigenous procurement, where the Government has made good progress (albeit without releasing data in a comprehensive and transparent way which would allow scrutiny of where that progress is being made). And third, on land tenure issues. On land tenure, the extent of progress is much less clear.

Set out below are the three paragraphs in the Response on land tenure. I have added emphasis to focus on some key points:

The Australian Government supports this recommendation, noting this is also a matter for state and territory governments.

The Australian Government is working with state and territory governments and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stakeholders to improve land administration and use by implementing the findings and recommendations of the COAG Investigation into Indigenous land administration and use (the Investigation) and the White Paper on Developing Northern Australia.

The Investigation makes recommendations to support Indigenous peoples' use of their rights in land and waters for economic development. These include recommendations that go to reducing red tape arising from overlapping types of Indigenous land tenures, removing legislative barriers to bankable long-term leases, supporting native title determination processes and better engagement between governments and Indigenous land owners and also with particular sectors such as the banking industry. The Council of Australian Governments agreed jurisdictions would implement the recommendations of the Investigation’s report, subject to their unique circumstances and resource constraints. The Commonwealth Minister for Indigenous Affairs will report back on implementation of the recommendations after 12 months.

Under the White Paper, the Government has allocated $10.6 million over four years to support a small number of land tenure reform pilots. The pilots will broaden commercial development on land in northern Australia and increase the diversity of activity in business and Indigenous communities.

The very first post on this blog dealt with the COAG and the adoption of the COAG Investigation into Land Administration Policy. Since the report was considered by COAG, the Government has made no further statements on its implementation – see the relevant PMC webpage here which also links to the report and the submissions provided to the review.

To date, it is not clear that any action whatsoever has resulted from this Report, and the COAG decision to “implement” it. There has been no progress report from the Minister though arguably his report has only just become due. Nor has there been any advice or publication on the progress of the funds allocated to land tenure reform pilots.

Turning back to the Infrastructure Plan Response, while it is positive that a national plan and its response deals specifically with Indigenous issues, it is much harder to discern the tangible changes for Indigenous Australians which will emerge from the process.

The real challenge for COAG and the Australian Government in remote Australia is to reinvigorate and sustain the investment of almost $6bn over the last eight years in remote social housing provision and upgrades. Overcrowding remains a major issue, and it has significant and serious flow on impacts for health, community safety, schooling and employment, all issues the Government professes to be concerned about.

The apparent arbitrary exclusion of social housing provision form the definition of infrastructure is a major mistake in its own right. However it also means that the needs of remote communities for power, water, sewerage, and internal roads are made invisible as these services are intrinsically linked to the provision of housing, and this is substantially under-provided. The under-provision of acceptable remote housing is one of the most egregious policy blind spots in public policy in Australia, and our national preparedness to remain blind to this issue is a major contributor to the severely constrained life opportunities for the 100,000 plus Indigenous citizens residing in remote communities.

The fact that this is not seen as a priority, and does not deserve a mention in the Plan and the Australian Government’s response provides grounds for deep pessimism regarding the ability of the nation to address deep-seated Indigenous disadvantage over the next few decades.