Statistical miasma: the Productivity Commission Report on Government Services and Remote Housing

I have commented on the challenges of remote housing in an earlier post: link here.

At the risk of some repetition, there seems merit in canvassing some of the data emerging from the Productivity Commission this month. The new data is available in the amazingly detailed Report on Government Services (link here) released annually by the Productivity Commission. Unfortunately, for anyone who is busy, there is just too much information to easily absorb.

Volume G (link here) deals with housing and homelessness services and including data tables runs to 463 pages.

The approach I have adopted is to merely dip my toe in the water so to speak, and make a number of observations focussed particularly on some of the data related to remote housing provision, which of course is almost entirely directed to Indigenous citizens.

Thus the largest social housing program is Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA). It involves transfers of $4.4bn per annum. Some 1.35m Australian households access CRA, including 67,000 Indigenous households, or 5 percent of the total. On one perspective, Indigenous citizens are over-represented as Indigenous people comprise just 3 percent of the national population. However, in remote and very remote regions, only 4000 Indigenous households, or less than one third of one percent of CRA recipients access CRA (Table GA.22); a function of the lack of private sector rental options in remote regions.

As a consequence, remote Indigenous citizens are particularly reliant on the quality and effectiveness of social housing provision, and have limited alternatives where those services are not adequate. It also means that remote Indigenous citizens are vulnerable to cuts in remote programs which governments would not be prepared to implement in mainstream programs.

So how effective is the provision of social housing in remote regions?

The answer is that is seems there are substantial shortcomings in the effectiveness of social housing provision, but there are also inexplicable data absences which make comprehensive assessment more difficult.

So at page 18.5, in Box 18.3, the report indicates that some 5000 social housing units in the Northern Territory were removed from the Indigenous Housing data set following their transfer to mainstream social housing in 2008-10, but seven years later relevant data is still not being provided and is expected to be included in the Report in 2018. This is entirely unsatisfactory and difficult to understand in a context where government rhetoric is focussed on the priority of closing the gap.

In terms of dwelling conditions, the report notes that in 2016 Indigenous citizens’ dwellings are much worse than mainstream tenants’ dwellings:

Nationally in 2016, the majority of social housing respondents lived in dwellings of an acceptable standard, though proportions were lower for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander households:

· for public housing, 80.7 per cent of all dwellings and 69.6 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dwellings ….

· for community housing, 88.8 per cent of all dwellings and 77.2 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander dwellings (figure 18.6 and tables 18A.36, 18A.38).

Roughly one quarter of Indigenous social housing tenants lived in dwellings (provided by government) of an unacceptable standard. In the Northern Territory, the data suggests that this figure rises to around 50 percent for Indigenous community housing (see Figure G.5 of page G.10).

Turnaround times for managing vacant dwellings in social housing stock (a measure of overall efficiency of the housing management) is twice the national average in the Northern Territory (which has a preponderance of Indigenous tenants). See pages 18.27-8. The NT clearly has a significant challenge in front of it in managing not only its remote housing stock, but its total social housing stock.

In terms of overcrowding, the Report notes (Table 18A.23) that 4.2 percent of public housing nationally is overcrowded. In the NT, it is 8 percent, and the ratio has stayed roughly constant for the last five years.

Reading the Report on Government Services is not for the feint hearted, and if one is interested in social housing services for Indigenous tenants, the narrative is confusing and incomplete. For states such as WA and Queensland, most services to Indigenous tenants are included within mainstream services, and impossible to disaggregate. The NT is a useful barometer for remote Indigenous housing because the preponderance of social housing tenants outside the major cities are Indigenous.

However, close reading of the report suggests that the deep-seated disadvantage of remote residents continues, notwithstanding the $5.5bn invested by the Rudd Government in the National Partnership on Remote Indigenous Housing, most of which has already been spent or committed, notwithstanding that the National Partnership still has a year to run. Overcrowding is still a serious issue for remote housing.

The present Government has made no moves to supplement the NPARIH investment since coming to office, and indeed has cut $95m in funding for property and tenancy management within NPARIH as part of the funding reductions announced when it first came to office (refer to the answer to Question on Notice 331 from the May 2015 Estimates Hearings). The wisdom of this when over 20 percent of all Indigenous public housing tenants are living in unacceptable conditions in government supplied housing is impossible to fathom. The Minister’s defence was that the funds would be diverted to the RJCP (now CPD) program, and that program would assist in property and tenancy management services. There is no data or indications available that this is in fact occurring.

The Government has announced the transfer of NPARIH funding to a new Remote Housing Strategy, which appears to be laying the groundwork for a much reduced level of ongoing investment. Late last year the Minister announced a review of remote housing (link to media release is here). There has been no word on progress of the review, no discussion paper or as far as I can discern no call for public submissions (the PMC website indicates that submissions to the review have closed, but it is not clear to me that they were ever advertised publicly). Perhaps we may see a report in the lead up to the budget, though no time frame has been announced.

Hopefully one of the outcomes of the review will be a set of recommendations for rationalising the statistical swamp which oozes around all aspects of Indigenous housing. The Government has identified improved evaluation of government programs as a priority for closing the gap (a strategy which I am sceptical about) but it is clear that if any area needs a comprehensive and independent evaluation then it is Indigenous housing, and in particular remote housing. The establishment of a review by three well regarded Indigenous persons albeit with limited housing policy background, and supported by non-independent public servants, is in my view not the way to address the serious and longstanding challenges facing Indigenous social housing recipients.

The related issue which perhaps the Productivity Commission should address is that the Review of Government Services, while based on an extraordinarily comprehensive set of mainstream data compiled from a wide array of state and federal data sources, is not independent. The fact that it appears optional to provide potentially embarrassing data merely reinforced the point.

Like the Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage Report which is produced under the direction of a Steering Committee comprising public servants from state and federal governments (link here), there is a risk that the use of the Productivity Commission brand suggests an independence which is technically absent. It is undertaken on behalf of a committee of Commonwealth and state public servants, and thus is technically not owned by the Productivity Commission. The Report would benefit from some rigorous evaluation by the Commission so as to make it user friendly and allow readers to draw policy conclusions rather than sink into the miasma.

The Commission appears set to increase its profile on Indigenous issues following the recent announcement by the Prime Minister (link here) of the intention to appoint an Indigenous Productivity Commissioner. This is all the more reason for ensuring there is clarity between reports prepared on behalf of government and reports which are independent advice to Government from the Commission.

Anthropology, native title, and public policymaking

This post outlines an argument for the greater use of anthropological insights in policy development, and examines two current examples, including the current proposals to amend the Native Title Act to support the argument.

I recently had the pleasure of attending the annual conference of the Centre for Native Title Anthropology held in Perth and an associated seminar convened by the Centre, the Native Title Tribunal and the Federal Court to acknowledge 25 years of anthropology in native title.

Both events provided fascinating insights into the practice of native title claim research, practice and litigation leading to determination from the perspectives of both anthropology and the law.

My aim here however is not to review these proceedings but to develop some comparative reflections on the making of public policy in Indigenous affairs derived from the way in which the courts and legal system has developed over the past twenty five years since the High Court’s Mabo decision.

Each of the three arms of government, the Legislature, the Judiciary and the Executive contributes to Indigenous policymaking, yet the roles of the legislature and particularly the judiciary are often underappreciated, at least by those who are not involved directly in either of those arms of government.

What became very apparent to me over the course of the two days of proceedings was that the overthrow of terra nullius and sudden emergence of the native title system, and the consequential requirement on the legal system, in particular the Federal Court, to hear and determine native title issues created an imperative for cross cultural social analysis to facilitate the professional and objective consideration of the requirements contained in the Native Title Act. Of course, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander claimants invariably give evidence directly, but the logical and conceptual complexity arising from differing epistemologies invariably necessitates a process of what is in effect cross cultural translation to allow the courts to give full effect to the evidence that is made available to them by Indigenous witnesses.

While it was very evident that the incorporation of anthropological (and linguistic) expertise into the litigation process has not always been easy or without structural tension, over the course of twenty five years, a body of practice incorporating anthropological evidence has developed in native title litigation and has in effect been institutionalised within the legal system. The fact that many Federal Court judges are now routinely exposed to professional social science analysis of complex native title issues and assisted by anthropological (and other) experts will no doubt ultimately have spillover impacts in the ways in which the higher courts deal with a wider range of Indigenous related litigation.

In stark comparison, the Executive and in particular the bureaucracy has not been required to utilise social science analysis in developing policy. There has been no institutional driver or imperative on the bureaucracy in its policymaking roles equivalent to the requirements in the Native Title Act which required the courts to assess the merits of assertions by claimants of continuous connection to particular tracts of land.

The consequence has been that the Indigenous affairs bureaucracy, by and large staffed at senior levels by generalists with limited experience of Indigenous communities, and faced with an institutional imperative to make universal policies for a highly heterogeneous group of citizens, is structurally unaware of its own ignorance of the ways in which Indigenous groups and societies operate.

There are numerous potential objections to the proposition that there should be a greater role for anthropological analysis in public policymaking, but I will pick out just three of the most salient.

The first potential objection is that policymaking which incorporates appropriate and adequate consultation with Indigenous interests will offset or counteract the absence of anthropological and related social science analysis in the policymaking process.

Of course, consultation with Indigenous interests if undertaken well will go a long way to adding value to the policymaking process. Setting aside the fact that consultation is expensive (both in resources and time) and not often undertaken to an appropriate level, the increasing complexity of the Indigenous domain involving hundreds of family, kinship and language groupings, differing levels of accommodation to the dominant society, new and emerging forms of engagement (‘hybrid structures’) suggests that Indigenous perspectives on policy proposals will themselves be diverse, directed to differing objectives, adopt differing lenses and perspectives, and reflect deeper underlying cultural forces and imperatives which are not necessarily apparent to non-Indigenous policymakers. 

While policymaking is an art and not a science, and inevitably involves trade-offs and value judgements (as well as a substantial dose of politics: intra and inter-agency conflicts; budget conflicts; and second guessing of ministers), it seems to me at least that the bureaucracy would be better positioned to provide comprehensive and effective advice to Ministers if it found ways to supplement consultation with Indigenous interests to better incorporate anthropological knowledge into the policy development process at least for substantial policy initiatives.

A second potential objection might be that anthropology is politically compromised either because its epistemological roots are embedded in the colonial project, and it thus is just another arm of the dominant settler society, or at the other end of the spectrum, because its practitioners are captured by Indigenous interests as a result of their modus operandi based on participant observation, involving extensive time living and working amongst particular groups of Indigenous subjects.

I don’t have space to deal with each of these arguments in full, but would merely note that while both arguments have potential validity, the experience of the courts in the native title system has largely been that the professional ethos of the discipline of anthropology works to counteract these vulnerabilities. It will always be necessary to choose individual advisers carefully based on their skills, knowledge and professionalism. The potential for poor choices of anthropological advisers is not an argument against accessing anthropological and related social science expertise more generally.

A third potential objection might be that anthropologists do not have the requisite policy skills to enable them to make an effective contribution. While some anthropologists would undoubtedly struggle with some of the more arcane and ruthless practices of the bureaucracy, the experience in the native title system is that the anthropological profession has managed to make the adjustments required to ensure that their advice and perspectives can be presented in effective formats. There would inevitably be tensions and challenges involved in attempting to incorporate anthropological insights into the policy process, but persistence on both sides would find a way through.

Finally, it is worth perhaps providing some examples of current policies which may have benefited from greater anthropological input.

The implementation of the last Labor Government’s Remote Jobs and Communities Program (RJCP) and more sharply, the current Government’s Community Development Program (CDP) both involved implicit program logics which were based on an assumption that remote ‘jobseekers’ would respond to incentive structures in particular ways. Both programs experienced challenges on this front, with many ‘jobseekers’ responding to their own culturally determined imperatives rather than to mandated program requirements by in effect voting with their feet to ignore program requirements, often leading them to exit the program. The current extraordinary breaching levels under CDP (link here and here) are evidence of fundamental program and policy failure but policymakers appear unable to recognise the underlying causes of the problems. 

Were there to be an institutionalised role for anthropological advice within the policy development process, the blind adherence of policymakers to yet tougher incentives and penalties would potentially be questioned from within. As it is, the program is being heavily criticised publicly from without, but political and policymaking realities make public acknowledgement of failure a fraught business.

A second quite recent example concerns the consequences of the recent McGlade decision in the Federal court. The Court held, contrary to previous authority in the Federal Court’s 2010 Bygrave decision, that the Native Title Act required an area ILUA (that is an ILUA negotiated by a group of claimants before a determination of native title had been made) be signed by all members of the Registered Native Title Corporation (RNTC) rather than just a subset of members. The Court recognised that this requirement was virtually unworkable and would require legislative amendment (as it even included the requirement for the signature of deceased members) but was not prepared to read down the explicit drafting of the legislation.

As a consequence, the four ILUAs in McGlade were overturned (they related to the Noongar Native Title Settlement in the south west of WA) and some hundreds of previously registered ILUAs were potentially invalidated. Also placed at risk was the ILUA negotiated (but not yet registered) in relation to the proposed Adani coal mine which is being vociferously criticised by a subset of native title claimants.

Following the decision, the Government moved swiftly (albeit arguably belatedly- link here) to introduce amendments to the Native Title Act to validate existing ILUAs and to change the requirement for unanimous agreement from members of the RNTC to allow a subset of members to be appointed by the RNTC to sign the ILUA and in the absence of such an arrangement by the RNTC, to provide that a simple majority of members of the RNTC would be the default requirement to allow registration of an ILUA.

The text of the Native Title Amendment (Indigenous Land Use Agreements) Bill 2017 and the Explanatory Memorandum are available on the Parliament web page for the Bill which also allows progress of the Bill to be monitored (Link here).

The Bill has passed the House of Representatives, and is currently the subject of consideration by a Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, which will be required to report on 17 March 2017, the Friday before the next Senate sitting day.

In the debate in the House of Representatives, issues raised included the potential for an RNTC to be pressured by a proponent to authorise a small group (potentially just one person) to approve an ILUA (see Warren Snowden’s speech link here). The processes which govern such an authorisation would be controlled by the terms of the RNTC’s constitution, which can vary from corporation to corporation, but in many cases are likely to require merely a majority vote of Corporation members, who may or may not all be native title holders/claimants. Certainly, the Bill’s default provision for a majority vote where an RNTC has not made an authorisation for the process will go a long way to enshrining western norms of decision making in the legal superstructure erected by the Native Title Act.

That these decision processes are potentially sensitive and contentious can be seen in the conflict which has arisen between Indigenous groups over the Adani mine proposal. Here is a link to a media report of native title claimants expressing concern at the way the Adani ILUA has been negotiated.

My preliminary point is not to express an opinion on the merits of the arguments in relation to the Adani proposal, but to point to the fact that there is a disjunction between the ways in which decisions are made by native title holders in relation to their lands and the provisions set out in the current Amendment Bill. While the current provision is clearly unworkable, it arguably is a closer reflection of Indigenous decision making processes (which may have changed over the past two hundred years) than the proposed mechanism with its focus on a majority vote of RNTC members.

My substantive point is that the Executive (in this instance the Attorney General’s Department) appears to have given no consideration to the merits of trying to reflect traditional norms of decision making into the proposed provision, but have merely adopted, almost unthinkingly, the western norm of majority voting. Of course, while widely accepted as a ‘fair’ method of making social choices, it is essentially arbitrary, and subject to a range of ancillary influences which can potentially impact on the process (for example, is voting compulsory, are the set of RNTC members representative of the native title holders, are children allowed to vote, is there an adequate process for explaining the implications of the issue to be determined to voters, and so on). These are exactly the sorts of issues to which anthropological insights might be expected to add value. 

The absence of an institutionalised role for anthropological input into policy in effect ignores and makes irrelevant the statements in the Preamble of the Native Title Act which provides, inter alia:

It is particularly important to ensure that native title holders are now able to enjoy fully their rights and interests. Their rights and interests under the common law of Australia need to be significantly supplemented. 

and the Objects Clause in section 3 which  includes the statement: The main objects of this Act are: (a) to provide for the recognition and protection of native title;… 

The effect of the amendments will be to open a doorway to outcomes which fundamentally compromise the communal nature of the title insofar as it will be possible for a bare majority subset of native title holders and /or RNTC members to make decisions regarding the land which in theory is owned jointly by all native title holders.

The contrast with the Northern Territory Aboriginal Land Rights Act (ALRA) is instructive. Section 23 (3) of that legislation, referring to the functions of Land Councils, provides:

In carrying out its functions with respect to any Aboriginal land in its area, a Land Council shall have regard to the interests of, and shall consult with, the traditional Aboriginal owners (if any) of the land and any other Aboriginals interested in the land and, in particular, shall not take any action, including, but not limited to, the giving of consent or the withholding of consent, in any matter in connexion with land held by a Land Trust, unless the Land Council is satisfied that:

            (a)       the traditional Aboriginal owners (if any) of that land understand the nature and purpose of the proposed action and, as a group, consent to it; and

            (b)       any Aboriginal community or group that may be affected by the proposed action has been consulted and has had adequate opportunity to express its view to the Land Council. [Emphasis added]

In effect, ALRA adopts a middle ground which more closely reflects Aboriginal cultural practice and while it does not require group unanimity, it does require something more than a bare majority.

In my view it is unfortunate that the Government in dealing with the present requirement to amend the NTA did not adopt something more along the lines of the ALRA formulation. The absence of any institutionalised avenue for the provision and consideration of anthropological advice with respect to issues pertaining directly to matters of land ownership policy is in my view one of the reasons the Executive arm of government is willing to merely adopt non-Indigenous western norms in devising the necessary amendments.

Perhaps the consideration of the Bill by the Senate Committee will open up an opportunity to consider a revised decision process. However, the third arm of Government, the Parliament, is largely controlled by the Executive. Given the complexity of public policy issues which come before Parliament, there would be value in Parliamentary Committees moving to incorporate a greater role for independent expert staff in the consideration of issues coming before them (along the lines of the US Congressional committees). In Indigenous policy contexts particularly, there is again scope to consider utilising anthropological expertise as an additional source of advice.

To sum up, the Federal Court has by necessity developed an institutionalised process for accessing anthropological expertise in dealing with native title issues. This raises the question whether other arms of Government, in particular the Executive, might usefully emulate the Federal Court and seek to make explicit provision for the incorporation of anthropological advice into the policy development process. While there are potential objections to this idea, the experience of the Federal Court suggests that they do not represent insurmountable challenges. Two current examples are discussed where policymakers might usefully have relied more heavily on anthropological advice in devising policy.

Given the challenges governments face in addressing Indigenous disadvantage, there is a case for greater innovation in the policy development process. The idea explored here is just one potential option for greater innovation.

ANAO Audit of the Indigenous Advancement Strategy

‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in it’

Hamlet Act II, Scene ii

The ANAO released its effectiveness audit (link here) of the Indigenous Advancement Strategy (IAS) last Friday (3 February 2017). The IAS (link here) is the Government’s major grants program in Indigenous Affairs, allocating in excess of $1bn per annum for activities designed to deliver services to Indigenous citizens and communities.

The Australian described the audit as ‘scathing’ (link here), and noted:

However the audit found that a seven-week planning and design period had “limited the department’s ability to fully implement key processes and frameworks, such as consultation, risk management and advice to Ministers”.

The program’s short implementation time had then “affected the department’s ability to establish transitional arrangements and structures that focused on prioritising the needs of indigenous communities”.

Further, the department’s grants administration process “fell short of the standard required to effectively manage a billion dollars of Commonwealth resources”.

The ABC story (link here) led with the following paragraph:

The Abbott government bungled its overhaul of billions of dollars worth of Indigenous funding, a major report has found.

The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet website published a summary of the Department’s response to the audit (link here) which tries valiantly to shift the focus to the future and away from the findings, and as a result, in my opinion fails to adequately acknowledge the seriousness of the findings.

The Minister for Indigenous Affairs published a media release in response to the audit (link here) titled “Government a step ahead of the ANAO audit recommendations” which stated in the first paragraph that the audit findings related to the 2014 grant round, and ‘should be viewed as a historical observation on a process carried out two-and-a-half years ago’.

The implication that the ANAO and the Auditor General is a step behind the Government in releasing this report, and that its assessment is not ‘fair and reasonable’, is on its face extraordinary. So too is the Minister’s quite direct criticism of the ANAO for failing to focus on the Government’s alleged successes as stated in the minister’s media release:

Assessing the success of the IAS based on the introductory period is premature. Any fair and reasonable assessment of the IAS needs to consider a timeframe well beyond the introductory period to give the strategy time to deliver the intended benefits.

By focusing its audit on the grants round, the ANAO has paid insufficient regard to the state Indigenous Affairs was in when the Coalition Government came to office in 2013 – and hence the need for the Government to implement its reforms.

Before the Coalition introduced the IAS, it was not possible to say where and how much taxpayer money was being spent or what outcomes were expected for the outlay. I know this to be true, because they were questions I repeatedly asked in Senate Estimates as an Opposition Senator. 

These criticisms ought to be seen for what they are: attempts to divert attention from the shortcomings identified by the ANAO. In relation to the claim about assessments in the ‘introductory period’ the Minister himself decided that the previous Government’s Remote Jobs and Communities Program was a failure and should be abolished while it was still less than 12 months old, and the replacement Community Development Program is in diabolical trouble, with soaring breach rates and substantial community concern (link here). The comments about not being able to say where the money was being spent and what outcomes were expected under the previous Government are issues identified by the ANAO in relation to IAS. The degree of transparency in relation to the IAS is virtually non-existent, as a cursory trawl through the PMC website will reveal.

To take just one example, the level of detail available in relation to expenditure on the Minister’s signature program, the Remote School Attendance Strategy is woeful, with no accessible detail on the allocation of funding, no detail on the numbers of students impacted, only one internal quantitative evaluation which suggests that the program’s impact, while positive, is far from making a meaningful difference to overall remote school attendance. Yet the media releases, magazine articles and good news stories keep rolling out.

In an interview with the ABC in relation to the ANAO Report, the Minister was reported as stating that he did not think errors were made (link here):

"I don't accept that this was some sort of disaster at all," Senator Scullion told the ABC.

"All of these criticisms are about departments and processes. What my job is to do is focus on what people who receive the services think.

"The fact is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, as a consequence of these remarkable changes, are far better off."

In essence the Government’s response has been to argue that the IAS involved “remarkable changes”, that any issues identified by the ANAO are “historical observations” of no relevance today, and that ‘these criticisms” are ‘unreasonable and unfair’ and all about bureaucratic processes for which the minister is not responsible.

Before assessing the merits of these arguments, it is worth noting some of the ANAOs detailed findings. Of necessity, they are extracts and the report needs to be read in its entirety. Nevertheless, a number of the findings are extremely concerning, and suggest deep-seated problems existed (and presumably continue to exist) in the way Indigenous public policy is being implemented.

In terms of understanding what has gone on here, it is important to understand that the ANAO is precluded for examining the actions of Ministers; its focus is entirely on the actions of agencies, notwithstanding that the Minister is the decision maker and he and his office would have been integrally involved in the roll out of this program (as was confirmed in Secretary Parkinson’s letter (discussed below).

Here are some of the more worrying quotes from the ANAO report (emphasis added):

7. While the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s design work was focused on achieving the Indigenous Advancement Strategy’s policy objectives, the department did not effectively implement the Strategy.

10. The department’s grants administration processes fell short of the standard required to effectively manage a billion dollars of Commonwealth resources. The basis by which projects were recommended to the Minister was not clear and, as a result, limited assurance is available that the projects funded support the department's desired outcomes. Further, the department did not: • assess applications in a manner that was consistent with the guidelines and the department’s public statements; • meet some of its obligations under the Commonwealth Grants Rules and Guidelines; • keep records of key decisions; or • establish performance targets for all funded projects.

11…..The department has commenced some evaluations of individual projects delivered under the Strategy but has not planned its evaluation approach after 2016–17.

16…..The department did not meet its commitments with respect to providing advice on all the elements identified as necessary for the implementation of the Strategy. The department also did not advise the Minister of the risks associated with establishing the Strategy within a short timeframe.

24. The department did not maintain sufficient records throughout the assessment and decision-making process. In particular, the basis for the committee’s recommendations is not documented and so it is not possible to determine how the committee arrived at its funding recommendations. The department did not record compliance with probity requirements. Further, the department did not maintain adequate records of Ministerial approval of grant funding.

1. 15…..the ANAO does not have assurance that the department has produced complete records of the design and implementation of the Strategy.

2.9…… The department advised the ANAO that it met with Indigenous leaders and national peak bodies outside of the council but did not keep records of the meetings. As such, it is not clear who the department met with, what feedback the department received and how this was considered in developing the Strategy.

3.21….. There is limited evidence that regional profiles were considered in the grant assessment process. As at August 2016, two years after the commencement of the regional network, the department has drafted but not finalised regional strategies.

3.23 The department advised that it has provided the Minister with dashboard reports since August 2015. The reports include a short local issues section that, until January 2016, focused on the Community Development Program and Remote School Attendance Strategy. The dashboard reports provide a reflection of activity within the regions, but do not meaningfully report on the performance of the regional network.

4.17 ….. This meant that the information from the application assessments was so aggregated that it did not provide meaningful information to the committee against the selection criteria, and subsequently the Minister.

4.20 ANAO analysis shows that some projects that were awarded a high score against the selection criteria and need score were not recommended for funding, and some low-scoring applicants were recommended. For example, 59 projects that were awarded assessment scores of 20 or below and a need score of 3 or less were recommended for funding. Further, 222 projects that were awarded assessment scores of 26 or above, and a need score of six or above were not recommended for funding.

4.25 The department provided the ANAO with a list of 415 demand-driven applications it assessed, but could not confirm that it was a complete list of the applications received. The ANAO identified 11 applications that were under assessment for more than one year, with the longest time between application and notification of outcome being 592 days.

4.34 The review of applications identified 300 missing applications that the department had received but not registered for assessment.

4.36 The requirement that all projects were assessed by two staff was not applied to all projects. Analysis by the ANAO identified that 815 out of approximately 5000 project assessments did not receive two assessment scores….4.37  As a consequence of being assigned an automated score, the 815 projects were not appropriately considered against each of the individual selection criteria at the assessment panel stage.

4.40 The probity plan required that committee meetings be recorded, with minutes signed by the Chair of the committee, and that the Chair ensure that the grant assessment process be comprehensively documented and tied explicitly to the selection criteria. The committee did not record minutes of its meetings, keep a record of the actions taken by the committee to address conflicts of interest recorded by committee members, or keep records of key decisions.

4.41 The ANAO was provided with two different spreadsheets that, according to the department, recorded the funding recommendations made by the committee. Neither spreadsheet matched with the value of funding recommendations recorded on the brief that the committee Chair signed to approve the recommendations to the Minister, and one of the spreadsheets recorded recommendations that the department later advised the Minister were not an accurate representation of the committee’s recommendations.

4.46 The department provided descriptive information (such as project locations and electorates), but did not provide the Minister with assessments of the extent to which projects met each of the five Strategy selection criteria. The department advised the ANAO that it provided the assessment score and need score to the Minister in its initial $917 million recommendation brief, but was unable to provide evidence of this.

4.48 Similarly, the department did not maintain adequate records of the grants approved by the Minister.

4.61 As such, the department has limited assurance that the process of negotiating funding agreements and amounts was conducted fairly, and that applicants received similar treatment across the regional network.

5.26 The department drafted an evaluation strategy in June 2014…... A constraint on evaluation activity was that the evaluation strategy was not formalised and no funding was set aside to implement the evaluation strategy.

The ANAO has also published at pages 67/68 a copy of the letter responding to the audit from the Secretary of PMC, Martin Parkinson. It is a only a slightly more balanced response than that provided by the Minister, but is nevertheless a letter which no Secretary, let alone the Secretary of PMC would ever wish to have to sign.

Parkinson acknowledges what he terms shortfalls in ‘some’ of the Department’s processes including record keeping. He notes, inter alia:

The department worked closely with the Minister for Indigenous Affairs and his Office to ensure that they were apprised of the progress being made and implementation challenges…The department considers the shortfalls in its processes outlined in the Report and the potential implications arising from them are overstated when seen in the full light of the transition….

The substantive issues raised by the ANAO are extremely serious in their own right, but it seems to me that there are two broader issues which deserve attention.

The first goes to the quality of the advice provided by the Department to the Minister. The ANAO makes clear that the advice was substantively faulty in relation to a substantial proportion of the grants being considered. This raises broader issues relating to the capacity of the APS to provide quality advice to Ministers. It needs to be remembered that while Indigenous affairs is a complex area of public administration, managing grants programs is core business for the bureaucracy and it seems almost unbelievable to me that a central agency such as PMC could get it so wrong. One must wonder where the Department’s Audit Committee was during this process? Where was the Executive Leadership Group which according to the Annual Report for 2013-14 (link here) ‘considers strategic issues impacting on the Department, including any ongoing or emerging risks, and monitors performance in delivering outcomes’?  

It was less than ten years ago that Peter Shergold (the then Secretary of PMC) identified policy and program implementation as key areas of focus for the APS and established an implementation unit in PMC to drive a stronger focus on the issue across the APS.

More importantly, and more worryingly, is the implication which can be drawn from reading between the lines of Parkinson’s letter, (and from paragraph 16 of the ANAO summary) that PMC failed to properly advise the Minister of the risks of attempting to implement major change to Indigenous funding programs ‘within very ambitious timelines’ presumably set by the Minister, either because it didn’t recognise the full nature of the risks (but see paragraphs 2.18 and 2.19), and in any case  decided to ignore or discount them. The inevitable conclusion drawn by the ANAO was that the bureaucracy did not provide appropriate (ie frank, fearless and quality) advice, and we might surmise that the Department was perhaps afraid to tell the minister and government that the reform agenda in the timeframe demanded was not possible.

This is an issue of much broader import than program administration in the Indigenous affairs portfolio, and goes to the increasing politicisation of senior levels of the APS, not in a partisan sense, but in the sense that it is career suicide for a senior public servant to say ‘no Minister that is not possible’. This increased ‘politicisation’ of the bureaucracy strengthens the arguments for stronger independent checks and balances elsewhere in the systems of public policy and administration.

The second issue goes to the notion of ministerial responsibility. It is appalling that no-one appears prepared to take responsibility for what is an extraordinary litany of incompetence and ineffective program implementation. Of course the ANAO can only asses what is recorded and it may well be that the Department was verbally warning the Minister of the risks and the need to take corrective action. And of course, once the course is set by the Minister, it is often impossible to turn the clock back. Given the inevitability that the bureaucracy’s advice and relationship with the minister is a ‘black box’, even to auditors, and that the levels of resourcing for agencies are set by governments, there is an extremely strong public interest in the minister being held accountable for the performance of his Department. This is the normal Westminster theory, a notion which appears to be increasingly ignored in practice.

What is particularly concerning in the present case, and unprecedented in my memory, is the Minister’s preparedness to denigrate the ANAO and attack the ANAO conclusions (replicated more diplomatically by the PMC Secretary). This has the effect of eroding the authority and independence of the ANAO and deserves public censure.

The overall outcome of all this is just too cute. The Department did not advise the minister of the risks, so he takes no responsibility. The Secretary claims the program was integral to ‘a very ambitious reform agenda but one that was long overdue in the delivery of Indigenous programs’ and any ‘shortfalls in its processes outlined in the Report and the potential implications arising from the are overstated when seen in the full light of the transition…’, so there is no case for the Department to be held responsible. The Minister claims that as a result ‘of these remarkable changes’ Indigenous people ‘are far better off’, the problems identified by the ANAO are merely of historical significance and in effect have either been fixed or are being fixed. No one takes responsibility.

The information disclosed in the ANAO Report may just be an account of teething problems in the reform of a complex grant program under tight deadlines. But those reforms, driven by the minister, also created a system which created the potential for substantial subversion of normal grant management principles and normal principles of governance, where the Minister could if he so wished, take funding decisions in accordance with whatever whim came to him, could reward favorites, punish enemies, without reasons being recorded, details kept, and all hidden from view and scrutiny. There is no evidence in the ANAO report that this occurred in relation to this program, but the question is: where is the assurance that it didn’t occur? And where is the assurance that it is not occurring today? That is the purpose of good process, record keeping, timely transparency and equal and fair grant management processes.

We might believe that virtually all politicians and ministers are akin to saints, and will never seek to pursue personal or political agendas, but the realist within tells me there will always be a minority who are prepared to opportunistically pursue self-interest and political agendas under the guise of operating in the public interest. And that is why all those with an interest in good governance ought to be concerned with what has been shown to have gone on here.

Personal disclosure: I worked as a ministerial adviser for Minister Macklin from 2008 to 2011, and in the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs from 20011 to 2013.

Evaluation and Income Management Policy: Ten Years On

The Minister for Indigenous Affairs today announced (link here) the allocation of $10m per annum over four years for increased evaluation of Indigenous programs. Evaluation is a fraught business, particularly in Indigenous affairs. It can be highly useful, but can also be an absolute waste of money, particularly if it is used as a camouflage for taking necessary action in the face of real needs.

It is no coincidence that today’s announcement comes on the day of the scheduled release of the ANAO effectiveness audit into the Indigenous Advancement Strategy. I will post a link to that report when it becomes available. Postscript: here is the link

One area where evaluation has been at the centre of the policy debate is income management policy. While there are important issues around the policy of income management in its own right, it also offers us a window into the issues which surround evaluation approaches in Indigenous affairs.

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the introduction of Income Management into Australian social policy. Although a mainstream program, the vast majority of income managed welfare recipients in Australia are Indigenous.

I confess to being vexed regarding the impact of income management to date, its ongoing utility, its policy motivations, and its future usefulness. I previously wrote about it a year ago in this post: Imagining a Better Welfare System: Next Steps for Income Management (Link here). The points I made in that post remain highly relevant today.

So I was pleased to see the publication of a Special Issue of the Australian Journal of Social Issues (Volume 51(4)) devoted to the topic of Income Management (link here). My comments are necessarily limited to key points rather than comprising a comprehensive review. Each of the articles in the volume makes a positive contribution to providing a better understanding of income management, and they deserve to be read in their own right.

The contributors to the volume raise a host of issues, mostly persuasively argued, many following well-worn paths, and virtually all critical of the policy of income management.

The most powerful and now highly relevant article in my view is Rob Bray’s excellent summary account of the various evaluations of income management over the past ten years, (Bray: ‘Seven Years of evaluating income management - what have we learnt?’). Bray was a co-author for the largest and most rigorous of those evaluations, the 2014 evaluation of New Income Management in the NT. The findings of that evaluation were that there is no ‘consistent evidence of income management having a systematic positive impact’, and nor is there ‘evidence to indicate that income management has any effects at the community level, nor that income management, in itself, facilitates long term behavioural change’.

Bray also has a range of interesting comments on the methodological approaches and rigour other evaluations of income management to date. He points to the disjuncture between the views (both favourable and unfavourable to income management) of those subject to income management and the evidence of program success or failure. His point being that these are different things. Bray also discusses the limitations of the program evaluation approach, given that it is solely concerned with what has happened compared to the formal objectives of the program. In relation to this latter point, Bray notes previous research by Altman and Russell which argued that evaluation in Indigenous affairs has become an ‘obfuscating tool’ which is effectively divorced from the issues it seeks to assess, a view which I find difficult to refute. Certainly, it has become the case that evaluations and their findings have become the currency of political debate over income management since the NT Emergency Response.

Nevertheless, Bray goes on to point out that the disjunction between the luke-warm at best evaluation findings on income management and the ‘persistent view within government that the program should be maintained, and indeed expanded’ requires explanation. Unfortunately, while providing ample evidence of the selective interpretation by Ministers and policymakers of the outcomes of the various evaluations of income management, in my view he fails to deliver an adequate answer to his own question.

However a number of the other contributions in the volume either explicitly or implicitly advance proposed explanations.

Marston, Cowling and Bielefeld in their contribution (‘Tensions and contradictions in Australian social policy reform: compulsory income management and the NDIS’) point to the apparent inconsistencies between the provision of choice under the NDIS reforms and the imposition of conditionality under income management, essentially concluding that Australian social policy is characterised by a confused form of ‘authoritarian –liberalism’. In effect they argue that public policy is confused and internally inconsistent. They may well be right, but they also under-emphasise the substantive differences in the intent of disability support and income support.

Lovell in her account of the parliamentary debates around the introduction of the income management legislation (‘The normalisation of income management in Australia: analysis of the parliamentary debates of 2007 and 2009-10’) lays out a range of views from both the major political parties which rationalises income management as a means of addressing passive welfare, reducing welfare dependency, encouraging ‘responsible’ behaviour and ‘self-improvement’, and addressing community dysfunction. Lovell characterises these rationales as elements of a policy designed to create ‘the ideal, ‘active’ neoliberal citizen.

I found Lovell’s analysis not entirely persuasive since the drivers of policy are not necessarily entirely encompassed by the rationales put forward in the Parliament. Nevertheless, she does add texture to the justifications proffered for income management.

An interesting contribution by Bray, Gray, Hand and Katz (‘Social Worker Assessed Vulnerable Income Management’) assesses a minor element of income management, the Vulnerable Welfare Payment Recipients Measure, which involves social worker assessments of vulnerable individuals in determining whether to apply income management. There appear to be benefits for the few people on the scheme, although it may well be that the involvement of social worker support assists in driving those outcomes rather than the program itself. Implicit in the operation of this measure is the ideal or aspirational vision of what income management might become. Yet it is apparent that the bureaucracy and government perceive it to be administratively expensive and effectively dispensable in favour of a more streamlined and automated approaches.

Finally, Altman and Klein in separate articles provide more searing critiques of income management: (Altman: ‘Blind-sided by basics: three perspectives on income management in an Aboriginal community in the NT’; Klein: ‘Neoliberal subjectivities and the behavioural focus on income management’).

The implicit answer to Bray’s question advanced by each of them is that income management is the product of an ideological commitment to market and neoliberal prescriptions which on their face have all the hallmarks of seeking to reshape Indigenous people through ‘behaviour modification’, market incentives, into homo economicus.

Notwithstanding the use of the language and jargon of ‘critical theory’ overtly signalling an ideological commitment to the progressive or left end of the political spectrum, there are important points made by both Altman and Klein which deserve serious consideration and assessment by policymakers.

Altman’s perspective is intuitively more attractive; he argues that income management in itself is only part of the more general exercise of what he terms’ the overarching state project of heightened governmentality in the name of improvement’. Implicit in his argument is that the answer to Bray’s question about the persistence of the Government commitment to income management can be found in the blind commitment of policymakers to this ‘overarching project’.

My own perspective is somewhat different.

I don’t deny that there is a government and policymaker mindset about Indigenous people and communities, and it is not necessarily accurate or well informed. It tends to seek simplistic solutions to what are complex problems, and in this sense I agree with Klein’s conclusion that policy should accept and address social and political complexity much more than it does.

The critics of income management however have allocated extraordinary efforts to parsing and dissecting the policy of income management from every conceivable angle (I am not referring just to the contributors to this volume when I say this). They allocate very little attention to discussing the existence of community violence and dysfunction, indeed, it is as if it doesn’t exist. I don’t deny that governments can frame social circumstances in tendentious ways, but it seems to me at least that the existence of deep-seated disadvantage characterised by violence against women and children, of child protection issues, of substance abuse including alcohol abuse are real issues which deserve attention by governments. Yes they can be framed in ideological ways, but they shouldn’t be ignored.

Just as Klein argues for acknowledgement of social and political complexity on the ground, I would argue for greater acknowledgment of the complexity and challenges of policymaking within government. 

Thus, in terms of income management’s origins, it is impossible to deal with it without dealing with its inclusion as a key measure in the NTER. This was in my view a largely political exercise, aimed squarely at a particular segment of the wider electorate in the lead up to the 2007 election, with conservative ideological underpinnings. Nevertheless, it was also intended by the then Government (however misguidedly) to drive positive change.

The decision in rolling out income management in the NT in 2007 to over-ride the operation of the RDA was always a serious issue, and sent an extremely regressive signal particularly to Indigenous Australians. However, the imposition of income management was arguably substantially outweighed in its impact on Indigenous people by the other more confronting NTER measures: the compulsory acquisitions of community lands, the use of the uniformed ADF, the compulsory health checks and so on.

Once legislated in 2007, with Labor’s support (arguably necessary to neutralise the prospect of a race based election campaign in 2007, but extremely regrettable nevertheless) income management became embedded in the social policy foundations in Australia. Labor, hamstrung by their prior support and their lack of Senate numbers, moved incrementally to reform the program, including to make clear in legislation that the RDA was not set aside and that the scheme was a special measure, and to remove from the ambit of income management aged and disability support pensions.

The advent of so called New Income Management in 2012 placed income management on an independent footing. It was administered from outside the Indigenous affairs bureaucracy as a mainstream program.

Was there a justifiable rationale for the program? In my view, the answer then was yes. It related to the terrifyingly destructive impact of alcohol on those communities. Admittedly, income management was not the only tool available to limit alcohol abuse, but it was important to do all that was possible, using all the policy tools available. In remote Indigenous communities, where a majority of community members of working age were on welfare, the scheme operated to limit the discretionary income available across the community for purchasing alcohol by around 40 percent. Much of the expenditure on alcohol was done outside legal channels, and there were and are few reliable statistics on illegal expenditures.

Whether income management was successful or not is not my point, rather I am arguing that it was worth attempting in an effort to minimise the adverse consequences (including violence against women and children) of alcohol abuse. Welfare is inherently conditional, the ultimate sanction being the threat of ceasing payments, a very real issue across remote Australia at present. Altman is on strong ground however in his observation that there was virtually no planning, no detailed and consultative program design work which predated the roll out of income management in 2007. This merely reinforces the predominance at the time of electoral over policy considerations.

Bray notes in his article that the New Income Management evaluation he was involved in reported:

‘Lack of substantive change was also identified for other community problems, including child outcomes and excessive drinking. Further evidence of any improvement across a diverse set of NT outcomes such as child mortality, education, alcohol-related crime, and hospital admission, was absent’

These results appear determinative, although it is not clear how robust they are, nor the extent to which they disguise intra-community variations in outcomes.  However retrospective justification is not the basis for prospective policy. It seems that ten years on it is time for a root and branch review of income management policy design.

Over time, there have been a swathe of trials and pilots, all with their own program rules etc. It is time they were rationalised and amalgamated into a single universally applicable scheme. In designing a new program, serious consideration needs to be given to the evaluation work undertaken to date. While not definitive, the evaluation conclusions provide a benchmark against which any future model of income management ought to be tested.

The unwillingness of governments to date either to implement universal income management across all welfare recipients nationwide, or to go back and remove it suggests a government and bureaucracy frozen in a spotlight. The shape of such a universal scheme might be similar to or radically different from the schemes currently in operation. For example, it might be a universal voluntary scheme; or a universal scheme based on social worker identification of vulnerable people. But it is time to ditch the trials, set aside the pilots, and commit to a national approach to conditional welfare.

In relation to remote communities, the lessons of the last ten years include that the provision of adequate support services and supporting policy frameworks are crucial in driving positive outcomes. A single program cannot carry the weight of driving positive social outcomes. But more importantly, whether one agrees or disagrees with Altman’s assessment of government motivations, the insight implicit in Altman’s analysis of the state of play in Maningrida is that Indigenous choice is important, and while governments and policymakers might believe that they can use policies (even non-coercive incentives) to shape Indigenous peoples behaviours, it will ultimately be counter-productive.

The formulation of complex social policy to operate in a highly complex social and political settings exhibiting high levels of heterogeneity is no easy task. While policy critique is important and necessary, it seems to me that critics will be more influential if they go some way towards seeing the world from the perspective of policymakers. By the same token, policymakers have an absolute responsibility to seek out and incorporate local and individual perspectives notwithstanding the pressures they face to develop and implement national level policies. In the absence of one or both of these elements, policy dialog will largely be non-existent, and we will all be worse off.

Finally, in the light of today’s announcement of a renewed focus on evaluation in the Indigenous policy domain, it is worth focussing on the extent to which government has responded to the substantial resources allocated to date in evaluating income management policy.

Personal Disclosure: I worked as a ministerial policy adviser to Minister Jenny Macklin from 2008 to 2011, and as a senior officer in the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs  from 2011 to 2013.