On 8 February 2018, the Commonwealth released its response to
the recent report of the Royal Commission which was announced by the Prime Minister
in July 2016 (link
here) following revelation on the ABC 4Corners program. The Prime Minister,
Minister for Social Security, and Minister for Indigenous Affairs issued a
media release (link
here). Carriage of the response is with the DSS. Here
is a link to the Commonwealth’s response.
The Commonwealth has responded to 28 of the Commission’s
226 recommendations which relate to or involve Commonwealth action.
The Ministers’ media release stated (in part):
The Commonwealth Government
will focus on improved national leadership and the coordination of early
intervention for at-risk children in its response to the Royal Commission into
the Protection and Detention of Children in the Northern Territory…
While the majority of the
findings and recommendations are matters for the Northern Territory Government,
which has responsibility for child protection and youth justice systems, there
are a number of recommendations that solely or partially relate to the
Commonwealth and we are committed to
taking action where appropriate.
The Commonwealth invests $790
million of the Indigenous Advancement Strategy (IAS) into the Northern Territory,
including one third of the Community and Safety Programme funding under the
IAS. The Commission found the issue is not a lack of funding, rather, it is the
lack of coordination and understanding of how that money is spent and what
outcomes are being achieved…(emphasis added)
I propose to limit my commentary to a small number of
issues rather than attempt a comprehensive analysis of the Commonwealth
response. The response groups the 28 recommendations into 20 groups, and the
responses break down as follows:
Supported 3
Supported in principle 12
Noted 3
Not supported 2
The
reliance on the ‘support in principle’ approach is worrying as it allows the Government
to appear supportive without necessarily committing to actioning the
recommendations. This is the equivalent of the formulation utilised in the media
release: ‘we are committed
to taking action where appropriate’.
There
are a number of recommendations relating to the effectiveness of program
expenditure in the areas relating to children’s services, in particular recommendations
6.1, and 15.4.
Recommendation
6.1 suggests the Productivity Commission undertake a review and audit of
Commonwealth expenditure in the Northern Territory in the area of family and
children’s services relevant to the prevention of harm to children. The review
should address coordination of programs, funding agreements and selection of
service providers, service outputs and evaluations. The response was to support
in-principle, with the addition of Northern Territory government expenditure to
the review.
While a
Productivity Commission review would no doubt be extremely useful, part of the
ongoing underlying problem necessitating such an ad hoc review is that the Commonwealth
and the NT fail to produce comprehensive information on what they spend and
where, updated quarterly or even annually.
So for
example, the Commonwealth Ministers’ media release mentions that the ‘Commonwealth invests $790 million of
the Indigenous Advancement Strategy (IAS) into the Northern Territory,
including one third of the Community and Safety Programme funding under the IAS’.
Yet this information is not available on the PMC website (and of course, nor is
any comprehensive and accessible expenditure information relevant to other
jurisdictions or other functional responsibilities. This is a simple fix which
would go a long way to meeting the Royal Commission’s aspiration that Governments
work in partnership with Indigenous communities. This is not possible when Governments
tightly control access to all information on investment priorities.
Recommendation
15.4 relates to rationalising the funding of medical services in prisons by
applying the Medicare Benefits and Pharmaceutical Benefits arrangements to the
provision of health services within youth detention facilities, yet the Commonwealth
has rejected this on the spurious basis that to accept the recommendation would
lead to double dipping. The Commonwealth could make an adjustment to state
funding simply by changing the instructions to the Grants Commission, but given
its decision to not support the recommendation, it appears content to leave arrangements
in place which appear to build in a structural incentive for institutions to underprovide
medical services to inmates. This is poor policy.
A second set
of recommendations relate to place based service provision. The Commonwealth
has supported them in principle, making the comment:
Further consideration of implementation details is
required, including clarifying the role of the Commonwealth and NT Governments.
The importance of place based service provision has
been widely appreciated amongst policymakers for more than two decades, but it
has been consistently honoured in the breach by the Commonwealth, perhaps the
most obvious example being the slow or non-existent progress of the government’s
Empowered Communities strategy. The Government’s ‘in-principle’ support for
this recommendation provides very little assurance that anything will change in
the near future. Again this prevarication is poor policy.
Finally, there are a series of recommendations on
evaluation, ostensibly a major priority of the Commonwealth. So recommendation
43 includes:
43.1 Specific evaluation plans be established as a
mandatory component of policy and program development, and as a means of
assessing effective implementation of the Commission’s recommendations.
43.2 Outcomes from evaluation be used to establish a local
evidence base to support the existence and funding of policies and programs.
The Government’s response is
Support
in-principle, subject to further consultation. Further consideration of implementation
details is required for each of these recommendations. Some data collection and
analysis would require agreement of all states and territories, and would need
to be aligned with existing projects.
This is plainly so heavily caveated as to be meaningless. If
the Commonwealth was serious about national leadership and coordination (as
mentioned in their media release), they would cut through these sorts of issues
and commit to action. Instead, the gap between rhetoric and substance appears
to be as wide as ever. A suggestion which appears to be good policy is being
lined up for subversion and non-implementation once the spotlight of attention
moves on.
There is much more which might be examined and analysed,
but the drift is clear. After establishing the Royal Commission, funding it to
the tune of over $50m, one would hope that the Commonwealth Government would
give serious attention to responding with substantive proposals for changing
the system which led to the royal commission in the first place. Instead, we
get prevarication and obfuscation, disguised as concern and attention to
detail.
If the Government were serious about addressing these
issues, they would commit to establishing a parliamentary committee to be
established in a year’s time to examine progress in implementing the Royal Commission’s
recommendations.
The lack of transparency in the Indigenous affairs policy domain
is a major contributor to community misunderstanding, raised and dashed
expectations, and poor policy and program effectiveness. It is easily fixed,
but potentially politically inconvenient. Fixing it would require real national
leadership.
No comments:
Post a Comment