A brief comment on the new National Indigenous Australians Agency

O brave new world

That has such people in’t

The Tempest, Act 5, scene 1

On 12 June 2019, the Prime Minister announced that the current Indigenous Affairs Group within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) would become a standalone agency within the PMC portfolio from 1 July (link here).

The order establishing the agency as an Executive Agency under the Public Service Act (link here) sets out its functions. I have set out the order in full so as to spell out those functions:

Order to Establish the National Indigenous Australians Agency as an Executive Agency

I, General the Honourable Sir Peter Cosgrove AK MC (Ret’d), Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, acting with the advice of the Federal Executive Council and under section 65 of the Public Service Act 1999:

(a)        establish the National Indigenous Australians Agency as an Executive Agency;

(b)        allocate the name National Indigenous Australians Agency to the Executive Agency;

(c)        allocate the name Chief Executive Officer to the Head of the Executive Agency;

(d)       identify the Minister for Indigenous Australians as the Minister responsible for the Executive Agency;

(e)        specify the functions of the National Indigenous Australians Agency be as follows:

                            i.       to lead and coordinate Commonwealth policy development, program design and implementation and service delivery for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people;

                          ii.       to provide advice to the Prime Minister and the Minister for Indigenous Australians on whole-of-government priorities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people;

                        iii.       to lead and coordinate the development and implementation of Australia’s Closing the Gap targets in partnership with Indigenous Australians;

                        iv.       to lead Commonwealth activities to promote reconciliation;

                          v.       to build and maintain effective partnerships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, state and territory governments and other relevant stakeholders to inform whole-of-government priorities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and enable policies, programs and services to be tailored to the unique needs of communities;

                        vi.       to design, consult on and coordinate the delivery of community development employment projects;

                      vii.       to analyse and monitor the effectiveness of programs and services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, including programs and services delivered by bodies other than the Agency;

                    viii.       to coordinate Indigenous portfolio agencies and advance a whole-of-government approach to improving the lives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people; and

                        ix.       to undertake other tasks the Prime Minister and the Minister require from time to time.

This Order will commence on 1 July 2019.

Dated    29th May 2019                            

Andrew Podger, an ex-senior bureaucrat and undoubtedly one of the most experienced and astute observers of the Australian public sector, published a short piece last week on the blog Pearls and Irritations (link here to the full article). He made a number of comments on the changes to government structures following the election including the new Indigenous affairs arrangements. I have set out the relevant comments below. I have not included a number of observations he made about other potential executive agencies which amplify his argument.

New structures

An interesting aspect of how the Second Morrison Government is to work with the public service concerns the new service delivery arrangements the PM mentioned when announcing the ministry last week. The new Administrative Arrangements Order issued on Wednesday clarified that the new arrangements do not involve as radical a restructuring as the initial announcement suggested. Services Australia will not be a new agency but essentially the former Department of Human Services with a new name. But the new National Indigenous Australians Agency seems likely to be an executive agency under the Public Service Act operating within the PM&C portfolio.

There are potential advantages in having service delivery agencies separate from policy departments. This can allow them to focus on their clients, looking mostly ‘downwards and outwards’, while meeting performance targets agreed with portfolio departments and their ministers; those departments would then have primary responsibility for ‘looking upwards’ to serve ministers. Such agencies must work in partnership with the policy departments and be directly accountable to ministers but their main energies can be devoted to the task of efficient and effective service delivery, exercising the authority devolved to them. Properly managed, this can lead to efficiencies,  higher quality services and greater responsiveness to clients…

…I am pleased, however, about the new National Indigenous Australians Agency though there is as yet no clarity about its governance or its relationship with PM&C. Will its minister (Ken Wyatt who is in Cabinet) be advised by the agency or PM&C or both? If, in practice, the agency is the primary adviser of the minister, the advantages of a degree of independence to focus on service delivery may be diluted. Again, this might be avoided if the minister focuses primarily on helping the agency get the resources it needs, helping it foster close relationships with Indigenous communities and giving it real influence over the other arms of government delivering services to Indigenous Australians.

The Governor General’s Order makes clear that the new Agency will advise both the Minister and the Prime Minister on Indigenous issues (though of course this won’t prevent DPMC from independently advising the Prime Minister (and perhaps even the Indigenous Australians Minister) when the need arises.

There are a number of interesting and even intriguing points which emerge from the functions outlined in the Order.

First, the Order gives the Agency formal responsibility across the Commonwealth for the development and implementation of policies and programs related to Indigenous Australians.

Second, the Order gives the Agency the responsibility for monitoring the effectiveness of Indigenous related programs and services across the Commonwealth. Yet the recent ANAO report on evaluation of Indigenous programs by DPMC provides a heavily qualified report card on DPMC’s role in this area in recent years, and the Treasurer recently requested the Productivity Commission to develop an evaluation framework for Indigenous related programs across the Commonwealth. My next blog post will analyse both those initiatives in greater detail; suffice to say here that there appears to be a degree of overlap in responsibilities in this area emerging, and on the evidence in the ANAO report, the new Agency will need to rapidly upgrade its evaluation and monitoring capabilities.

Third, in paragraph (v), the functions explicitly include refence to enabling  ‘policies, programs and services to be tailored to the unique needs of communities’. This is a welcome acknowledgement of both the heterogeneity of First Nations peoples and the risks of insisting that ‘one size fits all’ policies and programs are inevitable or imperative in the Indigenous policy domain.  

Fourth, the reference in paragraph (vi) to ‘design, consult on and coordinate the delivery of community development employment projects’ is a reference to the former CDEP program which was contentiously dismantled and ultimately abolished in 2013. I suspect this is a ‘cut and paste’ error from a previous Administrative Arrangements Order, rather than presaging a return to the former CDEP program. However, the fact that the error made it all the way into the Governor General’s Order provides a window into the coordination challenges facing the new Agency, and perhaps into the degree to which expertise and corporate knowledge has been hollowed out in recent years.

Additionally, issues that will loom large for the Minister and new Agency include:

·       the future structure and role of the Agency’s regional network;

·       the Agency’s preparedness to use its paragraph (vi) functions to proactively explore greater use of place based programs and service delivery;

·       the Agency’s actual influence within the Commonwealth and its capacity to persuade other Commonwealth departments and agencies to harmonise and coordinate activities which impact on First Nations’ concerns and aspirations;

·       the Minister’s and Agency’s preparedness to engage proactively and forcefully with the states and territories on Indigenous policy issues, and to the extent that they do so, their capacity to influence and persuade; and

·       the preparedness of ERC and the Cabinet to recognise and acknowledge that one of the down sides of being a small stand-alone agency is that there are much more limited opportunities for financial offsets or savings to be found when arguing for new program initiatives (one of the normal budget rules in relation to new policy).

Conclusion

The optimal structure and design of the public sector invariably involves trade-offs and compromise. Notwithstanding the substantial challenges that will face the new Minister and new Agency, on balance, I consider the new structural arrangements to be a positive step. They retain a foothold within the Prime Ministers portfolio and thus at least some scope to exercise whole of government influence, and they set up a structure which at its best will allow the (re)development of greater corporate knowledge, and provide for a degree of policy autonomy especially for the Minister. Risks and challenges abound, but it seems to me that with a new Minister and new structural arrangements, we have at least the opportunity for a new approaches, new priorities and new relationships.

If I had to identify the changes that I am hoping for and see as important for a successful reset of Indigenous policies, it would be a commitment to focus on substance rather than rhetoric, action rather than procrastination, and open communication rather than obfuscation and dissimulation. The new Indigenous portfolio arrangements provide a potential foundation for just such a positive and visionary policy re-set.