Policymaking in a maelstrom: preliminary thoughts on the longer term implications of the current crises

This world to me is as a lasting storm

Pericles Act 4, scene 1

What are the implications of the current crises for Indigenous policy in the future? At a national level, the current health and economic crises exude uncertainty at multiple levels. Neither governments, their health and economic professionals, nor the citizenry at large have answers to key questions: how long will the crises endure, where will the impacts fall most severely, which demographic cohorts will be most severely affected; what will be the most effective strategies to ameliorate adverse impacts, how will the inevitable trade-offs between competing objectives be managed and determined, and so on and so on.

In this post, I don’t wish to focus on the immediate consequences, risks and even opportunities emerging as a result of the crises. Others are doing this, and I don’t have anything substantive to add.

On the health front, I would point interested readers to the NACCHO web site and their regular updates on the virus (link here). See also recent articles from The Conversation focussed on the health implications of the crisis  (link here) and some economic implications of the crisis (link here).

On the economic front, the Treasury web site has a succinct and accessible document outlining the economic consequences of the Covid19 pandemic and the Federal Government’s most recent response (link here) which they estimate at $189 bn over the forward estimates.

At the macro/mainstream level, governments have set in train a rolling program of ever stronger health related precautions, including constraints on immigration, internal movement, on assemblies in public places, and on non-essential businesses, and are likely to extend to school closures in the near future. These all have economic costs and consequences, and will over time lose their effectiveness as the virus spreads within the community. They are likely however to be difficult to remove once in place.

The economic measures are designed to counter the macro-economic contraction of demand within the economy and to support the resilience and capabilities of firms  who are being forced to lay off employees and reduce or cease trading activities.

While huge in historical terms, the size of this intervention is likely to rise over the coming months. For example, it seems likely that the Government will have to step in to further support or effectively nationalise some or all of the nation’s airlines.

It is clear that notwithstanding the government’s intervention, the nation is facing a recession this year. What is unclear is just how deep and how prolonged it will be. A prolonged recession will itself have severe social and health costs for the nation, including perhaps increased mortality over the ensuing years, although there will be no obvious link between economic contraction and individual morbidity and mortality outcomes. Intuitively, these hidden costs and ramifications are most likely to fall on the vulnerable within the Australian community.

What is also clear is that the nation’s policymakers have a gargantuan and once in a generation policy challenge on their plate. The politicians among them have an additional side dish of diabolical political challenges to manage. The next federal election is due in mid-2022 (link here), so there is a strong likelihood that the Prime Minister will not call the next election until the first half of 2022.

Given these sudden and largely unforeseen circumstances, the question I wish to explore is what does this mean for Indigenous policy into the future?

Perhaps we should first list the known changes and their likely consequences, before moving to list the potential policy outcomes.

Known changes:

Indigenous communities and citizens are more likely to be vulnerable to the virus, and to have higher adverse morbidity and mortality outcomes . This is particularly the case in remote regions, but urban and regional populations are also vulnerable. Offsetting this is the knowledge that the Indigenous population is comparatively young, with the median age in 2016 being 23 years compared to the mainstream population median age of 34 years (link here). The virus appears less dangerous to younger cohorts.

The economic changes announced to date will allocate an extra $10 bn or so into social security payments over each of the next two years. To the extent that Indigenous citizens are over-represented amongst social security recipients they will benefit more pro-rata than mainstream interests from these allocations. They are likely under-represented in small businesses and will thus benefit less pro-rata than mainstream interests. Without a detailed study, the ultimate incidence of the stimulus in relation to Indigenous interests is unclear; however it does not appear that economically vulnerable Australians including Indigenous Australians have been given preferential treatment in the stimulus package.

Potential policy changes:

The following points are largely speculative insomuch as the future is fundamentally uncertain, and in current circumstances, even more so. Nevertheless, there seems value in at least considering what might emerge from the current crises in the Indigenous policy domain.

In terms of the Federal Government’s existing (or perhaps more accurately pre-existing) policy agenda, there are three significant policy reform initiatives in train: the development of new Closing the Gap targets in conjunction with COAG and the Coalition of Peaks under a COAG Partnership Agreement (link here); the development of proposals for an Indigenous Voice to Government; and the implementation of a northern Australia policy agenda under the recently signed Northern Australia Indigenous Development Accord (link here). A fourth policy agenda with the potential for significant policy implications is the eventual Government response to the forthcoming Productivity Commission report on an Indigenous Evaluation Strategy (link here). The Commission’s draft report is now scheduled for May 2020 (it was initially to be released in February 2020), to be followed by a final report currently scheduled for October 2020.

So how will each of these policy agendas now play out? My own assessment is that there is likely to be delays across three of the four agendas. Policy reform momentum will stall. The reasons are two-fold: the difficulty in gaining policy attention from policymakers who will be consumed with handling the implications of the health and economic crises; and the difficulty of gaining attention from Indigenous citizens and others as they strive to survive in increasingly difficult circumstances. A third, more cynical, reason worth considering is that governments generally respond to pressure, and in the absence of pressure, prefer the status quo to change. In a crisis, pressure will shift from calls for medium and longer term reform to calls for more immediate action. For all these reasons, the political incentives on the Government will be to focus on managing short term measures, and this will work against finding the time and resources to develop longer term policy reforms.

The Closing the Gap targets may well be the exception; the federal Government has an incentive to substantially shift the policy goalposts this year to avoid the reiteration of ongoing and deep-seated policy failure highlighted in the annual presentation of the report to Parliament. Moreover, the process of policy redesign is well advanced (albeit the details of the discussion have not been made public) and has the support of the national Coalition of Peaks. The Coalition of Peaks will be pushing for the target changes to proceed if they are agreed and perceived to be substantive and positive reforms. In a recent media interview (link here),  Minister Ken Wyatt went on the record confirming that the process remains on track:

Patricia Karvelas: Very briefly, Minister, before we end - the 2020 Close the Gap campaign report has been released today, and it's warned that only systemic reform will make up for the harrowing failure of the last 12 years of government policy on Closing the Gap. It seems to me closing that gap is ever more important as we now deal with the Corona virus. Are you still working to deadline on changing those targets?

Ken Wyatt: Yes, we are. And whilst we're focussing on COVID 19 we're also continuing with business as usual. And this means finalising the targets and then looking at what systemic commitment and change must occur at all levels in order for us to close those gaps. We have to do things differently. [inaudible] Closing the Gap, led by Tom Calma and then endorsed by Prime Minister Rudd, was a great way forward, but we collectively have not seen the systemic reform that would help achieve those gaps and close them.

While both the Government and the Coalition of Peaks appear to see benefit in the refresh process, I am wary and see significant risks as well as opportunities (link here). To date, there is inadequate information in the public domain to enable a close assessment of the likely results of the refresh process.

The other three policy reform agendas appear much less likely to be advanced in a timely fashion.

The process established to develop a National (and locally constituted) Voice to Government (link here) appears cumbersome, with three separate committees tasked to consult and develop proposals over a two phase process. Those Committees will find it difficult to convene over the next three to six months, and even harder to consult communities on the ground. The current schedule suggests that advice will be provided to Government by the end of 2020, with no timeframe on the Government’s own internal deliberations regarding how to proceed. I will be amazed if the Committees advice is ready before mid 2021, and see little prospect of the Government prioritising legislation or executive action to establish such a Voice before the next election.

The Indigenous component of the Government’s northern Australia agenda has been extremely slow to emerge. The Indigenous Reference Group to the Ministerial Forum was appointed in December 2017, and in its most recent meeting communique (link here), noted inter alia,

The IRG provided the Ministerial Forum an update on the extensive work undertaken to investigate access to capital, reform of the northern Australia Indigenous institutional landscape, and improve opportunities to leverage and commercialise the northern Australia Indigenous estate. This will help ensure that Traditional Owners can fully use their land and rights holdings should they choose to support economic development.

While the details of that work are not yet in the public domain, there seems little evidence to date that the Government has been serious about the structural reforms necessary to reshape the institutional and policy landscape in northern Australia to deliver a step change in Indigenous economic development outcomes. The likelihood that this will change in the current crises seems remote, not least because the two ministers who designed this policy architecture (Matt Canavan and Nigel Scullion) are no longer in place. We may see some policy change at the margin, but this would be window dressing. A close analysis of the Northern Australia Indigenous Development Accord (link here), the centrepiece of the policy process to date, suggests that it is largely process oriented: compare the proposed outcomes in clause 15, with the detailed outputs in the attached Implementation Plan. It seems likely that the IRG will continue to meet and the jurisdictional parties to the Accord will continue to ‘scope options’ and ‘engage constructively’ in working parties and the like, but actual and tangible reforms are unlikely this side of the next election.

On evaluation of Indigenous policies, the Treasurer requested the Productivity Commission to

develop a whole-of-government evaluation strategy for policies and programs affecting Indigenous Australians. The Commission will also review the performance of agencies against the strategy over time, focusing on potential improvements and on lessons that may have broader application for all governments.

Policy and program evaluation is a complex area, and I cannot do it justice here. See this previous post (link here). I expect the Commission will produce a detailed and comprehensive report, but it seems unlikely that the Government will set aside the policy resources required to institute the far reaching reforms to evaluation practice required to improve policy and program performance across the board in a time of ongoing crises. Nor do I think it is likely that the current Government will mandate ongoing Productivity Commission reviews of all agencies evaluations strategies. Let’s wait and see what the Commission recommends. The more robust its recommendations, the more likely that the Government will sit on the report and do nothing or little. In such circumstances, the existence of interrelated health and economic crises will be the perfect excuse for inaction.

It is also worth considering some ‘blue sky’ Indigenous policy ramifications of the dual crises we currently face.

On Constitutional recognition, the Government has been consistently sceptical of anything with more than symbolic content. The likelihood of any constitutional change agenda emerging over the next two years appears close to zero. Indeed, the likelihood of a post-election / post-2022 constitutional reform agenda emerging must be assessed as much lower today than may have been the case two months ago.

In terms of broad policy focus in the Indigenous domain, the stars appear to be aligning for a shift towards a much greater focus on Indigenous health issues. The Minister, Ken Wyatt has a long background in the health sector. NACCHO, the peak body for Indigenous medical services is the most effective peak body and First Nations advocacy body in the nation, ably led by Pat Turner, an experienced ex-public servant, who herself has a strong background in health sector issues. And of course, the political prominence of the impact of the Covid19 virus will propel greater focus on wider health risks and issues for Indigenous citizens, particularly vulnerable cohorts within the Indigenous community.

Of course, the corollary of a shift towards health will be shift away form focussing on other non-health policy sectors (such as land rights / native title).

More speculatively, I suspect that the impact of the dual crises, combined with the changing demographic shape of the Indigenous population, will accelerate the importance of mainstream programs in the lives of First Nations citizens. To the extent that Indigenous specific policy agendas are left to languish, this will merely serve to reinforce this trend.

While Government rhetoric will not necessarily reflect this, the reality is that mainstream institutions (the social security system; the justice system; the child protection system; the disability support system; the education system; the telecommunications system; the health system and the nation’s finance system) already dominate and shape the lives of Indigenous citizens much more than Indigenous specific policies and programs. Indigenous advocacy is yet to appreciate this reality, and if, as I suspect, the current crises represent a critical juncture which strengthen radically the influence of mainstream institutions across the Indigenous policy domain, it will become even more important that Indigenous leaders and peak bodies build the capability to advocate across mainstream policy domains, and seek out common cause with like minded mainstream advocacy bodies.

It is worth reminding ourselves that these crises will inevitably have uncertain outcomes, and the policy responses of Governments, both in the short and medium terms, will have unanticipated consequences. At the micro level, the social and health costs of mental anguish will likely be significant across the whole community. At the macro level, the potential for social and political breakdown and unrest will rise. Vulnerable members of the community (among whom First Nations citizens are over-represented) will be particularly at risk in these uncertain times. The impacts of structural inequality and exclusion are magnified in times of crisis.

Finally, it would be remiss of me if I did not turn my gaze backward rather than forward. In particular, should governments have given more attention to the risks of a pandemic, and more generally to the regularity of crises. Or to put it another way, when I stated above that the pandemic was unforeseen, was that in fact a reflection of poor and ineffective governance in relation to a foreseeable and inevitable eventuality. Part of the issue is that public policies are most effective when they operate as a neutral arbiter between competing interests, including in relation to the risk of temporal trade-offs. To the extent that policy is captured by special interests, it becomes much less attuned to managing for wider societal risks.

In the Indigenous policy domain (and beyond), this is reflected in a shift over the past two decades to privileging corporate over community interests in terms of program delivery (eg in the realm of social security). In turn, this opens up service delivery gaps when markets fail (eg in the shallow coverage of providers within the disability sector).

One outcome of the current crises is that a much stronger light will be shone on the risks and failures of recent policy settings in Indigenous affairs (and beyond). Whether future governments will have the independence, vision and political will to change course seems to me to be a moot point. One of the comparative advantages First Nations communities and citizens have is that there is widespread acknowledgement amongst the wider community and policymakers that they do have particular and unique needs and aspirations. Looking forward, this is a cause for hope that policy reforms and necessary reversals may be considered, notwithstanding the myriad reasons for pessimism in what appears to be a once in a century social, health, economic and political maelstrom.

Child protection: the invisible pandemic

A wretched soul bruised with adversity,

We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;

But were we burdened with like weight of pain,

As much, or more, we should ourselves complain.

Comedy of Errors, Act 2, scene 1

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare recently released their report Child protection Australia 2018–19 (link here). I have not had a chance to make a close examination, but even a cursory scan makes for devastating reading.

This national snapshot comes in the wake of multiple reports and reviews over many years. To take just one of the many, in October 2019, Professor Megan Davis finalised a comprehensive report (link here) for the NSW Government. Family is Culture: Independent review of Aboriginal children and young people in out of home care is the most wide-ranging and comprehensive report on Indigenous child protection issues in Australia for at least a decade. It is full of detailed analysis and statistics, along with suggestions for reform. Professor Davis makes 125 recommendations. A particular focus of Davis’ analysis is the need to address the structural issues underpinning what is widely acknowledged to be a dysfunctional child protection system seeking to address widespread issues of neglect, abuse and violence within many Indigenous families. I have not had a chance to review implementation progress, however it seems unlikely that there has been adequate time for a considered NSW response to date. The risk that the NSW Government will do nothing, or very little, appears very high, as along with so many of these reports, the Davis report gained very little media coverage and has had very little public impact. Moreover, it has been overtaken by emergencies such as the bush fires and now the Covid 19 pandemic that inevitably consume all the available political oxygen.

The Davis report came hard on the heels of a report by former Commonwealth public servant David Tune into the mainstream child protection system in NSW. Neil Westbury and I made a detailed study of the Tune Report in our Policy Insights Paper published by CAEPR in March 2019, Overcoming Indigenous exclusion: very hard, plenty humbug; see pages 55-57 (link here).

I don’t wish to attempt to make a detailed assessment of the core issues arising from these reports here; interested readers should go to the publications themselves. I do however wish to make an important policy point: the extraordinary levels of out of home care in NSW (and other urban and regional jurisdictions) is demonstrable proof that structural exclusion is an issue for Indigenous citizens across the whole nation, and not just in remote regions.

Rather than seek to re-analyse and regurgitate insights proposed by others over time, I thought I would merely reproduce some selected quotations from the AIHW Report before drawing some very high level conclusions. I make no claim to comprehensiveness in doing this, my purpose is merely to bring home to readers just how dire is the situation of First Nations children in this country.

Selected extracts of the AIHW report

From the Summary:

• 1 in 6 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children received child protection services. 12,600 Indigenous children were the subject of a substantiation in 2018–19. The most common type of substantiated abuse was emotional abuse (47%) followed by neglect (31%).

• 1 in 18 Indigenous children (around 18,000) were in out-of-home care at 30 June 2019, two-thirds (64%) of whom were living with relatives, kin or other Indigenous caregivers.

Page 15: In 2018–19, 51,500 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children received child protection services, a rate of 156 per 1,000 Indigenous children. This was almost 8 times the rate for non-Indigenous children (21 per 1,000 non-Indigenous children).

Page 17: The number of Indigenous children receiving child protection services rose between 2014–15 and 2018–19, from 42,900 to 51,500. This was reflected in the rate, which rose from 134 to 156 per 1,000 Indigenous children in the same period. For non-Indigenous children the rates have remained relatively steady at 21 per 1,000 non-Indigenous children between 2014–15 and 2018–19, with minor fluctuations during the period.

Page 25: Children from geographically remote areas had the highest rates of substantiations—children from Very remote areas (20 per 1,000 children) were almost 3 times as likely as those from Major cities (7 per 1,000) to be the subject of a substantiation (Figure 3.6). Of the children who were the subject of a substantiation from Remote and Very Remote areas, 88% were Indigenous. In Major cities only 16% of children subject to substantiations were Indigenous.

Page 27: In 2018–19, 12,600 Indigenous children were the subject of a substantiation. This is a rate of 38 per 1,000—6 times the rate of non-Indigenous children (6 per 1,000). This is consistent with findings for previous years.

Page 41: At 30 June 2019, 37% (21,900) of children on care and protection orders were Indigenous. Of these children, 70% (15,300) were on guardianship or custody orders. The rate of Indigenous children on orders was 66 per 1,000 Indigenous children, 9 times the rate for non-Indigenous children (7 per 1,000). The rate of Indigenous children on orders was higher than that for non-Indigenous children across all jurisdictions, with rate ratios varying across jurisdictions.

Page 43: From 30 June 2015 to 30 June 2019, the rate of children aged 0–17 on care and protection orders rose from 9 to 11 per 1,000 children. Over the 5-year period, the number of Indigenous children on care and protection orders rose steadily, from 16,900 on 30 June 2015 to 21,900 on 30 June 2019, with rates rising from 53 to 66 per 1,000 Indigenous children.

Page 49: In 2018–19, about 4,300 Indigenous children were admitted to out-of-home care at a rate of 13 per 1,000 Indigenous children, nearly 9 times the rate for non-Indigenous children (1.5 per 1,000 non‑Indigenous children). Similar differences in rates of admission to out-of-home care for Indigenous and non-Indigenous children were evident across all age groups.

Page 52: At 30 June 2019, more than half (54%) of the children in out-of-home care lived in Major cities, and 42% lived in Inner regional and Outer regional areas (based on postcode of living arrangement).

The rates for children in Remote and Very remote areas were twice that of those in Major cities for children living in out-of-home care at 30 June 2019. The rates of Indigenous children in out-of-home care were much higher across all remoteness areas than the rates for non-Indigenous children.

Indigenous children living in Major cities were 14 times as likely as non-Indigenous children in Major cities to be in out-of-home care at 30 June—62 per 1,000 Indigenous children compared with 4 per 1,000 non-Indigenous children.

Indigenous children living in Remote and Very remote areas were 10 times as likely as non-Indigenous children to be in out-of-home care.

Page 53: At 30 June 2019, about 18,000 Indigenous children were in out-of-home care—a rate of 54 per 1,000 Indigenous children, which was nearly 11 times the rate for non-Indigenous children. This difference between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children was evident across all age groups.

Policy Implications

There are a range of potential responses to this information by policymakers. The first approach, perhaps the most likely, and the easiest in the short term, is to just ignore this situation and hope a political scandal or media revelation does not emerge in the near future.

A second possible approach would be to seek to ascertain the underlying causes of the extraordinary rates of out of home care and then adopt policies and programs designed to mitigate and ameliorate those causes. Such an approach is not as straightforward as might be imagined, since the potential causes are multiple, are potentially legacies of previous policies , and are potentially subject to debate and  argument (even within the policymaking community). Moreover, the potential political support of the measures required to address those causes is often non-existent (either out of ignorance or self-interest), and even were it to exist, the implementation capacity of governments in these complex cross-cultural domains is weak and problematic.

A third approach, that I find intuitively attractive, but is likely to be the least likely approach of policymakers, is to ramp up considerable the policy focus and attention on the issue, allocate substantially more resources including to supporting foster families and, and give the issue more profile in policy contexts. This would require political leadership and commitment, and would necessarily be guided by the broad thrust of the Indigenous community’s insights and concerns, for which Professor Davis’ analysis and recommendations including her calls for greater Indigenous involvement in the child protection system might be considered a proxy. Of course, she correctly articulated the case for broader contextual reforms in the Indigenous policy space, and this too will be essential. My point is that there is a case for a crisis response to the child protection pandemic that will be contingent on wider reforms, but should be pursued on its own terms nevertheless.

I have made a very direct link to the need for a pandemic response not merely as a rhetorical device. It is worth thinking about the child protection statistics, and then making the imaginative leap to try to understand what they mean for real children and families. Their worlds are in turmoil before the child protection system is engaged, but that turmoil continues both during and afterwards. Moreover, the levels of need for child protection services are extraordinary, suggesting that the reverberations of poor policy will spread far and wide. Like the operation of the health system in a pandemic, the effectiveness of the operation of the child protection system in mitigating family violence, rebalancing lives, and creating a foundation upon which children can build a future life will have life and death consequences. Future rates of drug use, domestic violence, incarceration, psychological health, and employment are all impacted by individuals’ experience in their childhood years. Let me repeat: the child protection policy domain has life and death consequences for First Nations peoples.

Of course, it is instructive that when a health crisis such as Covid 19 hits the wider community, creating an associated economic crisis, governments are prepared to adopt the third approach above, focussed on moving quickly to acknowledge the crisis and throw untold resources (‘whatever it takes’) at mitigating it including across the health, finance, immigration and social security sectors. As I write this, the media is reporting that the Government is preparing a massive second stage economic stimulus package in excess of $50bn. Yet Governments have been unwilling to adopt an equivalent approach to the long standing, and ongoing child protection crisis engulfing Indigenous Australia. The answer to the question: ‘why this continues to be so?’ would provide the most persuasive insight into the underlying structural causes of the longstanding child protection crisis in Indigenous Australia.

Indigenous income inequality: wider ramifications

Well, whiles I am a beggar, I will rail,

And say there is no sin but to be rich;

And being rich, my virtue then shall be

To say there is no vice but beggary

King John Act 2, scene 1, 593-6

I recently came across (h/t Marginal Revolution) an interesting article on a World Bank Blog by World Bank researchers Francisco Ferreira and Marta Schoch (link here). Their short post repays reading, including for the enlightening graphs.

Their article, which is focused on the relationship between inequality and social unrest in Latin America, raises interesting implications that Australian policymakers dealing with Indigenous public policy should consider.

As the authors point out, widespread social unrest has increased across the globe in recent years, but has been particularly intense in Latin America.

The core of their argument is that the recent outbreak of mass social unrest in Latin America is not correlated with increasing income inequality, as in fact income inequality has been declining for the last two decades and the middle class cohort measured by income has been increasing. They also point out that notwithstanding the declines in inequality, levels of income inequality remain at ‘obscene’ levels and across Latin America are the highest in the world.

Instead, they hypothesise that it is ongoing inequality of opportunity that is fuelling social unrest. They point to data that suggests that Latin America (along with many African nations) has the highest levels of inequality of opportunity globally. They conclude that the protesters cross Latin America are in fact demanding

a break with the old Latin American social contract through which elites pay lower taxes (except in Argentina and Brazil) and opt out of low-quality public services, hoarding opportunity through private schools and kindergartens, private health insurance schemes and clinics, and better pension systems than those available to most.  In that sense, the 2019 protests in Chile and Colombia are related to inequality after all: inequality of opportunity preserved by an oligarchic social contract. 

Another way to frame this hypothesis, it seems to me, is that it reflects the failure of governments and national economies to meet the economic expectations of rising middle classes.

Of course, Latin America is not Australia. We have much greater equality of opportunity than Latin American nations (see figure 3 in the Ferreira and Schoch blog post). And our levels of income inequality are much less than in Latin America. The World Inequality Database (link here) suggests that while Brasil’s top one percent earn around 25 percent of national income, in Australia the top one percent earn around 9 percent. Interestingly however, while income inequality (measured by the share of income earned by the top one percent) has been falling across Latin America over the past two decades, in Australia it has doubled. See for example this article in the Treasury Economic Roundup from 2013 (link here), particularly fig. 8.

The issue of income inequality amongst Indigenous citizens is complex for a range of reasons, including increased rates of self-identification in urban and regional areas, and supplementary access to non-monetary forms of income in remote and very remote areas. Nevertheless, it is worth outlining the basics. The best and most recent account is to be found in Biddle and Markham’s 2018 CAEPR Census paper ‘Income, Poverty and Income Inequality’ (link here), particularly from page 20 on. Again, interested readers will benefit from reading the article in full.

Their paper analysed data from three censuses, in 2006, 2011 and 2016.

As outlined in the Abstract to their paper, key findings include:

a growing divergence between the incomes of Indigenous people in urban areas and remote areas. Although Indigenous incomes are growing steadily in urban areas, …median disposable equivalised household income in very remote areas fell …Indigenous cash poverty rates in very remote areas rose from 46.9% in 2011 to 53.4% in 2016. During this period, poverty rates in urban areas continued to fall, reaching 24.4% in 2016. Finally, changes in the difference in the incomes of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians followed a similar pattern, with income gaps shrinking in urban areas while growing rapidly in very remote areas. Although the increased incomes in urban and regional areas – where the majority of the Indigenous population lives – should be welcomed, this paper highlights a great divergence in the material circumstances of the Indigenous population across Australia. Urgent policy action is required to ameliorate the growing prevalence of poverty among Indigenous people in very remote Australia.

While their paper is rich in data and insights, I wish to emphasise three of the most policy relevant insights their analysis reveals:

1.    Compared to non-Indigenous citizens, Indigenous citizens are over-represented in lower income deciles (see fig. 17 and page 23);

2.    There is a significant divergence between income levels of remote and very remote Indigenous citizens versus the income levels of regional and urban Indigenous citizens (see fig. 17 and page 23), and

3.    While the income gap between Indigenous and mainstream citizens is very slowly reducing, it continues to worsen in the bottom half of the Indigenous population. This divergence largely maps on to the urban / remote divide.

Or to quote Biddle and Markham directly (refer page 33):

For the first time that we are aware of, more than half of the Indigenous population in very remote Australia was in income poverty, with rates in most very remote regions well above 50% in 2016. Indigenous incomes in very remote areas fell further behind non-Indigenous incomes, with the median Indigenous income in these areas averaging just 44% of the median non-Indigenous income. The structural causes of this increase in poverty require urgent action (emphasis added).

Their final paragraph is also worth quoting (refer page 34):

One final finding of note relates to income inequality within the Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations. This paper is the first of which the authors are aware to observe that incomes are distributed less equally among the Indigenous population than among the non-Indigenous population… this finding underscores the diversity of outcomes within the Indigenous population. This Census Paper has reported both a cash impoverishment of Indigenous people in remote regions and at the bottom end of the income distribution, and the continued growth of Indigenous incomes in urban areas. There is an urgent, clear policy imperative to ameliorate the former while promoting the latter.

Social unrest is not unknown in Indigenous Australia, but widespread social unrest amongst Indigenous citizens directed against governments is quite rare. Over the past four decades, unrest, demonstrations and riots have occurred in both larger urban centres and remote regions. In the years before 2000, they were often political in nature, related to activism in favour of land rights, or responses to particular acts of police violence. Over the past two decades, most instances of social unrest have occurred in remote Australia, but they have generally been localised in particular communities. Examples include violent conflict between youth gangs in Wadeye in the period 2007 to recent times, a major split and some associated violence between family/clan groups in Yuendumu in 2010, and more recent unrest, and regular outbreaks of rioting and violence in Aurukun over the past decade, including this year.

My intuitive sense is that in regional and urban Australia the quantity and intensity of social unrest has gradually declined over the past two decades. This may accord with Biddle and Markham’s observation that the levels of income growth amongst Indigenous citizens at the top of the income distribution adds weight to discussion regarding the possible emergence of a middle class amongst urban Indigenous citizens (see page 9). However, in remote Australia, regular outbreaks of unrest appear to have persisted through the past two decades, although the absence of a readily available data set makes any assessment inherently unreliable.

My point is not to collate or outline a comprehensive listing of such occurrences, nor to promote a particular narrative regarding the causes of community violence. I am aware of an extensive anthropological literature on political conflict and violence within traditional Indigenous communities. Rather, my aim is to look to the future, and in particular assess (in a provisional way) the likelihood of ongoing social unrest within Indigenous Australia arising from the hypotheses of the World Bank research.

As noted above, there appears to be a dearth of analysis of the overall levels of social unrest in Indigenous Australia. Raw data in the form of media and police reports of particular community conflicts or riots exist, but these are of variable quality and coverage, not easily accessible, and are likely to provide little insight into the immediate drivers of the unrest. In parallel, there is an increasing reluctance among academic analysts to seek to measure and explain the overall levels of community unrest, perhaps because such analysis is seen to contribute to a ‘deficit narrative’. My own view, however, is that whether or not the causes of community unrest are endogenous or exogenous to Indigenous societies, the existence of such unrest ought to be an issue of policy concern and attention. Indeed, the ongoing existence of overt and in particular violent unrest ought to be seen primarily as a policy failure of government, not as a failure of Indigenous societies, communities or leadership.

Taking the World Bank hypotheses as our starting point, it is immediately obvious that they do not translate to Australia, and in particular not to Indigenous Australia. We have a more robust democratic culture. Moreover, the comparative position of Australia vis a vis most Latin American nations on income inequality and inequality of opportunity is much more egalitarian (see figure 3 in their post). Australia does not have a robust tradition of sustained mass demonstrations against government initiatives, and we might hypothesise that this is a result of our comparative wealth, our comparative economic egalitarianism, and perhaps the long term erosion of union power.

In relation to the position of Indigenous Australians, they benefit from the comparative robustness globally of our national institutions, reflected in lower levels of income inequality and inequality of opportunity. Nevertheless, it is fair to assume that the bulk of these benefits accrue to urban and regional Indigenous citizens.

As Indigenous incomes at the top of the income distribution, and thus the Indigenous ‘middle class’, have grown, the instances of social unrest appear to have dissipated in urban and regional areas. There appears to be little evidence that expectations around greater equality of opportunity are creating greater unrest. In remote areas, income inequality is growing, and we can assume expectations of greater equality of opportunity are either non-existent or also falling. Social unrest continues (albeit most obviously in larger groups of residents), but it is rarely directed at government, and more often might be characterised as either lateral violence or a form of communal anomie.

If anything, the remote Indigenous experience of unrest fits more neatly into a simple hypothesis (at variance from that proposed for Latin America by the World Bank authors cited above). Namely, that there is a correlation between continuing or worsening inequality of income (probably accompanied by absent or falling expectations of equality of opportunity) and continuing and sporadic lateral unrest and violence. We might also hypothesise that the existence of lateral violence is also correlated with higher rates of disengagement (eg poor school attendance), and higher levels of individual violence, domestic violence and suicide. The extraordinary rates of Indigenous incarceration, out of home care for children and youth suicide in remote Australia support such an hypothesis. Of course, the fact that these are also serious issues in regional and urban Indigenous contexts (albeit not at remote levels) correlates with the continuing existence of income inequality in those contexts.

Indeed, the starting point of this post, namely a focus on the comparative experience of social unrest directed against governments, may well be a distraction from the pandemic levels of internally directed unrest and violence within remote Indigenous communities.

So what is the appropriate policy response going forward?

My first point, is that there is a desperate need for greater policy relevant research related to the levels and causes of internally and externally directed social and economic unrest (including lateral violence) within remote Australia. The data and analysis that is currently available is inadequately synthesised into policy relevant conclusions, is highly siloed between disciplines, and is mostly inaccessible to non-specialists. This sort of synthesis research is highly unlikely to occur and be promulgated without some sort of government support and initiative. Moreover, the risk flowing from the absence of such research is that it leaves the way clear for anecdote and social media driven narratives to drive policy initiatives.

Second, we can confidently assert that whatever governments are doing or have done in relation to remote Indigenous policy has not worked. Moreover, a number of existing government policy approaches are likely to make the situation worse. In particular, I would mention the ideological fixation by both major political parties on jobs and commercial development as some sort of panacea. This rhetoric, which is often not backed up by comprehensive or coherent policy nor programs, may be appropriate in relation to urban and regional Indigenous Australia, but hasn’t worked in remote Australia, and wont for the foreseeable future. See John Taylor’s recent demographic research in the Pilbara for evidence of this (link here).

Another disastrous policy is the Community Development Program (CDP) which operates only in remote Australia. CDP incorporates a work for the dole imperative, a minimum 50 % income management element across most of remote Australia, and highly punitive job search and reporting conditions which in turn lead to stratospheric rates of breaching adversely impacts thousands of remote citizens, and is largely invisible to mainstream Australia (link here).

Finally, the deliberate, short-sighted, and deliberately obscured decision by the current federal Government in 2018 to unilaterally discontinue the ten year National Partnership on Remote Indigenous Housing with the states upon its expiry will have seriously adverse long term consequences. The decision effectively cuts Commonwealth funding from $550m per annum to around $100m per annum (for the NT only). It will lead to a reduction in social housing investment for the most disadvantaged citizens in the nation. It will exacerbate existing overcrowding, shorten asset lifespans (leading to a need for further taxpayer investment down the track), and reduce economic opportunities within remote communities (links here and here). Given the likelihood of a national covid-19 pandemic, and its greater impact on the aged and medically vulnerable, the overcrowding crisis in remote Australia may, in a worst case scenario, turn into an avoidable death sentence for many remote citizens over the coming decade.

My third point is that remote Indigenous Australia is facing a largely invisible social and economic crisis. In comparative terms, for remote Indigenous citizens it is as bad as, or worse than, the impact of the Great Depression. There is no single policy initiative that will on its own, or quickly reverse this crisis. What is required is for governments to reverse their current policies of disinvestment and structural neglect, and to establish and sustain a ‘remote new deal’. This would involve working with local and regional Indigenous organisations, to gradually ramp up the levels of government investment and engagement in remote Australia. This would need to be led by the Commonwealth and include the relevant state and territory jurisdictions. It would require a radical reconceptualisation of both policies and programs.

I am under no illusions regarding the likelihood that governments of any persuasion will adopt the policy agenda outlined here in the near or proximate future. The reason is that, like the poor in Latin America, remote Indigenous citizens face an inequitable social contract, a ‘political settlement’ if you will, that does not include them. They do not have the demographic heft to undertake mass protests, or to challenge the existing social contract electorally. Instead, they express their powerlessness in fundamentally self-destructive ways. While not designed to challenge, these outcomes should challenge Australia’s self-perception as a fair and equitable nation, where everybody gets a fair go. There is thus both a moral and economic imperative for fixing these issues. Fixing them is in the national interest. They are not inherently intractable, it is just that we Australians lack the vision, consensus and commitment to address them. Instead we prefer to blame (and punish) the victim, and clothe ourselves in the cloak of fiscal and moral virtue.

Along with our punitive policies on treatment of refugees, and our wilful blindness on the risks of climate change, our treatment of Indigenous citizens, particularly in remote Australia, will stand out as one of the most short-sighted and irresponsible decisions we have taken as a nation in the 21^st century. Like the White Australia policy that shaped our nation for almost a century, that record will represent a permanent blight our history.