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.