Diluting structural reform: the Productivity Commission’s Information Repository on Closing the Gap

 

Angels and ministers of grace defend us!

Be thou a spirit of health or goblin damn'd,

Bring with thee airs from heaven or blasts from hell,

Be thy intents wicked or charitable,

Thou com'st in such a questionable shape…

Hamlet, Act 1, scene 4.

 

 

The Productivity Commission launched a new Closing the Gap Information Repository on 23 June 2021 (link here).

 

On the same day, Minister Wyatt issued a media release (link here) extolling the Commission’s new web site. He claimed (inter alia) it was:

…another step towards delivering on the Government’s commitment to share data and support more informed decision making by all parties to the National Agreement…

…As well as supporting the comprehensive review of progress every three years, this measure includes developing and maintaining a data dashboard (presenting the most up-to-date information available) and an annual data compilation report (a point-in-time snapshot).

“The launch of the Productivity Commission’s information repository provides the evidence base we need to properly monitor progress that all parties are making towards Closing the Gap,” Minister Wyatt said.

“This initiative brings all the data together into one place so that people can readily see the current situation and trajectories of indicators for each target, providing a level of transparency and access that we haven’t had before…

…Minister Wyatt also said the Productivity Commission will play a key role in keeping all parties to the National Agreement accountable.

 

This initiative, which is required by the National Agreement on Closing the Gap (see clauses 116 & 117) (link here), is clearly a welcome and positive development.

 

Nevertheless, it deserves to be subject to critical assessment, as do the Minister’s claims.

 

The Productivity Commission makes plain that the information repository is still under development, and the web site is listed as being a ‘beta’ version, which normally refers to the release of software that has been through internal ‘alpha’ testing, and is now released for wider public testing. The Minister’s media release glosses over this qualification. The information repository’s beta status does mean that any critique made is potentially moot. Of course, the reality is that the dashboard will be constantly evolving as new data and information becomes available.

 

There are two contextual criticisms worth making upfront. First, contrary to the Minister’s comment that the initiative provides a ‘level of transparency and access that we haven’t had before’, we should remind ourselves that the present Government abolished in 2014 a number of oversight and implementation coordination entities including the COAG Reform Council and the Closing the Gap Clearinghouse. Both these mechanisms had important roles in publishing relevant data regarding the performance of the Closing the Gap framework.

 

Second, contrary to the Minister’s assertion that the repository ‘provides the evidence base we need to properly monitor progress’ and that it ‘brings all the data together into one place’, it seems clear that the intention is to limit the data included to social indicators and to provide no comprehensive account of the investments allocated by governments towards meeting the targets. It will be impossible to keep all parties accountable, and to assess responsibility for shortfalls in meeting targets if we are not in a position to see what levels of investment is being allocated to each target by each of the governments involved, and in particular, are able to monitor variations over time in those investment levels.

 

The third issue worth considering is the way the repository ‘dashboard’ treats the four strategic reforms included in the National Agreement on Closing the Gap and signed up to by all jurisdictions. These are not targets which can be measured quantitatively, but are policy reforms that will need to be sustained over time and inevitably involve policy relevant qualitative judgements to assess their effectiveness. Yet the Productivity Commission has taken the bizarre decision to treat them as if they are mere targets, and thus has devised somewhat artificially quantitative indicators that purport to assess performance.

 

The most egregious example relates to Strategic Reform Three which deals with transforming mainstream government organisations, spelt out in paragraphs 58 to 68 of the National Agreement (link here). The Agreement identifies six elements of a successful transformation in clause 59. The dashboard selects a number of indicators that relate to just one of those six elements (racism), invents a target, namely a ‘Decrease in the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have experiences of racism’ with the implicit suggestion that this is the evidence we need to monitor progress in the implementation of the strategic reform, and will keep government parties accountable (to refer once again to the criteria propounded by the Minister). That implicit suggestion is absolutely wrong on both counts.

 

What is most surprising about the Productivity Commission’s approach here is that in its Indigenous Evaluation Strategy (link here) released in October 2020, and not yet responded to by the Government, the Commission was at pains to emphasise the importance of evaluating the impact on First Nations citizens of mainstream policies and programs. Unless it revises its approach, the very real risk will be that government agencies across eight jurisdictions will limit their purportedly transformational activities to those that relate to the narrow indicators identified in the dashboard. If this occurs, essential structural reform will have been transmuted into mere desirable change.

 

If, as the Minister suggests, the Productivity Commission is to play a ley role in  keeping all parties to the National Agreement accountable, and is to maintain the trust of the Indigenous and wider community in these matters, it will need to ensure that it is meticulous in aligning its dashboard, and the information provided by the repository with the actual terms of the Agreement negotiated by First Nations interests with all Australian governments.

 

Finally, on 25 June 2021, the Minister and Prime Minister issued a joint media statement  (link here) recording their second roundtable with representatives of the Coalition of Peaks. The statement is largely process oriented and provides little information of substance. It does confirm that the Government intends to publish its closing the gap implementation plan in August along with announcements on ‘associated investments’. At that point, the degree of seriousness being brought to the task of closing the gap by the Australian Government will become clearer.