Dodge dip and dive: eight ‘data points’ on remote policy

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players

As You Like It, Act two, scene seven

 

A consistent theme on this Blog has been the social, economic and environmental crisis facing remote Australia, and in particular, remote Indigenous communities (link here, link here, link here, link here and link here).

 

It is perhaps time for me to chance my arm and lay out a high level outline of a potential policy strategy along with the accompanying rationale to address this crisis, albeit one that will take time to devise and implement, and longer to gain traction. Nevertheless, the alternative is to keep muddling on, at serious and ongoing cost to the life opportunities of the 150, 000 remote Indigenous residents across Australia.

 

Before doing so, hopefully sometime in the next month, I thought I would present a random and non-prioritised assembly of key remote ‘data points’ or markers that I have been collecting over the month or so. In laying out the data points, I will add some brief contextual commentary. My point in approaching this issue in what is a deliberately adventitious way, without suggesting an order of priority, importance or significance, is to provide a sense of the breadth and interdependence of the policy challenges facing remote Australia and its residents as well as the temporal cycles that permeate this domain.

 

I am hoping readers think about the underlying implications of each data point, but also consider what it means if the data point is replicated more widely. While it is clear that not every remote location and community faces the same circumstances, it is also clear that individual data points are replicated more widely, albeit to an unknown extent, creating notional data sets. Moreover, the interactions of the totality of different notional data sets operate are not independent or constrained, but reinforce each other in ways that resist the constrained and limited policy horizons of governments and policymakers confined by self-imposed bureaucratic silos. The implication of this insight is that policy responses must also be designed and implemented as assemblages of reinforcing initiatives.

 

Remote data points

Data point one: A recent ABC news article reports that in Halls Creek in the Kimberley region of WA, school attendance at the District High School has dropped from 38 per cent in 2021 to 26 per cent last year, compared to 80 per cent across Western Australia's public schools (link here). An earlier August 2022 ABC news article (link here) reported that the Western Australian Coroner had found that poor school attendance was a common factor in the deaths [by suicide] of young people in the town between 2012 and 2016.

 

Data point two: In 2022, ANU researchers finalised an extensive 140 page report on Groote Eylandt for the Anindilyakwa Land Council titled Social Indicators and Data Governance to Support Local Decision Making in the Groote Archipelago (link here). It is worth reading in full for the contextual background. Three sets of issues from the report caught my attention for their policy implications:

The first issue relates to overcrowding: The report notes (pages 87-88) that in 2006, 39% of the community-controlled housing stock was uninhabitable ...The number of Indigenous occupied dwellings in the Archipelago as defined by the census has increased by more than 50% over the past 15 years ….The percentage of census-identified dwellings that are overcrowded declined from 49% in 2016 to 37% in 2021 (pages 87-88). My comment: What the report does not do is to explicitly draw out the policy implications of this data. Notwithstanding the improvements over the past 15 years, overcrowding is clearly a significant issue with a third of houses overcrowded. Yet clearly the substantial investment included in the now discontinued National Partnership on Remote Indigenous Housing had a positive impact. What is unclear is whether the current NT Housing program at a considerably lower level of overall investment will have the momentum to overcome the ongoing rate of housing asset deterioration (in a worsening climate) and continue to eat into the overcrowding backlog. As an aside, the ANU report does not address the quantum and allocation of mining royalties by the ALC on Groote: in many respects, Groote is unique amongst remote communities in northern Australia, and it is the major driver of royalty equivalent payments that fund the operation of all four NT Land Councils plus the ABTA. Royalty allocation decisions are an important issue on Groote as mining will not last for ever. The allocation of royalties must be directed to capital investment (including private housing investment) rather than recurrent expenditure if it is to have a lasting impact. That is an issue for separate consideration and study.

The second issue relates to health: the Report notes (page 106) that for residents of Groote Eylandt, hospitalisation rates are higher now than 20 years ago for all leading causes, except in the case of genito-urinary diseases which includes renal failure …. Other notable increases in the rate of hospitalisation have occurred for external causes and alcohol-related diseases. The latter have been much higher over the decade 2011–2020 compared to 2001– 2010 … Intentional self-harm hospitalisations have also been much higher over the past 10 years, with the rate for females double that for males. My comment: the important, but unanswered question here is what has caused these retrograde developments. It may be a reduction in the quality of health services, but my intuition is that the problem lies more in the area of the social determinants of health.

The third issue relates to education: on school attendance, the report notes that the overall attendance rate at Groote Archipelago schools (% of those enrolled attending only some of the time) has been consistently low at 40–50% since 2011. The overall attendance level (those attending >90% of the time) has been consistently very low at <10% since 2011. In effect, this means that a large share of the current generation of school aged children have missed an effective education. My comment: this is an extraordinary indictment on the NT Government and its education policies.

 

Data point three: A recent academic article on the organisational depth, robustness and footprint of political parties in remote Australia, authored by Griffith University political scientists Duncan McDonnell and Bartholomew Stanford, titled The Party on Remote Ground: Disengaging and Disappearing? (link here and link here). This research documents the weakening and extremely thin footprint of organised political parties in remote electorates such as the Barkly in the NT and the Kimberley in WA, and points to the adverse implications for democratic participation and engagement, including amongst Indigenous citizens. My comment: what the authors don’t say, but perhaps should have, is to emphasise the crucial role of political parties in shaping public policy, and the concomitant consequence that political party remote disengagement risks exacerbating the ongoing remote policy vacuum. See the discussion in my submission to the Joint Select Committee on the Voice Referendum (#65 at link here). I previously posted on the low voting turnouts in remote Australia (link here).

 

Data point four: in a recent Submission (link here) to the Standing Committee on Community Affairs Legislation Committee Inquiry into the provisions of the Social Security (Administration) Amendments (Income Management Reform) Bill 2023, ANU researchers Matthew Gray and Rob Bray  used ABS and AIHW data to track Indigenous imprisonment rates in the NT over the past twenty years against non-Indigenous rates in the NT and nationally (see Figure 1) and Indigenous school attendance rates in the NT over the decade from 2009 to 2020 (Figure 4).

In relation to incarceration, they observe that compared to non-Indigenous adults, Indigenous imprisonment rates have dramatically widened since 2000, exceeding 2700 per 100, 0000 in 2020, up from just under 1000 per 100, 000 in 2000. Non-Indigenous incarceration rates have remained stable throughout these decades at about 200 per 100, 000.

In relation to school attendance, they report declining school attendance across the NT over the past decade, reaching mid sixty percent levels for remote schools and mid forty percent levels for very remote schools. To which I would add two comments: this data is consistent with the Groote statistics cited above, suggesting Groote is not an outlier; and second, the statistics in Figure 4 do not cite the most educationally significant data, namely, the proportion of students who attend 90 percent plus of the time. These data are consistent however with the extraordinary conclusion that a substantial proportion of remote Indigenous students over the past decade are missing out on an education, and there is no policy initiative on the horizon to suggest this will change over the coming decade.

 

Data point five: the Gray/Bray submission referred to above, along with a number of other submissions, comprehensively demonstrates that the continuation by the current Commonwealth Government of universal compulsory income management across remote communities in the NT lacks a robust evidence base. The submission points out that policy breaches Labor’s pre-election promises, and points to departmental efforts to ignore or not publish relevant data. My own comment on this situation is as follows: the underlying rationale for continuing this selective policy can only be a blunt and indirect attempt to limit expenditure on alcohol by remote residents in circumstances where the NT Government is incapable and unwilling to impose robust regulation of the alcohol sales across the NT. This policy is increasingly at risk of tipping into being racially discriminatory, as its status as a ‘special measure’ under the Racial Discrimination Act requires it to have a beneficial impact. Yet if the evidence does not support this, the ‘special measures’ rationale falls apart.

 

Data point six: a recent research publication by ANU researchers (led by my CAEPR colleague Bradley Riley) and representatives of two Central Australian Aboriginal organisations documented the impact of COVID on energy security amongst remote NT residents. Titled Disconnected during disruption: Energy insecurity of Indigenous Australian prepay customers during the COVID-19 pandemic (link here), the research reported that:

The risks associated with the regular de-energization of prepay households have long been overlooked by government reporting and this contributed to a lack of visibility of energy insecurity and available protections for this group during the pandemic response. In contrast to the rest of Australia, energy insecurity in the form of disconnections remained unrelentingly high or worsened for prepay households during this time. COVID-19 magnifies pre-existing health and socio-economic inequities. 

I have previously posted about this issue, and the potential destructive interplay of high levels of pre-pay disconnections and rising temperatures (link here). The recent publication pays particular attention to the lack of comprehensive data. The paper concludes:

While the national moratorium on disconnection provided to post pay customers during COVID-19 meant that experiences of energy insecurity decreased for most Australians, remote living Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prepay customers did not receive commensurate protections …. While there are few published metrics relating to avoiding or reducing the frequency and duration of involuntary self-disconnection events experienced by prepay customers, what data there is shows that frequent de-energization of Indigenous prepay households continued and, in many cases, worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Data point seven: In early February, the ABC had reported that ‘Data reveals 50 per cent spike in alcohol-related emergency presentations after lifting of bans in Alice Springs’ (link here). These bans related to the consumption of alcohol on town camps around Alice Springs, and numerous other remote communities.

 

On 20 April 2023, NT Chief Minister Natasha Fyles issued a media release which stated in part:

The Northern Territory Government will extend takeaway alcohol restrictions in Alice Springs. Over the past three months we have seen these alcohol restrictions work, and support our community and frontline workers. 

Alcohol-related emergency department presentations at Alice Springs Hospital have almost halved, and domestic violence has dropped by a third in the month since the takeaway alcohol restrictions were reintroduced into the Northern Territory town. 

 

While the Chief Minister appears to be shifting the narrative away from the earlier across the board alcohol bans which she initially opposed, and reluctantly agreed to re-introduce after pressure from the Commonwealth, the points to note for present purposes are first the extraordinary human toll of alcohol abuse, and second, the direct link between alcohol consumption levels and hospital presentations. The latest available published data on the NT Government website (link here) is for the fourth quarter of 2022, and indicates 1299 alcohol related hospital emergency presentations. There were a total of 4145 alcohol related emergency presentations at the Alice Springs hospital for the 2022 year. To put this in context, a 2018 Deloittes Report (link here) noted that there had been a total of 46, 785 alcohol related emergency presentations across Australia in 2016-17 (table 2.1). Clearly, alcohol abuse levels in the NT and in Alice Springs have been at extraordinary levels for a considerable time. 

 

Data point eight: on 28 April 2023 Guardian reported (link here) on the ABS release of updated socioeconomic indexes based on 2021 census data which take into account census data on income, education, occupation, housing, employment and family structure, among other factors, to rank each of Australia 547 local government areas (LGAs).  The data is used to create a score with an average of about 1,000. Lower scores indicate areas of relative disadvantage. Unsurprisingly, by my rough reckoning, the 33 most disadvantaged LGAs in Australia all have a substantial majority of Indigenous residents. Of course, even more advantaged LGAs can include pockets of extreme Indigenous disadvantage, but these index scores are moderated by the population mix within the LGA. According to the ABS, “disadvantaged areas tend to be in regional and remote communities, while advantaged areas tend to be in major cities”.

 

Conclusion

I am conscious that these random data points, and particularly the associated notional data sets, largely represent shortfalls in the performance of governments, and are biased towards issues that have received media coverage which in turn is likely to be a proxy for policy attention from governments. Issues that are in my view significant, but are not listed here, include wider health issues (including for example the long lasting effects of FASD); employment / unemployment, and in particular the interaction with the Community Development Program which delivers income support to some 35, 000 remote citizens; environmental management including the operation of Indigenous Protected Areas and ranger groups; the impact and operation of land rights and native title legislation; and issues related to commercial and economic development. Each of these policy domains along with others I have not mentioned undoubtedly interacts with and contributes to the quality of life for remote citizens, along with the policy issues I have addressed. Nor have I focussed on institutional structures such as the operations and effectiveness of Indigenous organisations, or the impact of federal governance.

 

What is clear however is that given the synergistic interactions of multiple policy domains, the current model of policy design and implementation has not worked. This raises the potentially unsettling prospect that, at a fundamental systemic level, governments and policymakers are not incentivised to take the policy decisions that are required to make a substantive difference to the policy challenges that exist. Instead they are incentivised to manage difficult issues, oil squeaky wheels, and engage in a performative ritual designed merely to persuade an electorally significant non-Indigenous constituency (and a less electorally significant, but more animated, Indigenous constituency) that they are doing what is required to address the policy challenges that surface periodically in the public consciousness.

 

A recent review of a book on Boris Johnson (link here) described his motto for governing as ‘dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge’. As it turns out, this is an extraordinarily apt description of the systemic approach of Australian governments to remote policy challenges.