We know what we are, but know
not what we may be.
Hamlet Act 3, scene 4.
This post seeks to unravel the factors and trends that will
shape the life opportunities of Indigenous Australians in 2050. It is not an
attempt at prediction, but rather an attempt to identify in a hardheaded way
the factors that will shape the Indigenous policy domain going forward.
We live in a world of constant and rapid change, yet the
key drivers of where we are today, and where we will be in 25 years are nevertheless
amenable to analytic examination. Yet there is very little analysis available
discussing these issues.
Of course, the wider world is undergoing a range of
potentially catastrophic changes, linked to climate change, the ongoing
transformation of the current global order linked to the rise of nations such
as India, China, Indonesia and others, the stalling of unfettered
globalisation, and the inexorable increase in the salience of national security
and the related worldwide shift towards authoritarian systems of governance. These
changes will shape Australia in ways which no-one can predict and may well
overshadow or make irrelevant the factors laid out here which are expected to
shape the 2050 Indigenous policy domain.
Nevertheless, if we look back 25 years, the Indigenous
policy domain is both recognisable and, in many respects, familiar, albeit also
substantially changed. In other words, there are systemic continuities, and
seeking to identify the impact of those going forward may well highlight issues
and potential changes to current policy settings.
A recent book on the sources of economic growth, How the
World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth (link
here) by economic historians Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin identified and
assessed each of the most commonly suggested determinants of national wealth
and wellbeing: geography, institutions, culture, fertility, and colonisation.
While not necessarily endorsing the appropriateness of a narrow economic growth
metric, these factors provide a useful template for considering the determinants
of the shape of the Indigenous policy domain and the place of Indigenous people
in Australia in 2050.
In my view, each of these factors will play a role in
shaping the 2050 state of affairs and are also potentially arenas of policy focus
and political debate. Moreover, as Koyama and Rubin argue, these factors often
operate synergistically and reinforce each other.
The demography of
Indigenous Australia is undergoing a significant counter-intuitive change. A combination
of the definition of Indigeneity, fertility levels, high levels of
inter-marriage between non-Indigenous and Indigenous partners and increasing
rates of self-identification have led to a significant growth in the Indigenous
population of Australia over the past 25 years. This growth is well in excess
of natural increase. There is no reason to think that these dynamics are about
to change. In 1991, the Indigenous population was recorded as 265,500, or 1.6
percent of the Australian population. As of 30 June 2021, the Australian Bureau
of Statistics' (ABS) estimates an Indigenous population of 984,000 people
representing 3.8% of the total Australian population.
In thirty years, the population has almost quadrupled, and
its comparative size has more than doubled. The vast bulk of these changes have
occurred in urban and regional Australia. By 2050, on current trends, we could
easily see an Indigenous population of around two to three million people,
comprising in excess of 6 percent of the national population. What is less
clear is the likely socio-economic status of this larger population. However,
as the growth effectively involves the re-categorisation of individuals
shifting from the mainstream to the Indigenous population, its primary impact is
likely to involve an expansion of the Indigenous ‘middle class’.
While nationally comparative Indigenous disadvantage will fall
(a function of ongoing intermarriage and self-identification), a significant
proportion of the Indigenous population will remain severely disadvantaged,
thus driving a socio-economic wedge into the Indigenous demographic profile. A
strongly bifurcated demographic profile will have significant policy
implications, and if disadvantage is to be addressed, will likely require a
shift towards greater ‘needs based’ policies to address the most disadvantaged
segment of the Indigenous population. Whether such a shift occurs will likely
become a highly politicised issue.
Geographical issues will not be the
primary driver of policy in relation to the majority of the Indigenous
population. They are resident in urban and regional Australia and have access
to mainstream provision of infrastructure and essential services, and have
access to private sector markets. It will however be a crucial issue in
relation to remote Australia, where infrastructure investment is low or absent,
and where markets have weak penetration. It is in these regions that economic
and social disadvantage is currently deepest, and on present trends (e.g.
climate risks) are likely to worsen.
There is currently no coherent remote Indigenous policy
framework in place nationally, nor in the various remote jurisdictions. Across
almost every indicator, remote Indigenous citizens are amongst the most
disadvantaged in the country. While the remote population of some 150,000
citizens currently comprise only 15.4 percent of the Indigenous population (the
urban population is 40.8 percent; regional population is 43.8 percent), if
present trends continue, remote population increases through to 2050 may be very
limited as fertility drops and out migration increases. Overall the remote
Indigenous population in 2050 may remain well below 200, 000, and comprise only
around 8 percent of the total Indigenous population.
The long-standing absence of a coherent policy framework
suggests that the likelihood of governments devising one by 2050 is low and
suggests that the present socio-economic crisis combined with endemic community
dysfunction driven in large measure by governance and public investment
shortfalls (a responsibility of mainstream governments) will continue. The
likely exponential rise in climate induced environmental challenges across
northern and remote Australia will merely serve to exacerbate these crisis level
challenges. One very real possibility is that the current steady population
shift from remote communities to regional towns will strengthen and even
transform into a significant surge.
While Indigenous disadvantage is not limited to remote
Australia, the challenges of remote Australia will certainly complicate the
challenge of addressing Indigenous disadvantage nationally. It will deepen the
demographic bifurcation, place serious pressure on the ideological rhetoric of
pan-Indigeneity amongst First Nations interests, and in the absence of a
coherent policy framework increasingly require governments to devise short-term
crisis policy responses (with all the concomitant risks and costs).
The other geographical factor in play in the substantial
growth in Indigenous land ownership across the continent over the past 50
years, and particularly the last twenty-five years following on from the 1992 Mabo
Decision of the High Court and the Native Title Act of 1993. First Nations
currently own interests in land (not all exclusive possession) covering some 55
percent of the Australian land mass. The quantum of land ownership will increase
but seems likely to slow over the next 25 years. However, even the present extent
of Indigenous landholding provides both opportunities and creates risks for
both landowners and the nation.
Policy momentum in this area appears to have stalled for a
range of reasons too complex to explore here. In essence, governments have
shied away from important task of bedding down and shoring up what has been a
revolutionary change in Australian land law. The 2015 Review of the Native
Title Act by the Australian Law Reform Commission has been comprehensively
ignored by governments. Key structural flaws and omission in the legislative
framework persist. The policy challenge here for Indigenous interests is to
progressively build coalitions of interest to ensure that the seismic changes
embedded in the Native Title Act are finetuned and progressively improved. Public
sector support for ongoing land management should be a national priority for
both environmental and social justice reasons. Moreover, such support would
counter the current trends for Indigenous people to shift off country and into
towns. The alternative will be the gradual emergence of lost opportunities and regressive
outcomes for both Indigenous landowners and the nation.
The role of culture in
shaping policy outcomes is huge. Mainstream culture is a pervasive presence in
shaping policy generally, albeit largely unacknowledged, though from time to
time it rises in salience. For example, when former Treasurer Joe Hockey
categorised Australians as either ‘leaners or lifters’, or when Scott Morrison
talked of ‘giving a go to those who have ago’, these were both ideological but
at a deeper level cultural statements designed to justify particular policies.
Core Australian cultural values include a version of the protestant work ethic,
mateship, distrust of authority, and dislike of tall poppies, to name a few.
Indigenous cultural beliefs and values are clearly
different and unique (I am not going to try to summarise them) and are likely
undergoing a process of progressive adjustment since colonisation. The key
point to make in a policy setting however is that the implicit mainstream
values and norms that underpin much mainstream policy development may not apply
in relation to the interaction of mainstream policies and Indigenous citizens.
Obvious examples include assumptions that threats to cut income support for
breaches of mainstream norms will induce Indigenous citizens to comply. The
reality is that such incentives don’t work in remote communities, probably because
income support recipients can rely on cultural norms such as reciprocal kin
obligations to offset the consequences of income loss. The existence of
different cultural norms is one of the reasons that Indigenous interests have
advocated so strongly for greater involvement in shaping policies that affect
them. Governments are yet to fully comprehend the importance of doing this, and
to date have tended to promise more than they deliver.
My sense is that the need for a bicultural approach to
setting policy will persist well beyond 2050, as one of the consequences of
ongoing policy exclusion of Indigenous interests from full participation in the
mainstream will be to strengthen the importance for First Nations of
maintaining their unique cultural perspectives.
In relation to the role of colonisation in shaping
policy outcomes, in economic terms the argument boils down to two factors: the
initial transfer (theft) or loss of capital assets, most notably land, but also
of the opportunity to fully use the intellectual capital that allowed
Indigenous societies to successfully continue over many thousands of years
across the wide spectrum of ecological environments. Second, the ongoing
exclusion of Indigenous people from sharing in any of the benefits that accrued
from the economic use and development of the assets that were transferred. This
exclusion was not anodyne, but was often violent and explicitly racist, and has
led to the development of widespread intergenerational trauma. Both these
factors have contributed significantly to the challenges Governments face in
devising appropriate policy framework for First Nations.
Looking forward to 2050, there seems little likelihood that
the Australian nation will take any substantive systemic action to reverse the
ongoing impact of colonisation. Clearly, the granting of land rights and recognition
of native title were seen as one mechanism to attempt to reverse the adverse
impacts of colonisation, but while the cultural benefits have been significant,
the economic benefits are limited (albeit in some specific locations such as
the Pilbara, they have been very substantial). Moreover, the rapid and ongoing
onset of disruptive technological change has in many respects outweighed the
benefits of reclaimed land ownership. The more insidious issues of
intergenerational trauma are arguably evident in the extremely high rates of
incarceration, mental illness, substance abuse and intimate partner violence
amongst First Nations population. There is no practical retrospectively framed
policy framework that will undo these issues, notwithstanding the injustice
involved in the colonial project. Moreover, to date governments have lacked the
political will to effectively address these consequences of colonisation using
a prospective framing built around closing the gap. There is thus no extant
evidence available to suggest that there will be any sustained policy
initiative with the potential to effectively address the ongoing consequences
of colonisation by 2050. [See the discussion of treaties below.]
Finally, the role of institutions in shaping the
architecture of the Indigenous policy domain is crucial. By institutions, I
mean the ‘rules of the game’ set out in societal norms, laws, the modus
operandi of key decision-making organisations such as the reserve bank, the
courts, the parliament, and the like, along with informal operational modes
adopted by state agencies. The reason institutions are crucial is that they
both determine the overall revenue of the state, and the distribution of those
revenues to state priorities. Most public policy development can be framed as
disputes between peak interest groups vying for a greater share of the net
benefits flowing through existing institutions. The primary role of the
bureaucracy can be conceptualised as ensuring the continued efficient operation
of the nation’s institutional framework.
Over the past fifty years, Indigenous interests have
succeeded in persuading the nation to establish a suite of Indigenous specific
institutions, and to modify at the margin mainstream institutions in various
ways to benefit Indigenous interests. These successes have been the result of
sustained and determined advocacy involving both Indigenous interests and their
mainstream allies. However, the economic impact of these changes as a
proportion of total economic activity (GDP) has been miniscule. All the factors
outlined above have played a part in shaping these institutional reforms. They
have largely been the result of decisions taken by the Commonwealth rather than
the states. A listing of institutions (past and present) relevant to the
Indigenous policy domain would include land rights legislation in the states
and territory, and the Native Title Act, the Indigenous Land and Sea
Corporation, Indigenous Business Austrlaia, Aboriginal Hostels, the CDEP
scheme, the Aboriginal Benefit Account in the NT, heritage legislation in the
states and the Commonwealth, the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, and
some of the major Commonwealth-state programs such as the National Partnership
on Remote Indigenous Housing.
Arguably the zenith of institutional development in
relation to the indigenous policy domain was the 1990s with the establishment
of ATSIC and the passage of the Native Title Act. The last 25 years has seen
the progressive wind-back of Commonwealth engagement (with the NT Intervention
being an outlier) and a concomitant loss of policy reform momentum. The
abolition of ATSIC, the failure of the National Congress of First Peoples to
survive beyond its initial funding injection, the inattention to the unimplemented
recommendations of the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody,
the stasis in relation to the fine-tuning of the Native Title Act, and
notwithstanding its potential, the shift of policy responsibility to the states
and territories under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap have all been retrograde
steps. The failure of the Voice Referendum and the tangible reluctance of the
Government to enthusiastically implement the outstanding elements of the Uluru
Statement are merely the latest developments in a long litany of retrograde
steps to weaken or not pursue institutional reform. In other words the policy
reform tide in Indigenous Affairs has been receding for at least a quarter fo a
century.
What does this mean for 2050? Based
on the factors above, the likelihood that the tide will turn anytime soon
appears slim. The demographic bifurcation seems set to continue. Remote policy
challenges are split between four jurisdictions, with minimal Commonwealth
interest or involvement except for a receding legacy in the NT. A culture of
neo-assimilationism appears to be taking hold in significant sectors of mainstream
culture and politics. Despite the talk of treaties and the like on the
progressive side of mainstream politics, the lack of an explicit and tangible
agenda from Indigenous interests, and the increasing reluctance of conservative
parties in the states and the NT to commit to taking these treaty development
processes forward suggests that the requisite bipartisanship for sustained institutional
policy reforms to deal with the impacts of colonisation are absent. Any attempt
to move forward with a tangible policy agenda for a treaty or related reform
appears likely to attract a heated and politically lethal campaign for reversal
from conservative political forces.
My own assessment, for what it is worth, is that we are
unlikely to see significant Indigenous specific institutional reforms over the
next two and a half decades, and there are significant risks of further
institutional regression across the Indigenous policy domain.
My advice to First Nations and progressive mainstream interests,
and in particular their peak advocacy groups, would be to invest as much as
possible in building their capabilities to advocate for Indigenous interests,
to focus squarely on the absolute deficits in remote policy outcomes, including
education, employment, housing and essential infrastructure, and to pursue a
strategy of simultaneously protecting the institutional frameworks that
presently exist, while pursing incremental change across the breadth of the
public sector. In particular, Indigenous advocacy interests should explore avenues
to gain much greater independence from Government funding as it comes with a
hidden cost; the silence it implicitly requires reduces the necessary pressure
on governments to fix the extraordinary policy problems that exist across the
board, and the social and economic catastrophe that exists in remote Australia.
In the absence of such a strategy, it seems to me that by
2050, the nascent neo-assimilationist surge will become bipartisan, and will
force most disadvantaged Indigenous citizens into mainstream support programs,
while the remote Indigenous populations will remain deeply disadvantaged and
reliant on social security, inadequate social housing, and a continuing diet of
rhetoric, promises and social control. The lack of employment opportunities and
the complete failure of the education system across remote Australia will
ensure that social crises, endemic violence, and severely constrained life
opportunities, will endure well beyond 2050. This is the legacy our policies
today will likely bequeath to Australians generally, and particularly First
Nations in 2050.
1 March 2024
As always Mike, a great piece. Thank you.
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