Men judge by the complexion of the sky
The state and inclination of
the day…
King Richard II, Act 3, Scene
2.
The 2024 Report of the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee
(link
here) chaired by Jenny Macklin was released on 26 April 2024, some two
weeks before the 2024 Budget is due to be delivered. In my view, this is an excellent
report, extremely well argued, quite technical at times (reflecting a bias towards
identifying the evidence for its recommendations), and as one might expect,
encompassing an admirable mix of ambition and pragmatism.
The report makes 22 broad recommendations across the span
of the social security policy domain, and identifies five policy priorities for
2024:
- Substantially increase JobSeeker and related working age payments and improve the indexation arrangements for those payments.
- Increase the rate of Commonwealth Rent Assistance.
- Create a new employment services system to underpin the goal of full employment and ensure a more positive focus on supporting Australians seeking work.
- Implement a national early childhood development system that is available to every child, beginning with abolishing the Activity Test for the Child Care Subsidy to guarantee all children access to a minimum three days of high quality early childhood education and care (ECEC).
- Renewing the culture and practice of the social security system to support economic inclusion and wellbeing.
In this post I propose to point to the areas of the report,
and the specific recommendations, that have salience for First Nations policy
outcomes.
Of course, while the reports overarching focus is on
mainstream policy, it must be remembered that First Nations citizens will be
impacted by mainstream policies as much as indigenous specific policies, and perhaps
more so.
There are I think three elements of the Committee’s report with
particular significance for Indigenous interests.
The first element relates
to the Committee’s discussion of the Remote Area Allowance and recommendation
4. They base their analysis on work undertaken by Francis Markham from the ANU,
and which I published a post about in February (link
here). In that post, I extended the argument to argue for an overhaul of
the Community Development Program, an issue that the Inclusion Committee has
not addressed directly but see the second element below. The Committee recommendation
states:
Recommendation 4. The
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) or an appropriate researcher or research
centre in partnership with remote communities should be funded to undertake
analysis of the additional costs of living in remote areas, but the case for an
immediate increase in the Remote Area Allowance (RAA) seems particularly
strong.
This recommendation, if adopted and implemented, would lay
out in detail the case for much more targeted cost of living support for remote
communities, including in relation to food security, energy costs, transport
costs, and rent costs. At a strategic level, it begins the process of
developing an evidence base for a more comprehensive policy approach to remote
Australia, an issue I have been advocating for over 25 years.
The second element relates
to employment services reform and is perhaps the most significant of the
Economic Inclusion Committee’s recommendations for First Nations interests. The
recommendation states:
Recommendation 6. The
Government commit to a full-scale redesign of Australia’s employment services
system by adopting the recommendations in the report from the Select Committee
on Workforce Australia Employment Services. As a priority the Government
should: a. Finalise an implementation plan and enact necessary legislative
changes in 2024. b. Commit to a full redesign of the mutual obligations and
compliance settings in the Workforce Australia system that focus on building
capability and confidence to support people into work, consistent with the
directions outlined in the Select Committee’s report. c. Build and refine a new
practice model that genuinely meets the needs of people furthest from the
labour market, including through: [details omitted; refer to
page 10 of the report].
I published a post on the Select Committee’s report last
December (link
here) where I spelt out the specific elements that were of relevance to
First Nations interests. I recommend readers look at that post. While the Economic
Inclusion Committee has not framed its discussion and recommendation on these
issues as mainstream, there are enormous, embedded implications for remote Indigenous
interests, particularly in the Inclusion Committee’s comment about the needs of
people furthest from the labour market. The elephant in the room here is the
issue of direct employment creation by the Commonwealth. The Prime Minister in
his comments upon the release of the most recent Commonwealth Closing the Gap Implementation
Plan described the Community Development Program (CDP) as a failure, announced
(link
here) the creation of the Remote Jobs and Economic Development Program, and
funding for the employment of 3000 CDP participants by organisations working in
remote regions. Yet the result was to leave around 27,000 CDP participants in a
‘failed program’.
The third element
relates to First Nations Housing, and in particular building a better evidence
base for assessing both need and ongoing management of housing stock. Again, this
is a hugely significant policy issue for Indigenous interests, with
implications for disability policy, educational outcomes, the social
determinants of health, child welfare outcomes, the prevalence of domestic
violence, and not least, economic inclusion. Again, while not limited to remote
Australia, it has long been clear that housing need for Indigenous interests is
most acute in remote regions, not least because there is a limited private
market in housing provision. The Committee’s recommendation (edited) is as
follows:
Recommendation 10. The
Government urgently commit substantial investment to address need in public
housing and homelessness for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples,
including maintenance and upgrades, community infrastructure and the Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander housing sector.
To improve the economic
efficiency of investments, the Government should fund a National Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Housing Data Register to improve data availability,
quality and sharing… To better target existing investment, including from the
Housing Australia Future Fund and Social Housing Accelerator Fund, the
Government should: a. Negotiate improved performance reporting and data sharing
within intergovernmental agreements and arrangements. b. Undertake rapid needs
assessments of homelessness and overcrowding, maintenance, repair and community
infrastructure requirements in remote hotspot areas. c. Commission a redesigned
Community Housing Infrastructure Needs (CHINS)- like survey, which considers
limitations of earlier iterations and subsequent advancements in data
collection…
The import of this recommendation is that it explicitly
focusses on establishing a much better and transparent evidence base for this
most crucial area of policy. It will mean that Indigenous advocates such as the
Coalition of Peaks and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Housing Association will have the means to make a much more persuasive argument
for needs based assistance into the future.
The Economic Inclusion Committee report appends an
excellent detailed consultancy report addressing First Nations Housing issues. That
report is too detailed for me to summarise here, but I commend it to readers as
an excellent summary of the state of play in relation to First Nations housing
policy in Australia today.
Conclusion
The Economic Inclusion Committee has made an excellent
contribution towards sharpening the policy agenda for First Nations interests.
Clearly there are a swathe of other issues of relevance to Indigenous interests
that deserve attention by the Commonwealth Government. But there are limits to
what governments, and their advisers, are prepared to take on and prioritise.
From my perspective, I consider that the Inclusion Committee has done an excellent
job in highlighting key areas that deserve prioritisation and continuing
attention. Of course, the real issue will turn on what the Commonwealth
Governments response will be, and whether they allocate the intellectual and
financial resources to deliver on whatever commitments they do make.
In any case, the publication of this report provides a
shaft of bright sunlight that bodes well for the days ahead.
26 April 2024
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