Why understanding what has happened at the ALC is important

To fear the worst oft cures the worse

Troilus & Cressida Act three, Scene two

 

Along with my co-author Bill Gray, a former senior Commonwealth public servant with extraordinary experience across the Northern Australia and Canberra, I recently penned a short article focussed on the importance of regulatory oversight of the Anindilyakwa Land Council in particular, and by implication, all statutory entities in general.

Published in The Mandarin, with the title  Minister McCarthy and oversight of the Anindilyakwa Land Council  (link here), the article is available for open access once readers create an account.

I wont try to summarise the article here, but instead will make a couple of more general points.

First, robust and proactive regulation is important in establishing and maintaining high quality organisations, whether in the public or private sectors. The ongoing quality of statutory corporations is particularly important because they are invariably established for public purposes and thus are intended to pursue and contribute to the public interest.

Second, over recent decades there has been a general trend towards the overt politicisation of the public service. I do not mean partisan politicisation but instead refer to the co-option of the public service to supporting the Executive arm of government in its ongoing efforts to dominate the legislative arm, that is, the Parliament. Ministers are theoretically responsible to Parliament, but in fact in recent decades it has become apparent that the tables have turned, and in practice it is Parliament that is in most respects subservient to the Executive.

This leads to a situation where Ministers no longer feel obliged to maintain standards of accountability and deference to the law that constitutional theory requires. In these circumstances, regulatory oversight is made subservient to politics, and over time the quality of institutions degrades.

Third, I suspect that in the Indigenous policy domain, there is a reluctance by many public servants to be seen to be critical of Indigenous organisations or officeholders. Such reluctance may be exacerbated when the Minister that public servants are reporting to and supporting happens to be Indigenous. My own view is that it remains important for office holders in statutory corporations to be held to high and rigorous standards of accountability whatever their background. Not only is it paternalistic to adopt lesser standards, but for the reasons outlined above, high quality regulation creates the preconditions for high quality service delivery.

I have focussed on these issues to explain why it is that I have spent so much time and effort in analysing and understanding what has been happening on Groote in this Blog and elsewhere. The issues involved are of much wider significance than the possible shortcomings of a single statutory corporation on a remote Island off the northern Australian coast. The fact that the mainstream institutions designed to hold public sector institutions to account are not working effectively is the real issue.

The reforms required to reverse these developments are structural and systemic. Without close and detailed analysis of public sector developments in locations such as Groote Eylandt, (or in policy realms such as Robodebt), the task of devising the necessary reform agendas, and finding the political coalitions necessary to advance those reform agendas becomes impossible.

This is why the issues on Groote Eylandt are so important. It is also why it is essential that there be a comprehensive and independent forensic audit of the activities of the ALC and its associated CATSI corporations in receipt of royalty equivalent payments. I recommend readers have a look at the Mandarin article with these more general points in mind.

 

12 February 2025