Correction: remote employment and mutual obligations

                                                My thoughts are whirled like a potter’s wheel:

I know not where I am , nor what I do.

1 Henry VI, Act one, Scene five.

 

In my previous post on the ANAO report on remote employment (link here), I wrote about mutual obligations in the following terms:

 

On 1 June, The Australian reported (link here) that the Government was planning to reintroduce ‘mutual obligation’ into the scheme by requiring participants to ‘work for the dole’. These requirements fell by the wayside during Covid lockdowns and are not being strictly enforced.

 

On re-reading the ANAO report, I realized that I had made an error in attributing the shift in policy on mutual obligations to Covid. In particular, paragraphs 2.27 to 2.32 of the ANAO report make clear that the shift in policy can be attributed to a deliberate shift in policy related to the risk that the program might be held by the courts to be either directly or indirectly racially discriminatory.  I recommend interested readers take a close look at those paragraphs for a fuller account than I can spell out here. The following paragraphs have been edited to remove footnotes and to emphasise key points with bold font:

 

2.28 The legal risks associated with the CDP were first advised to government in 2015. The advice stated that the risk of the program being inconsistent with the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Racial Discrimination Act) was medium. From 2015, legal risk was identified by multiple external stakeholders. In December 2016, a complaint about the CDP was brought to the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) by the Shire of Ngaanyajarraku, alleging a breach of the Racial Discrimination Act. A mediation process was initiated but failed, and in July 2019 Dawson and Ors v Commonwealth of Australia (Dawson v Cth) commenced. In December 2021, Dawson v Cth was settled by the Commonwealth for a grant of $2 million (plus GST) to the Shire and Council; the design, implementation and evaluation of the Remote Engagement Program Trial in the Shire of Ngaanyajarraku (see Table 3.1); and legal costs of $278,897.

 

2.29 A commitment to reform the CDP was a component of the NIAA’s negotiations and eventual settlement of Dawson v Cth. The complainants required that the CDP’s (or future programs’) mutual obligation requirements be ‘on par’ with requirements in non-remote areas. In January 2021, the government was presented with a single recommended option to meet settlement requirements and reduce the risk of future legal action: to make most CDP mutual obligation requirements voluntary (referred to as a compliance pause). In May 2021, the government announced that the CDP would be replaced by a new remote jobs program and that, with immediate effect, participation in the work-for-the-dole component of the mutual obligation requirements would be voluntary. After the removal of the requirement to attend activities in May 2021, CDP participation declined by approximately 50 per cent on average. In July 2021, Jobs Australia wrote to the NIAA advising of concerns raised by its members, including that the ‘predictable’ outcomes of the changes to mutual obligation requirement had occurred, including increased domestic violence, lower school attendance, substance abuse and aggression toward frontline CDP staff.

 

To sum up:

 

First, the shift away from voluntary mutual obligations (in relation to community work or other meaningful activities), but not necessarily job search and other requirements such as monthly meetings with the provider) was not due to the Covid epidemic and lockdowns, but was a deliberate policy decision arising from the need to insulate the program and the Commonwealth from the risk of successful litigation based on alleged breaches of the Racial Discrimination Act.

 

Second there is evidence that the policy shift has contributed at least in part to the ongoing and arguably worsening levels of social dysfunction amongst younger members of remote communities.

 

Third, the ANAO documents serious deficiencies in NIAA risk management practices, in the context of widespread acknowledgement in NIAA and in advice to Ministers that CDP was ‘a failed program’. In para 2.27, the ANAO reports:

 

The August 2020 stocktake had noted that ‘[s]ince the implementation

of CDP, the program has received criticism that it is discriminatory, failing remote communities, racist and contributing to hunger and poverty in remote communities and contributing to an increase in crime, violence and suicide rates’. The NIAA advised the Minister for Indigenous Australians that the CDP had not been successful in achieving its objectives.

 

Yet it took until 2024 for the Government to announce (some) details of the replacement program due to be implemented in the second half of this year.

 

 

06 June 2024

Reforming remote employment: the ANAO performance audit

                                                                                     You shall mark

Many a duteous and knee-crooking knave

That, doting on his own obsequious bondage,

Wears out his time, much like his master’s ass,

For naught but provender, and when he’s old,

cashiered.

Othello, Act one, Scene one.

 

The ANAO recently released a Performance Audit on remote employment programs (link here). In my view it presents a devastating account of bureaucratic and ministerial incompetence, albeit one that spans seven years, two ministers and a change of government. Before seeking to unpack the ANAO findings, it is worthwhile providing some context for what we are dealing with.

 

The existing program, known as the Community Development Program (CDP) operates only in remote Australia, and is simultaneously a program ostensibly aimed at assisting unemployed citizens to find employment (thus an employment program) and the mechanism by which income support payments are provided (a social security program). It has around 41,000 participants of whom around 86% or 35,000 identify as Indigenous. On 1 June, The Australian reported (link here) that the Government was planning to reintroduce ‘mutual obligation’ into the scheme by requiring participants to ‘work for the dole’. These requirements fell by the wayside during Covid lockdowns and are not being strictly enforced.

 

Arguably, the job search objective is substantially misguided given the structural absence of a market economy across remote Australia (with the exception of major towns and mine sites). Attempts to enforce job search requirements have been implemented punitively in the past and led to astronomical levels of breaches which involved suspension of income support payments. At the same time, The Australian article mentioned above cited statistics indicating that in 2022-23, only 603 participants were placed in jobs lasting 26 weeks or more, that is a job placement rate of only 1.4%. Moreover, the implicit assumption that suspension of payments will incentivise compliance are based on assumptions that do not necessarily operate in Indigenous cultural settings.

 

There is in my view a strong case for undertaking a rigorous and independent policy review or evaluation aimed at unravelling the implicit assumptions that underpin the existing CDP and perhaps the future Remote Jobs and Economic Development Program (RJEDP) announced in May this year by the Prime Minister (link here). In my view there is a case for splitting CDP/RJEDP into its constituent parts, an income support program and a job creation program. Such a shift would nevertheless require some deep policy consideration to consider the best way to implement each element. IT is already apparent that the current outsourced model for CDP is not fit for purpose (see below).  It seems likely that neither the Government nor the NIAA understand these dynamics given that they have been unable after six years notice to develop a clear program logic for the new program (see ANAO para. 4.39 to 4.56).

 

The Productivity Commission Dash Board on Closing the Gap lists two targets related to employment: target 7 (link here) and target 8 (link here):

 

Target 7: By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth (15-24 years) who are in employment, education or training to 67%. Nationally in 2021, 58.0% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 15–24 years were fully engaged in employment, education or training (figure CtG7.1). This is an increase from 57.2% in 2016 (the baseline year).

 

However in remote and very remote regions, since 2016, there has been a regression, with the proportion dropping to 45.2% in remote regions and dropping 30.2% in very remote regions. Clearly in remote regions, for the 15 to 24 year cohort, government programs in relation to employment, education and training are failing to gain traction, and require adjustment and/or complete overhaul. For comparison the national statistic for non-Indigenous members of this cohort is 79.9%. The CtG target is 13% below current mainstream levels.

 

Target 8: By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 25-64 who are employed to 62%. Nationally in 2021, 55.7% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 25–64 years were employed (figure CtG8.1). This is an increase from 51.0% in 2016 (the baseline year).

Nationally in 2021, the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged 25–64 years who were employed was highest in major cities (62.1%) (figure CtG8.4). The proportions declined as remoteness increased, [down to 45.5% in remote and] down to 35.0% for people living in very remote areas. Since the 2016 baseline year, the employment rate increased in all areas, except for people living in very remote areas where it decreased (less than one percentage point).

 

The national figure for non-Indigenous Australians was 77.7% in 2021, so the 2031 CtG target is itself only partial.

 

The bottom line is that under the national Agreement on Closing the Gap, Australian governments have set employment related targets well below mainstream levels for all age groups, and under current policy settings are making, at best, insignificant progress on achieving even those limited targets in remote Australia in particular. Of course it is worth remembering that the achievement of the national target is feasible without it being met in remote Australia where the deepest disadvantage occurs.

 

This background demonstrates why the effectiveness of the CDP and its replacement is crucial both to the life opportunities of tens of thousands of individuals, but also to the social capital of remote communities. The ANAO performance audit of remote employment programs is thus both timely and important as it shines a light on these issues notwithstanding that its focus is primarily on efficiency and not effectiveness.

 

The ANAO report

 

The background to the performance audit is spelt out in the Summary and Recommendations section of the ANAO report:

 

3. A 2017 Senate committee inquiry into the CDP concluded that the program should not continue in its current form due to negative impacts on participants and their communities. Since 2017, the Australian Government has signalled its intent to fundamentally reform or replace the CDP through various announcements and measures. On 13 February 2024, the Australian Government announced a new ‘Remote Jobs and Economic Development Program’, which would commence in the second half of 2024 and fund 3,000 jobs over three years.

 

Rationale for undertaking the audit

 

4. Remote employment programs aim to assist people in thin labour markets to secure employment. Since 2015 the CDP has been the primary Australian Government remote employment program. The CDP covers 75 per cent of Australia’s land mass in over 1,000 communities. In 2022–23, $384.6 million was expended on CDP payments. As at June 2023, there were approximately 41,000 people participating in the CDP, of whom approximately 86 per cent identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.

 

5. Since 2017, successive Australian Governments have stated an intention to fundamentally reform or replace the CDP.

 

6. This audit provides the Australian Parliament with assurance on whether the NIAA has been effectively managing the transition from the CDP to a new remote employment program, including its processes to design a new program.

 

I don’t propose to undertake a comprehensive analysis of this performance report. The overarching conclusion, spelt out in para 9, was that the NIAA’s processes to design and transition to a new remote employment program, as at January 2024, were partly effective. The report goes into considerable detail regarding the history, various internal  processes, the design and implementation of a series of trials, and the surprising and in my view extraordinary absence of management oversight brought to bear throughout the transition process from 2017 to 2024. I recommend interested readers take a closer look at the meticulous ANAO analysis. At virtually every point, they find that the NIAA’s performance in the assigned tasks involved in transitioning to a new program was ‘partly effective’.

 

A major theme of this post is that the ANAO in focussing on process (efficiency or performance) it has understated the extraordinary failure of the CDP to achieve positive outcomes. Just to reinforce the illogicality and inadequacy of some of the ANAO assessments, it is worth quoting some text from para 15 of the ANAO report:

 

In 2023, the NIAA extended 63 out of 64 existing CDP provider grant agreements, despite 41 per cent having an average performance rating of ‘below requirements’ and despite failure of some providers to ‘fully meet’ unclear selection criteria. Value for money associated with each grant agreement extension, particularly for those providers with a history of underperformance, was not clearly articulated. The NIAA did not take advantage of the opportunity presented by agreement extension negotiations to address provider performance issues in agreement terms and conditions.

 

Not only do these contract extensions involve over five hundred million dollars in Commonwealth expenditures, but they fundamentally breach an essential requirement for outsourced public policy: the crucial requirement for rigorous regulation of private sector providers. Without such regulatory oversight, the rationale for outsourcing these functions falls away. Partly effective indeed! For those interested in the excruciating detail, I point you to paras 2.49 to 2.72 in the ANAO report, including what I consider to be a pathetic recommendation for remediation into the future.

 

Unfortunately, what the ANAO does not do is take the final step and make an assessment of the policy outcomes to date, and the likely policy outcome once the program is finally in operation in the second half of this year. In a previous post (link here), I discussed how this is a function of the ANAO’s limited remit and its concern not to stray into political criticism. Nevertheless, what matters to both the 41,000 CDP participants at any point in time, and to the broader community, is whether the proposed changes will produce better outcomes, not whether the processes adopted were up to scratch. Of course, good processes are important, even necessary, but they are not a guarantee of good outcomes.

 

In terms of an outcome, after seven years of procrastination, the ANAO had this to say regarding the design of the new program announced by the Prime Minister this year:

 

21. The NIAA collaborated with other government agencies in the development of draft policy advice in 2023 and 2024, however timeframes were too short to allow for effective collaboration. Design issues requiring cross-government collaboration were not resolved. In February 2024, the government announced a ‘Remote Jobs and Economic Development Program’, which would commence in the second half of 2024 and fund 3,000 jobs over three years. Advice provided to government in January 2024 about high-level features of the new program drew on some findings from consultations and trials, however, the high-level features of the new program (including the number of jobs to be created) were not supported by modelling or other evidence. At the time of its announcement, there was no program logic or evaluation framework for the newly announced program. (See paragraphs 4.39 to 4.56)

 

It is crystal clear that the pre-budget announcement was conjured for its political effect rather than developed methodically. As I previously noted (link here), the Prime Minister’s announcement of the new program was built around the proposition that the CDP was a failed program, and that the government would move to fully fund up to 3000 jobs. Yet the current state of play leaves 37,000 participants on the CDP and the new scheme supposedly being implemented in the second half of 2024. There is an extremely strong case for governments to fund real jobs across remote Australia, but 3000 is pathetically unambitious, and appears designed to create the appearance of action and reform rather than actually deliver it. According to the ANAO report, while the Government stayed silent, the NIAA website revealed that the new jobs funding was for three years only, making the renewal of the program without an evaluation plan contingent on the next government

 

My take-out after reading the ANAO’s detailed analysis was that the NIAA was effectively asleep at the wheel for long periods since 2017, that its Executive Committee and senior management were not monitoring the performance of the CDP and nor were they driving the process of designing and implementing a new remote employment program, that its Audit and Risk committee was being drip fed rather than proactively asking the hard questions, and that the NIAA Evaluation Advisory Committee were missing in action. Moreover, the complex stream of ever-changing cross agency coordination committees documented in the report clearly failed to produce a timely outcome. Of course, one might reasonably ask: where were the responsible Ministers while this fiasco was unfolding?

 

The bottom line is that there is nothing in the announcements to date which will shift the dial on the extraordinary underperformance of both the former LNP and the current Labor Governments in relation to CtG targets 7 and 8 most particularly in remote Australia.

 

Unfortunately, there is a game being played here whereby governments when not under pressure from powerful interests resort to flim flam and a song and dance routine aimed at persuading interested parties (and the commentariat interpreting for the public at large) that they are doing something; the ANAO analyse performance and identify a range of process deficiencies (but not effectiveness); the agency being scrutinised welcomes the report and promises to do better (assisted by the fact that the ANAO recommendations relate to processes only), and the media decide the issues are too complicated to warrant close reading and effective reporting. Rinse and repeat.

 

Finally, I should point out the potential for the ANAO’s core language across the breadth of its performance reporting to mislead. By using an implicit rating system of effective, partially effective, or ineffective to assess agency compliance with the relevant rules governing performance (ie efficiency or process), it subliminally signals that it is assessing outcomes (ie effectiveness). As I pointed out in a previous post, the ANAO does not assess effectiveness, and leaves that to evaluations, which are overwhelmingly undertaken by agencies and are rarely truly independent, even when outsourced to reputable major consulting firms (did anyone mention PwC ?; or the recent revelation by Greens Senator Barbara Pocock of consulting firms providing work pro-bono to agencies? (link here $)). For anyone who doubts my assessment that the Commonwealth public sector evaluation framework is not fit for purpose, I suggest they ask themselves, why is it that neither the previous nor the current Government have provided a response to the Productivity Commission’s 2020 report: Indigenous Evaluation Strategy (link here). It has been allowed to sink without trace.  

 

For what its worth, my effectiveness ratings of the various actors’ involved in reforming the delivery of remote employment services are as follows: NIAA entirely ineffective; relevant Governments and ministers: regressively ineffective. The accuracy of my assessment will only be determined in around five to seven years in the event (far from guaranteed) that an independent evaluation of the Remote Jobs and Economic Development Program is undertaken, and it has become clear whether the current regressive trends in achieving targets seven and eight of the Closing the Gap process have been reversed and the modest targets achieved. I sincerely hope that I am wrong. It is however a very poor reflection on our systems of governance oversight and policy development that we do not have access to an independent evaluation of the CDP now.

 

 

3 June 2024

A shaft of sunlight: the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee 2024 Report

                                                 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:

1. Substantially increase JobSeeker and related working age payments and improve the indexation arrangements for those payments.
2. Increase the rate of Commonwealth Rent Assistance.
3. Create a new employment services system to underpin the goal of full employment and ensure a more positive focus on supporting Australians seeking work.
4. 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).
5. 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

The Remote Area Allowance: the case for wider reform

 

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."

Measure for Measure, Act I, Scene 4.

 

Francis Markham, one of the most insightful and competent data and policy analysts in the Indigenous policy domain has just published a short blog post on the case for reforming the remote area allowance (RAA). His post (link here) is titled: The Poor Pay More: Why the Remote Area Allowance Needs Urgent Reform, and is highly recommended.

The post links to a 2020 Productivity Commission (PC) study (link here). The Executive Summary of that report is also worth reading.

I don’t propose to summarise Markham’s arguments which are succinct, persuasive and data driven.

What struck me as I read his post however is that it raises broader issues regarding remote employment, and in particular the need for radical reform of the Community Development Program (CDP).

In 2019, in response to the PC’s Issues Paper, I published a short post (link here) identifying a number of issues that would also come into play. Unfortunately, I failed to review the PC report when it was finally published in 2020….I must have been asleep at the wheel.

Below is an extract from that earlier post which in my view is still relevant, notwithstanding that the punitive tone of the CDP program appears to have moderated under the current Government:

A further potential issue relates to the impact of conditional welfare in remote Australia (ie the CDP program: link here) and the increasing evidence that as a result of punitive penalties, significant numbers of remote Indigenous residents are not accessing their welfare entitlements and thus not accessing RAA.

One of the challenges is assessing the utility of these policy measures, is that they were primarily devised to assist and benefit mainstream interests, particularly mainstream taxpayers and businesses. Consequently, it can be easy to overlook Indigenous perspectives in assessing the changes in underlying rationales over time. As the Commission notes:

A range of justifications have been advanced for special assistance for people living and/or working in remote areas (box 3), although many of these are contentious. For those justifications drawing on the isolation and arduousness of life in the outback, the changes in transport, communications and living conditions over the past seventy years mean that their strength has diminished (at least in many parts of the country). Such arguments have also been challenged on the basis that ‘individuals have a free choice whether or not to live or work in remote areas and to compensate them, if they so choose, would lead to resource misallocation and reduced growth for the country as a whole’ (see Cox et al. 1981, p. 15).

While there have been improvements in the circumstances of remote citizens, the circumstances of remote Indigenous citizens are still highly disadvantaged. Moreover, they may not have the same level of flexibility in their choice of residence as mainstream citizens. 

Markham’s arguments on reforming the RAA and the comments I made in 2019 together strengthen the argument for a radical reconsideration of the Community Development Program (CDP). In December last year, I published a post on employment issues where I endorsed what in effect amounted to a recommendation for a pilot employment creation program to be established (link here). Upon reflection however, the case for moving decisively to reform CDP is overwhelming: lives are not just at risk but will be drastically shortened unless action is taken.

It is time Governments looked seriously at shifting the totality of the 30,000 CDP participants across remote Australia into real Government funded jobs focussed on working on country, housing maintenance, NDIS support roles, construction, language and cultural advice within the education system, climate change readiness, disaster readiness, and community health. I mentioned some of these options when my views were sought for a recent article by Michelle Grattan in The Conversation (link here).

The rationale for such a radical reconceptualisation of the CDP is an amalgam of a number of factors: the existence of market failure in job creation in remote regions; the opportunity costs of not providing opportunities for real employment, the reduction in social security payments that would go some way to offsetting the costs of job creation; and the very real benefits to individuals, families and communities that would flow not just over the short term, but the long term.

I think of this as a macro-economic intervention across remote Australia in response to what is an ongoing economic, social and environmental disaster across remote Australia. It would be aimed at creating the foundations for a viable remote Australian economy. It would require vision, and sustained commitment from Government, as the present crisis (link here) is rooted in deep-seated market failure. In effect, it would be akin to an Australian version of Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Of course, the meta-issue worth considering is how is it that Governments have done nothing following the PC’s 2020 report on RAA, and more concerningly, have been incapable over at least four decades in ensuring that real employment opportunities are available for remote residents.

My own view is that Indigenous interests just do not have a sustained and powerful advocacy capability that governments find it impossible to ignore. Moreover, the Indigenous advocacy capabilities that do exist are both overwhelmed by competing mainstream interests whose claims on government effectively limit the funds available for investment in indigenous priorities. This is the fundamental reason that Government do not listen to Indigenous interests; they are just too busy listening to other interests.   

Finding the solution to that challenge is the real constraint on closing the gap, even for just 30,000 unemployed citizens across remote Australia, a cohort that totals less than 0.3 percent of AUstralias employment base, and which Francis Markham describes as ‘the most economically disadvantaged groups within Australia’.

 

 

12 February 2024

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.