Remote crisis: déjà vu all over again and again and again and again …

Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!

Macbeth, Act two, Scene three

I sat down to write a post that considered the recent media stories regarding the ongoing crime wave in the NT, NAPLAN, Closing the Gap, the extraordinary Indigenous unemployment levels in remote Australia and the ongoing and worsening incarceration crisis in the NT including the hyper-punitive response of the current NT Government. Then I realised that in doing so without the necessary contextualisation, I would be entering the perpetual motion machine that controls and shapes our media cycle and ensures that we never stop and ask how did we get here? I haven’t done the detailed research to write such a post, but my intuition told me that it was more important just now to remind readers of the underlying dynamics and forces which are shaping the outcomes that feed into daily life in remote communities, major towns like Katherine and Tennant Creek, and our daily media diet in south eastern Australia.

One way to do this is to list and link to the previous posts I have written on the theme of remote crisis. Below I list most (but perhaps not all) of the posts I have written on this topic since January 2022. I could have gone back further, but there is already more than enough material to digest. For each post, I have selected a short excerpt which illustrates some of the issues in play. The excerpts do not necessarily encompass the major argument of each post, and are not always the key point, but they do make in my view a contribution to providing the context that assists interested readers in forming a judgment of the underlying issues and causes in play when we read about the latest outrage or tragedy. I have left text bolded where I bolded it in the original post. I do recommend readers dip into at least some of these posts.

 

1.    Energy insecurity in remote Australia 13 January 2022 (link here)

The abstract of a recent academic article states:

Indigenous communities in remote Australia face dangerous temperature extremes. These extremes are associated with increased risk of mortality and ill health. For many households, temperature extremes increase both their reliance on those services that energy provides, and the risk of those services being disconnected. Poor quality housing, low incomes, poor health and energy insecurity associated with prepayment all exacerbate the risk of temperature-related harm … We find that nearly all households (91%) experienced a disconnection from electricity during the 2018–2019 financial year. Almost three quarters of households (74%) were disconnected more than ten times. … A broad suite of interrelated policy responses is required to reduce the frequency, duration and negative effects of disconnection from electricity for remote-living Indigenous residents.

 

2.    See How We Roll 24 January 2022 (link here):

It strikes me that this is, more than any other I have come across recently, an important book for policymakers engaged in shaping policy in the Indigenous domain. It shatters preconceptions regarding the distinction between remote and urban contexts, and makes clear the parallels between disadvantaged Indigenous people and other disadvantaged citizens. Most importantly, it should make policymakers question their assumptions and preconceptions regarding Indigenous life choices, and the potential for policy instruments and measures of various kinds to articulate or engage with the altogether different world views and approaches to living of many Indigenous people.

 

3.    The ongoing social and governance catastrophe in remote Australia 8 May 2022 (link here):

In October 2009, Nicolas Rothwell, writing in The Australian, published a scathing analysis under the title ’The failed state’… Rothwell’s opening sentence sums up his argument: ‘The Northern Territory is a lost cause’. He goes on:

There is, though, a failed state in our midst. That state is not Aboriginal north Australia, where the social fabric is in shreds and tatters. No: it is the jurisdiction largely responsible for entrenching this degree of Indigenous disadvantage: the modern-seeming, self-governing Northern Territory.

I quoted these observations in an earlier post in August 2016 (link here)… I would add however that the responsibility for entrenching Indigenous disadvantage is shared with the Commonwealth.

 

4.    Systemic myopia: Public investment challenges in remote Australia.19 December 2022 (link here):

To sum up, over the past two decades at least, public funding in core capital investments related to essential services, social housing, and community infrastructure has been severely deficient. This has undoubtedly reduced the levels of recurrent funding by governments in remote settings, and also limited the opportunities for local employment, and stronger economic development and progress. It is undoubtedly one of the key contributors to limiting the opportunities available to the rapidly growing youth cohort within communities. While reversing the sustained under-investment is not sufficient to address all the challenges facing residents of remote communities, it is a necessary element in any viable transition to a more stable future for remote communities. The onset of climate change is making addressing these challenges even more urgent.

 

5.    Cataclysm and Crisis 10 December 2022 (link here):

The inability of governments to envisage, understand and put in place effective strategies to address the multiple facets of the economic and social cataclysm facing remote communities amounts to a massive and fundamental failure. This failure is in and of itself a crisis; a crisis of governance capability, a crisis of will power, and ultimately a crisis of government legitimacy.

 

6.    Alice Springs crisis: observations on remote policy. 25 January 2023 (link here):

The Alice Springs hospital has 16 beds in its Intensive Care Unit. Minister Burney mentioned that she was shocked to learn that last night, 14 of those beds were taken by women who had been the victims of violent assaults. This window into the lived experience of too many remote women and their families is more than a warning of the seriousness of the rolling crisis across remote Australia. It is more than a prompt for governments to take action. It is more than an indictment on the quality and legitimacy of our systems of governance across northern Australia. It is damning evidence of the complicity and responsibility for these outcomes of those Australians (myself included) who take an interest in public policy. 

 

7.    The ongoing remote housing debacle 5 March 2023 (link here).  

In conclusion, the policy choices made over the past five years in relation to remote housing are retrograde and will have very real consequences: for taxpayers, for the population of remote Australia, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, and most importantly for the residents of these overcrowded and under-maintained houses across remote Australia. Over fifty percent of those individuals are under 25 and the overcrowding will have lifelong consequences for the opportunities that are within their reach.

 

8.    The structural underpinnings of the tragedy in Yuendumu 10 March 2023 (link here):

Yes, at the micro level, individuals on both sides of the cultural divide, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, have and had agency. But they were and are operating within an overarching set of institutional structures which have been in place for decades and were either explicitly designed to constrain and control Aboriginal people’s lives, or reflect longstanding and entrenched structures of underfunding that were oblivious to, and independent of the level of need. If we wish to prevent further micro level tragedies, we as a nation must move beyond allocating blame or responsibility at the micro level and also address the macro level issues. Micro and macro are both part of a single social system, one that is responsible for both extensive social and cultural harm, and ongoing mainstream governance failure.

 

9.    Dodge dip and dive: eight ‘data points’ on remote policy 1 May 2023 (link here):

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.

 

10. The remote community education scandal in the NT 24 September 2023 (link here):

It is time that the Commonwealth accepted that the NT Government is incapable of delivering remote education in a manner consistent with the public and national interest, and in such a way that it actually delivers outcomes. These poor outcomes are feeding directly into the social dysfunction that is endemic in parts of remote Australia, and which I have previously argued is a slow burn catastrophe (link here).

 

11. Looking ahead: the architecture of Indigenous policy in 2050 1 March 2024 (link here)

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.

 

12. The ongoing attendance crisis in remote schools 10 September 2024 (link here):

In relation to remote attendance, there is a need for the Commonwealth to step up and acknowledge it for the national crisis it is…. The Commonwealth should work with the states cooperatively on these issues, but devise incentive-based payments to the states and territories rather than indulging in the politically driven negotiation that currently predominate. Robust support to Indigenous community leaders aimed at encouraging and assisting them to raise expectations of parental involvement within their communities are essential. But so too are getting financial resource allocations for schools better targeted, and if necessary increased. Rewarding effective teachers much better and ensuring that the curriculum is focussed on the needs of the least capable cohort of students are both — to use a colloquial expression — ‘no brainers’. This suggests that the adoption of curriculum methodologies (such as Direct Learning) that do not allow any student to fall behind must be a priority.

 

13. Infrastructure shortfalls in Alices Springs town camps 24 December 2024 (link here).

What is particularly clear from the Guide is how exclusionary institutional complacency emerges in myriad instances of quite prosaic neglect: the absence of footpaths, of surveyed lots, of safe play grounds for children, of street signs, of shade and community shelters; in short, this neglect reflects the longstanding and widespread refusal of mainstream institutions such a local governments to see their roles as universal rather than sectional. The details vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but the impacts are longstanding and have a certain consistency….

The authors and publishers of the Guide to Housing and Infrastructure Standards in Town Camps have made an extraordinarily significant contribution to laying the groundwork for better advocacy for remote Indigenous communities on essential services reform both in Alice Springs, but importantly across northern Australia. They deserve wider recognition and indeed acclamation. What is also clear is that without the efforts of Tangentyere and its community leadership over almost 50 years, the progress made to date on the town camps would not have been possible. Their historically significant work is not yet complete; I only hope that it will not be another fifty years before Aboriginal people in town camps in Alice Springs and beyond are included as fully entitled citizens in the provision of essential services.

 

14. Indigenous hyper-incarceration: a remote problem? 24 January 2025 (link here):

One data point quoted stood out:

As of January, the Northern Territory hit a grim milestone. More than 1% of the territory’s total population is now incarcerated in adult prison.

….

It is the case that the process of colonisation turned the world upside down for Indigenous people across the nation, and the people of remote Australia are generations closer to that social cataclysm.

Mainstream Australia cannot undo those social processes, and the world has moved on for all Australians. However, given the clear evidence of deep dysfunction arising from those social processes that were neither chosen nor desired by Indigenous people, and the impacts those changes inevitably imposed and continues to impose, the nation and its policy elites must be prepared to consider policy options that turn established modes of policy formulation upside down. Not to do so would amount to an extraordinary admission of national policy failure. Indigenous incarceration is just one of the impacts that arise from widespread social and economic dysfunction across remote Australia and woven through pockets of urban and regional Australia.

 

15. Misdirected focus: the case for institutional policy reforms to alcohol supply 18 March 2025 (link here):

The subliminal message from the NIAA then is don’t look to the Commonwealth to drive institutional policy reform, its someone else’s responsibility. See this page on their website too (link here). For what it’s worth, I just don’t buy that argument.

The appendix to the NIAA submission ( #140 at this link) which I strongly recommend readers seek out and read very usefully provides a comprehensive and powerful snapshot of the impacts of alcohol on various sectors. Here are a few data points I have cherry picked from the NIAA submission appendix:

… First Nations people were 4.2 times as likely to die from alcohol-related causes as non-Indigenous Australians. They were also 3.8 times as likely to die from alcoholic liver disease, and 4.7 times as likely to die from mental and behavioural disorders due to alcohol use….

AOD are involved in more than half of all police-reported family and domestic violence incidents in Australia, and are likely to be involved in a substantially greater proportion of all family and domestic violence…. For homicides in the period from 1989–90 to 2016–17, 72% of First Nations offenders were under the influence of alcohol at the time of the incident, as were 71% of First Nations victims…

If Australia was serious about reducing Indigenous incarceration,…  reducing family violence within Indigenous contexts, … improving Indigenous health status, … [and] improving socio-economic status within the Indigenous community, we would implement significant policy reforms in relation to alcohol advertising, taxation and retail availability.

If Australia was serious about closing the gap, the Commonwealth would step up and lead, and one of its first steps would be to implement significant policy reforms in relation to alcohol advertising, taxation and retail availability.

Unfortunately, it is quite clear from a close reading of this report that neither the Government nor the Opposition are serious about any of these issues.

 

16. The Domestic and Family Violence crisis in the NT: a symptom of wider chaos 29 April 2025 (link here):

The Northern Territory is in a state of perpetual governance crisis, where underfunded schools are no longer fit for purpose, jobs are not within reach of young Aboriginal kids, alcohol and drug abuse is rife, as is domestic and family violence, and where violence and mayhem are increasingly spilling into the major towns and cities….

The problems in the NT have been decades in the making and have their roots in the failures of governments at all levels to adequately support the maintenance of a viable social and economic institutional infrastructure in remote communities. Reversing this longstanding policy neglect is not susceptible to some quick fix. In recent years however the systemic dysfunction in remote communities that governments have been prepared to tolerate for decades because they were metaphorically ‘out of sight’ has begun to colonise mainstream Territory cities and towns….

One way or another, remote Australia requires more serious policy attention (as opposed to political froth) from national policymakers. A good first step would be to progressively and incrementally strengthen controls across the board (ie mainstream and Indigenous) over the availability and price of alcohol. But much more than this will be needed to reverse the progressive decline in governance and its silent handmaiden, economic security, that is currently underway and gathering momentum. The alternative to serious reform is progressive decline into systemic chaos not just in remote communities, but across the NT and potentially elsewhere in remote Australia. Unfortunately, it seems things will have to get much worse before the political willpower to reform will emerge either in Canberra or Darwin.

 

1 August 2025

 

The Domestic and Family Violence crisis in the NT: a symptom of wider chaos

 

Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!

Macbeth, Act two, Scene three

Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS), a research organisation established by Australian governments, recently published an evaluation report (link here) commissioned (and presumably funded) by the Northern Territory Department of Children and Families into the Territory’s Men’s Behaviour Change Programs (MBCPs). These programs (which to be clear seek to address important issues of individual responsibility) are aimed at reducing the levels of Domestic and Family Violence in some, but not all, regions in the NT. The evaluation focussed on the two MBPCs operating in the NT (link here), one in Darwin and Wadeye run by Catholic Care NT, and the other operating in the Alice Springs Town Camps run by Tangentyere Council. The evaluation was process focussed rather than outcome focussed, and while its recommendations are sensible and, in many respects, predictable, the evaluation was clearly limited in its focus. In setting the scene, the report identifies the broader significance of domestic and family violence (DVF) in the NT (page 18):

The NT arguably faces the greatest challenge of all Australian jurisdictions in addressing domestic and family violence. The rates of DFV in the NT are far higher than any other jurisdiction in the country, with particularly severe consequences for victims and survivors. In 2023, rates of DFV-related assault were almost 6 times that of all other jurisdictions where data is recorded, and 3.5 times the national average. The rate of DFV-related homicide was 4 times that of all other jurisdictions, and 3 times the national average. 2 in 3 (67%) assaults recorded in the NT were related to DFV and over half (55%) of homicides recorded in the NT were DFV related in 2023 [footnotes removed].

The report goes on to state:

While DFV affects people across population groups in the NT, Aboriginal women are disproportionately affected, being over 8 times more likely to be assaulted than nonIndigenous women or men. Aboriginal women in the NT are killed by intimate partners at almost 13 times the rate of non-Indigenous women and men. Over the 20-year period between 2000 and 2021, 70 per cent of intimate partner perpetrated assault deaths in the NT were perpetrated against Aboriginal women…  It is important to emphasise that while DFV is experienced mostly by Aboriginal women in the NT, DFV is perpetrated by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous men [footnotes removed].

The report proceeds to cite research identifying the ongoing impacts of colonialism, the impact of the 2007 NT Emergency Response, and the pervasive impacts of racism as significant contributors to the existence of DFV. While these are undoubtedly ongoing factors in shaping Aboriginal people’s life opportunities, I consider that their significance in driving DFV rates in the NT is both overstated and without rigorous empirical proof. More significant are the wider systemic issues identified in the report on page 19 under the heading Contextual realities of the NT. Unfortunately, the report frames these factors as downstream factors which compound the impact of DFV rather than as drivers or causes of DFV:

The experiences and use of DFV in the NT are compounded by contextual realities that make addressing this violence particularly complex. … alongside structural and system racism, Aboriginal communities in the NT are also disproportionately affected by factors such as poverty, homelessness, inadequate housing, housing insecurity and overcrowding, physical and mental health issues, alcohol and drug use, high rates of unemployment, and socio-economic disadvantage [footnotes removed].

The effect of this framing in the evaluation is to shift attention away from focussing on causation, and towards a focus on remediation. Of course, this ultimately flows through into the framing of the internal and external policy debate. The result is that while the ANROWS report mentions systemic issues, it simultaneously downgrades those that are susceptible to policy action to a category of ancillary or downstream issues that are just unfortunate ‘contextual realities’. The systemic issues that are identified (colonisation; the NT intervention; ongoing racism) are not susceptible to reversal through policy reform. The result in my view is that notwithstanding the reports undoubted merits as a process evaluation, it is simultaneously a contributor (perhaps unintentionally) to the systemic blindness which facilitates the ability of policymakers to avoid dealing with the real issues of causation in relation to domestic and family violence in the NT.

The NT Government’s Families Department website has some very useful information and data on the levels of DFV across the NT (link here) and I particularly recommend interested readers look at the DFV mapping report (link here) which provides a comprehensive analysis of the prevalence rates in the Northern Territory, and purports to identify gaps, opportunities and proposals for reform. Pages 145-147 list a series of potential initiatives under the heading ‘Systemic Reform and enablers opportunities’. Unfortunately, like the ANROWS evaluation, there is no mention of alcohol as a driver of Domestic and Family Violence. Readers are effectively misdirected away from the structural reform and into a labyrinth of myriad potential and desirable administrative changes.

In November last year, I published a post with the title Justice Reinvestment: divert and distract (link here) where I stated:

Importantly, while the costs of Indigenous hyper-incarceration are overwhelmingly borne by First Nations individuals, families and communities, there are wider societal costs that provide a potential platform for future advocacy. I am not referring to the financial costs of our prisons, substantial as they are, but to the less tangible costs that degrade the moral and ethical foundations of our society. How can informed citizens live in a society where the preconditions for social dysfunction have been allowed to develop, largely through neglect rather than deliberate intent, to the point where in some parts of the nation, domestic violence is endemic, employment opportunities are minimal, (government owned) housing is in extraordinary states of overcrowding and disrepair, and where young people are less literate and numerate than their parents. As the NT Coroner Elizabeth Armitage noted in her concluding comments to the recently released Inquest into the deaths of four Indigenous women (link here), ‘94% of the very youngest children in detention (10-13 year olds) have been exposed to family violence’.

In March this year, in a post titled Misdirected focus: the case for institutional policy reforms to alcohol supply (link here) I quoted an NIAA submission to a Parliamentary Committee Inquiry which stated inter alia:

AOD [alcohol and other drugs] are involved in more than half of all police-reported family and domestic violence incidents in Australia, and are likely to be involved in a substantially greater proportion of all family and domestic violence…. For homicides in the period from 1989–90 to 2016–17, 72% of First Nations offenders were under the influence of alcohol at the time of the incident, as were 71% of First Nations victims…

In the conclusion to that post, I wrote inter alia:

If Australia was serious about reducing family violence within Indigenous contexts, we would implement significant policy reforms in relation to alcohol advertising, taxation and retail availability.

A commentator wrote in response:

… your conclusion says it all, really. The work has all been done by WHO [World Health Organisation], which over time has refined and distilled its best practice advice based on solid research gathered by its expert committees over decades. And if you had to choose the three items with the best evidence attaching to them, it is those three you mention: dealing with alcohol advertising; taxation; and seriously attacking the easy and cheap retail availability of alcohol. 

Concluding comment

The tragedy of our nation’s continued propensity to avoid facing up to the issues that are causing immense harm and damage to the life opportunities of tens of thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across remote Australia (and beyond) is approaching the point where it will spiral out of control and adversely impact mainstream institutions.

The Northern Territory is in a state of perpetual governance crisis, where underfunded schools are no longer fit for purpose, jobs are not within reach of young Aboriginal kids, alcohol and drug abuse is rife, as is domestic and family violence, and where violence and mayhem are increasingly spilling into the major towns and cities. Recently, the organisation representing the traditional owners of the Darwin region called on the four land councils to take some responsibility for the mayhem arising from the misbehaviour of out of town visitors (link here).

The reaction and knee-jerk responses of politicians and the wider Territory community is to blame the victim and seek ever increasing punitive laws and actions by governments. Last week, the Chief Minister announced she would recall Parliament (scheduled to sit tomorrow) specifically to rush through stronger bail laws following the murder of a storekeeper by a young Aboriginal man with a lengthy criminal justice record. On Saturday, the Weekend Australian (26-27 April 2025) published an article by Liam Mendes headlined ‘Same old story in red-flag Territory’ ($ link here $) which recounted numerous instances of shocking and appalling violence perpetrated against innocent citizens by young offenders. The article noted that ‘Territorians have been here before’ recounting how the CLP Government had come to office promising to get ‘tough on crime’, but that the community were increasingly sceptical: ‘The Chief Minister’s declaration …that “nothing is off the table” meant very little to exasperated residents’. Mendes concluded by noting ‘It is clear that the Territory’s justice system is broken. The answer isn’t to lock every defendant into overcrowded, overrun, disgusting watch houses.’ The author is right of course, although his concluding comment that the Government should have acted sooner is arguably misguided insofar as it implies that there are (unspecified) short term solutions.

The problems in the NT have been decades in the making and have their roots in the failures of governments at all levels to adequately support the maintenance of a viable social and economic institutional infrastructure in remote communities. Reversing this longstanding policy neglect is not susceptible to some quick fix. In recent years however the systemic dysfunction in remote communities that governments have been prepared to tolerate for decades because they were metaphorically ‘out of sight’ has begun to colonise mainstream Territory cities and towns.

Simultaneously, quite apart from the justice system challenges, and the associated issues related to Indigenous disadvantage, the quality of governance and public administration within the NT Government more generally has reached a tipping point and is now in a state of rolling crisis. Over the past year major governance failures have emerged in the Police, in the Anti-Corruption Commission, in the Chief Minister’s Department, and in the high-profile Waterfront Corporation. The senior levels of the NT bureaucracy appear to have been seriously compromised without apparent accountability. The concept of ministerial responsibility appears to have been consigned to the deeper depths of Darwin Harbour. The NT Independent recently published an editorial headlined CLP Government’s cover-up of misconduct at Waterfront part of wider dysfunction in the Territory (link here).

The prospect of any government in the NT pursuing the public interest on any significant issue in the near term is, in my view, a chimera. To take the crucial issue of alcohol, both Labor and CLP Government in the NT have consistently been prepared to prioritise the interests of the alcohol industry over the public interest (link here and link here). The risk is that the Territory’s diseased culture of governance has also infected the Commonwealth’s administration of Indigenous affairs. Three of the last five Ministers or Assistant Ministers have been from the NT, and the current Shadow Minister is also from the NT. In these circumstances, it is difficult to see the Commonwealth holding the NT to account on Indigenous policy issues going forward (not least because it has failed to do so to date).

One way or another, remote Australia requires more serious policy attention (as opposed to political froth) from national policymakers. A good first step would be to progressively and incrementally strengthen controls across the board (ie mainstream and Indigenous) over the availability and price of alcohol. But much more than this will be needed to reverse the progressive decline in governance and its silent handmaiden, economic security, that is currently underway and gathering momentum. The alternative to serious reform is progressive decline into systemic chaos not just in remote communities, but across the NT and potentially elsewhere in remote Australia. Unfortunately, it seems things will have to get much worse before the political willpower to reform will emerge either in Canberra or Darwin.

 

29 April 2025

A strategically important remote housing initiative

 

 

Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful

Measure for Measure Act three, Scene one.

 

The Commonwealth and NT Governments will today announce a major investment in remote housing. Prime Minister Albanese was interviewed on ABC radio (link here) and had this to say:

 

DAVID LIPSON, HOST: G'day. Welcome to AM. I'm David Lipson coming to you from Gadigal Land in Sydney. The Prime Minister is today unveiling a major boost to Indigenous housing in the Northern Territory. Along with the NT Government, $4 billion will be spent on the construction of 2,700 new homes over ten years. The aim is to halve overcrowding in Indigenous homes. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese joins me now. PM, thanks for being with us here on AM.

 

ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Good morning. Good to be with you, David.

 

LIPSON: There are 19 Closing the Gap targets. 15 of them aren't on track. Why have you made Indigenous housing a priority?

 

PRIME MINISTER: Because housing is the key to other opportunities in life. If you don't have a secure home over your head, if you have overcrowding, then you will have - not just housing problems - you'll have health problems, you'll have problems with justice issues, inevitably, that come from the tension that come from overcrowded homes and communities, and you'll have difficulty getting education. It's hard to see yourself having a greater opportunity in life if you don't have that security of a roof over your head and in a way that enables you to actually go about the other things that we need to close the gap on.

 

LIPSON: So, will $4 billion be enough to close the gap on Indigenous housing?

 

PRIME MINISTER: Look, it's a major step forward. This is a joint $4 billion announcement. It will go out at $400 million a year over ten years. It will see up to 270 homes being built each and every year. And importantly as well, the nature of how that construction occurs is important, because we're doing it through local Indigenous housing, what it will do is ensure that we can build into the agreements - skills development, apprenticeships, making sure that jobs are created as well. So, it goes hand in hand with the other work that we've done, abolishing the CDP Employment Program, to have real jobs with real wages, providing real opportunities for Indigenous people in remote communities.

 

LIPSON: I note you say up to 270 homes a year. Could it be less?

 

PRIME MINISTER: Well, we think that the costings that we've made, essentially, that that is spot on - the funding that is available. But of course, it won't be one size fits all. There'll be some homes that are just for smaller families, but homes that, by and large - it's based upon three bedroom homes, because we know that families in these remote communities tend to have numbers of children.

 

I will add links to the relevant media releases when they are up on the web.

 

The importance of investing in remote housing has long been a focus on this blog, so I was very pleased with the announcement. The Commonwealth Government is to be congratulated both for recognizing the strategic policy importance of housing to addressing so many other challenges (a point the PM made in his comments above) and for locking in the investment for ten years which both provides policy certainty and facilitates the planning that goes hand in hand with effective implementation.

 

The investment is limited to the NT where the Commonwealth has a contingent liability related to some thousands of remote houses due to the fact that the leases are held by the Commonwealth and sub-leased to the NTG. This arose because the NT Land Councils insisted in leasing negotiations that the Commonwealth should hold the leases. This has turned out to be a clever tactic as it has kept the Commonwealth engaged in the NT even while it has stepped back form investing in remote housing in the states of WA, Qld and SA. It is to be hoped that the Commonwealth announcement will put renewed pressure on these states to lift their games.

 

The key challenges for the future with this initiative will include the following issues.

 

Implementation. There are numerous moving parts to delivering infrastructure projects in remote communities, and the NTG has often made heavy going of this aspect fo program delivery. The Commonwealth will need to ensure that it is monitoring progress every step fo the way.

 

The trade-off between new housing and ongoing repairs and maintenance (R&M). The most effective way to manage the total hosing stock in remote communities is to ensure that R&M is undertaken in a timely way. In recent years, it has been apparent that the NTG has not been managing this adequately (or even at all). It will be imperative that the Commonwealth implement oversight systems to ensure this issue is given substantive attention.

 

Essential services infrastructure (water, sewerage, power, and even sealed roads) are crucial components of an effective and safe housing system. These ‘lumpy’ investments are often not prioritized by the NTG, with the result that the existing housing stock is less fit for purpose than it should be. Again, it will be important that the Commonwealth establishes the monitoring systems that identify when there are major gaps in essential services provision. The Commonwealth’s recent Closing the Gap implementation plan identified that work in relation to target 9(b) had stopped. No explanation was offered for this decision. This decision should be revisited, and at the very least an explanation offered.

 

The overarching issue that links each of these three issues is the need for adequate data. Some of it will be administrative in nature (and given the joint nature of the new program, it will be important that the Commonwealth has access to the NTG administrative data as a matter of course. But perhaps more importantly, there is a need for more authoritative data such as was once obtained from the Community Hosing and Infrastructure Survey (CHINS) that was funded and auspiced by ATSIC. It is time this was resuscitated.

 

Finally, it is worth noting the political drivers for this announcement. The NT election is due later this year, and housing is always a core issue in remote communities. At the Commonwealth level, this is the sort of announcement that would usually be included in the May budget. My guess is that the Government is keen to get on the front foot in the Indigenous policy space following the Voice defeat, and this announcement will go someway to doing that. By separating it from the budget, it ensures that the likely focus of the Budget on cost of living issues for middle Australia is not sidelined by an issue which is not front and centre in most Australians’ concerns.

 

To sum up, this is an excellent development from a government that has been struggling to find its feet on Indigenous issues. For the first time in a year, it is looking like it is being proactive and setting the policy agenda on Indigenous issues. However, there will be challenges in rolling out the program, and the Commonwealth will need to set in place an effective oversight function to ensure that’s its investment is rolled out efficiently and that the outcomes delivered are effective in addressing the widespread disadvantage that exists across remote Australia.

 

 

The remote community education scandal in the NT

                                                            That glib and oily art

to speak and purpose not.

King Lear, Act one, scene one.

 

The Weekend Australian (23-24 September 2023) has begun publishing a series of articles (link here and link here $$) researched and written by three independent journalists and has also published an editorial titled NT schools worsen disadvantage (link here $$). The front page article is accurately titled Nation’s forgotten schoolkids scandal, and the back up article is titled Thirst for learning in education desert.

 

 The articles describe appalling conditions in makeshift classrooms in remote outstations, endemic shortfalls of registered teachers, and quite atrocious educational outcomes. The article also points out that large numbers of Indigenous students fall below established minimum standards and attendance rates are extraordinarily low. The NT Education web page (link here) provides a good overview of the extraordinarily poor attendance levels particularly in very remote regions. What those figures do not tell us is the proportion of students who are attending 90 percent of the time. For example, fifty percent attendance may mean that every student is attending only half the days in the school year, or that fifty percent are attending every day, and fifty percent none. The devil is in the detail. In any case, those outcomes scandalous in their own right, a ‘scandal’ informed observers have been aware of for decades (link here), and a ‘scandal’ the NT Government has been aware of and has done nothing substantive to address. Of course, the real scandal is that these outcomes are scandalous, but not a scandal that forces government action.

 

 The ‘scandal’ The Australian article authors point to are the funding mechanisms in place in the NT education system for remote schools. In particular, they point out that the NT is the only jurisdiction that funds schools on the basis of attendance numbers, and not enrolment numbers.

 

 According to The Australian articles, following a 2022 Deloitte Report that identified the harm arising from this system, the NT Government announced it will move to an enrolment based system over the next five years, but the NT Minister would not answer the authors questions on the current status of this transition. The result is a massive level of underfunding, estimated at $214m, that impacts on the most disadvantaged students in the nation.

 

 The second funding mechanism that is defective, and according to the article directly affects an estimated 400 remote students, relates to so called Homeland Learning Centres, that are in effect classrooms notionally attached to a hub school. The article states:

There is no public record of HLC student numbers, teaching ratios, educational outcomes, facilities or funding.

 It is not clear if the hub schools incorporate these statistics or not. A 2014 Review commissioned by the NT Government and cited by the article raised “issues about equity and quality in the delivery of education for all NT students” and suggested that hundreds of Indigenous students lived in homelands with no education provision at all.

 

 A third issue, raised by the Australian Education Union NT (AEUNT) was that education funding required on the ground is instead directed into the NT bureaucracy. According to Productivity Commission data compiled by the AEUNT, the NT has 22 non-school staff per 1000 students compared with nine in the ACT and eight in Tasmania.

 

 The Australian’s editorial includes the following assessment, with which I would agree:

The situation is unconscionable and suggests the NT government is not fit for purpose. The indifference, warped priorities and maladministration that have created the problems stretch back for decades across the political divide.

 

 So what are we to make of all this in policy terms?

 

 At the risk of gross simplification, and bearing in mind that remote NT is not the same as remote Victoria, it is worth assessing this from two perspectives, a micro community level perspective; and the macro jurisdiction wide perspective.

 

 At the micro level, the provision of education services by the public sector is just one element in a labyrinthine intercultural world, where community priorities are shaped by the seasons, the geography, cultural responsibilities, localised conflicts and alliances, family obligations, and the obligations and opportunities across multiple sectors emanating from mainstream institutions. To use a gross over-simplification, it is a complex micro policy environment. Mainstream values and assumptions are not guaranteed to operate as they might in Melbourne. Nor do local communities necessarily punish a government that does not provide services (particularly when all governments effectively treat them the same); instead, bush community members may take the view that voting is irrational and not a priority (link here).

 

 At the macro policy level, mainstream policy engagement is shaped overwhelmingly by political pressures and opportunities, with Cabinet and Ministers making zero sum decisions regarding the allocation of resources, both in terms of what is available to a particular sector (like education) and then where the finite and perhaps insufficient resources are allocated, making zero sum decisions within the sector, funding some schools more than others. If for example urban infrastructure is the paramount priority in a polity with small electorates, and where winning margins are razor thin, politicians and governments will be strongly incentivised to put electoral considerations above fairness, above long term investments with payoffs in the future, and above the interests of particular groups of citizens, above the public interest, and above the national interest.

 

 The funding available to a particular school, and its associated homeland learning centres, is a function of factors operating at both micro levels and macro levels. Governments are adept at finding bureaucratic processes (that is, systemic institutional processes) to allocate resources which deliver the outcomes desired by the political agenda of the government while appearing to be neutral and fair. The use of attendance rather than enrolment to allocate school resources across the NT is a prime example of this. It is not a policy mistake or oversight, but a deliberately chosen policy mechanism designed to deliver political outcomes while appearing anodyne and even appropriate. Other strategies adopted by governments include deliberate reliance on opacity or overt confidentiality, prioritising secrecy over openness. The articles in The Australian mention a number of times various reports that have been commissioned and not released, and information that is not available or not even collected. Transparency is the friend of the public interest and good policy, not its enemy (as governments implicitly argue).

 

 The educational outcomes at a particular school, and aggregative across the sector, are a function in large measure of funding availability, but also a function of other factors at both micro and macro levels. This is widely recognised by all participants in the sector, but paradoxically, it becomes a further reason for governments to rely on under-investment as a political strategy as outcome failure can always be blamed on something else (e.g. poor parental commitment, poor teacher skills, remoteness and poor roads, the weather, welfare dependence and so on). Yet while adequate funding is not in itself sufficient to guarantee good educational outcomes, it is certainly necessary (that is, essential) for good educational outcomes. Other factors that are essential include  effective alignment between the curriculum and approach to instruction and the cultural values of the school community; safe and secure housing; social stability within the community (including protection from alcohol related violence; and of course access to good health services. There may well be others such as effective community governance, and perhaps access to sport and recreation facilities, access to traditional country, and so on.

 

 In other words, if we as a nation wish to ensure that remote Indigenous communities are able to access an effective education system, we need to adopt a more holistic policy approach that is both culturally aligned and which priorities the community interest over short term political interests. This may sound somewhat naïve and idealistic when written in abstract prose, but it needs to be remembered that politicians are making decisions that are affecting adversely the life opportunities of tens of thousands of children and adolescents over the course of any decade. Those decisions are, in a very real sense, shaping and determining future life paths: prison or employment, alcohol or sobriety, sickness or health, long life or early death.

 

 If this all sounds too hard, I beg to differ. It is certainly complex, difficult and challenging. But there are people in the NT, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, who in the face of the widespread political indifference and obstruction outlined in The Australian article, are giving it their best shot. I refer readers to the Karrkad Kanjdji Trust (KKT) (link here) which is primarily an organisation established to care for country. It has apparently taken the view that education is too important for its members and their children to be left to the NT education system’s under-performance. They established and supported an associated entity, the Nawarddeken Academy (NA) which now operates three schools in western Arnhem Land. Their 2021 Annual Report (link here) outlines in detail what they are seeking to do. I do not have first hand knowledge of their educational approach and strategies, but what is available in their documentation strikes me as a significant step in the right direction. The fact that there are people working hard in the face of the political and bureaucratic indifference outlined in The Australian’s article is to my mind inspiring.

 

 I am however very conscious that micro success in delivering education programs (if achieved) is not the whole solution. It needs to be replicated across the whole sector. It may well be that the talents and commitment of the intercultural teams at KKT and NA are not widely available even if funding were to be made adequate and other ancillary requirements provided. Macro policy is, in this respect, more difficult than micro policy. This leads me to conclude that there is a need to focus on making macro policy settings effective and fit for purpose.

 

 In a recent submission to the Productivity Commission in relation to their draft report on the review of the operations of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap (link here to a my post on this issue – click through to my submission), I argued that the current closing the gap policy architecture was sub-optimal and used the absence of a target which directly monitors the effectiveness of school education as an example. I cited Productivity Commission research that links poor education outcomes to continuing deep disadvantage. I also argued strongly that the Commonwealth should step up and take an oversight role in relation to the performance of the states and territories on closing the gap. Importantly, I argued that the Productivity Commission should make the case for a more effective policy architecture, an approach that I hadn’t discerned in its draft report.

 

 It struck me that the Productivity Commission should be using its status as an independent expert body to provide potential solutions to the deep-seated inequities confronting First Nations citizens. The Australian exposé just reinforces the argument that the Productivity Commission, and indeed, the Commonwealth, must look beyond the strict terms of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap if they wish to see real progress in the next thirty years.

 

 In relation to the NT education system, it seems obvious to me (and increasingly others) that the NT Government has neither the political incentives, nor the policy capabilities to deliver adequate education services to remote communities. The Australian’s editorial suggested that elements of the NT education system be handed over to ‘an experienced non-government education service.’ I don’t support this idea as any such non-government entity would be at risk of direct or indirect  interference and pressure by electorally (and not policy) motivated NT politicians.

 

 It is time that the Commonwealth accepted that the NT Government is incapable of delivering remote education in a manner consistent with the public and national interest, and in such a way that it actually delivers outcomes. These poor outcomes are feeding directly into the social dysfunction that is endemic in parts of remote Australia, and which I have previously argued is a slow burn catastrophe (link here). I suggest that what is required is a joint Commonwealth and Territory Authority, inclusive of Indigenous representation and interests, to oversight the allocation of funding resources and development of policy for the delivery of education across the Norther Territory outside of Darwin and perhaps Alice Springs.

 

Such an Authority should be established by Commonwealth legislation, and should have a finite term, say twenty years. The Commonwealth should fund the authority, and adjust the existing funding to the NT if it so wishes to effectively ensure joint funding. There may also be merit in considering whether such an authority should be extended to remote regions in other jurisdictions. The 1967 referendum provided the Commonwealth with the legislative remit in relation to Indigenous matters in the states and territories (as does section 122 of the Constitution in relation to the Territories). The Commonwealth Government should fulfill its responsibility to the citizens of the NT who are being systemically deprived of the opportunity for an education, and the life opportunities that flow from that by the longstanding policy decisions of the NT Government.