Reconsidering the architecture for closing the gap

 

                                                 Go, tread the path that thou shalt ne’er return.

                                                 Richard III, Act One, scene one.

 

Following the publication of the Productivity Commission’s draft report for its Closing the Gap review (link here), I published a critique arguing for a more wholistic approach to the review. Having already made a submission, I was initially reluctant to make a further submission, but eventually decided I should make the effort to put my views formally to the review.

 

Last week, I submitted a second submission (link here) focussing primarily on the high level problems with the architecture for Closing the Gap, and argued that the Commission should take the opportunity to look beyond the Priority Reforms to the policy architecture generally and the targets in particular. I also attached an appendix outlining one alternative approach to designing the policy architecture for Closing the Gap. My purpose was not to advocate for that specific design, but merely to demonstrate that alternative design approaches are feasible which would address the flaws and gaps in the current policy architecture (which I pointed to in the body of my submission).

 

As it is reasonably short, I include the appendix below, and encourage readers to read the full submission.

 

Appendix A: Outline of one possible alternative framework for closing the gap

 

[This potential framework is included merely to demonstrate that alternative approaches to devising a framework for Closing the Gap are possible.]

 

The first step would be for the Productivity Commission to be requested to make an independently refereed estimate of the potential cost of closing the gap over (say) a fifty year period. This estimate should be indicative, revised every five or ten years, and designed to inform the Australian community of the scale of the challenge involved. Such an estimate should be contextualised with an analysis of the broad causes of existing disadvantage to undercut any suggestion that these are self-inflicted costs or that First Nations citizens are somehow responsible for their disadvantaged status. Such an estimate might be complemented by a revival of the Productivity Commission’s previous Indigenous expenditure reports, albeit better framed to take into account positive and negative expenditures, to differentiate between citizenship entitlements and discretionary investments, and perhaps even broadened to include tax expenditures as well as appropriated expenditures.

 

Core principles of the framework would be that the targets should be high level and address systemic issues, and implicitly acknowledge that deep disadvantage has multiple causes and symptoms.

 

The primary purpose of the targets would be to provide a generalised indication to governments whether or not disadvantage exists and continues. To this end, a limited number of targets would be set based on the availability of reliable data, and their power to communicate a readily understood narrative to the Australian population. To this end, they would generally involve comparisons between Indigenous and non-Indigenous citizens, and may benefit from being aggregated to amalgamate differing data points within each cohort into a single index (e.g. to amalgamate outcomes for education outcomes at different schooling years into a single index). There should be no expectation that Governments should allocate funding to these particular targets.

 

Examples of potential targets include:

•          Comparative lifespans.

•          Comparative educational outcomes.

•          An indicator of comparative geographic disadvantage across urban, regional and remote regions (incorporating physical infrastructure elements such as housing and essential services; and perhaps other core services such as health and education).

•          An indicator of comparative health disadvantage.

•          An indicator of comparative justice system disadvantage.

 

Beneath the high level targets there would be a limited series of high level ten year sectoral priorities linked to the allocation of additional funding locked in to legislated appropriations.  These core priorities would be supplemented by additional priorities locked in to the forward estimates. The priorities and their associated funding would be underpinned by a published policy or program rationale that includes indicators of current comparative socioeconomic status, a program logic and rationale, and links back to the overarching aim of the Closing the Gap agenda, namely, removing comparative disadvantage and inequity. However, there would also be scope for these priorities to encompass initiatives directed to strengthening culture, including for example language programs, support for the various forms of artistic expression, and support for maintaining links to land and country. Stronger cultures strengthen the capabilities that are a core part of citizenship and contribute indirectly (but importantly) to addressing disadvantage. In other words, such a model builds in a tangible mechanism for governments to acknowledge and fund alternative life choices by First Nations citizens.

 

In relation to the ten year sectoral priorities, there would be benefit in requiring these to be agreed Commonwealth /state funding programs which are designed to be additional to current funding initiatives and programs and can be monitored and assessed as a unified strategy.

 

There should be regular independent evaluations of each the sectoral and additional priority programs, with the evaluation reports tabled publicly in Parliament.

 

Additionally, there should be a series of Priority Reforms (such as currently in place) focussed on driving institutional and systemic reforms designed to support and underpin the Closing the Gap policy architecture. These should be framed in qualitative and not quantitative terms, and should be assessed by regular reviews (such as the current review process).

 

Finally, the Commonwealth should take the lead in this national project as the ‘first among equals’, rather than the current model where is sees itself merely as one of nine jurisdictions with responsibility for closing the gap. This would mean that it should take a direct leadership role in ensuring high level consistency in the closing the gap activities of states and territories, and in engaging with the Coalition of Peaks. The Commonwealth should take responsibility for amalgamating performance monitoring and reporting related to the closing the gap architecture across all jurisdictions. It should also provide robust feedback (perhaps through establishing a statutory office) to the states and territories on the quality of their program reports and implementation plans. This would be consistent with the implicit purpose of the 1967 referendum which gave the Commonwealth powers to legislate in relation to Indigenous citizens.

Labyrinth: the Productivity Commission Draft Report on Closing the Gap

 

…. that our stars,

Unreconciliable, should divide,

Our equalness to this.

Antony & Cleopatra Act V, scene 1

The Productivity Commission (PC) has released a draft report on its review of progress on closing the gap (link here). The draft report package comprises a nine page plain English executive summary (which I found extremely useful); a 15 page Executive Summary which includes six draft recommendations and a series of requests for information/feedback; a 101 page Draft Report, and a series of seven information papers totalling around 280 pages.

 

The review arises from the terms of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap (link here), in particular, clauses 121 to 124. In particular, clause 121 states:

The Productivity Commission will undertake a comprehensive review of progress every three years … It will provide an analysis of progress on Closing the Gap against the priority reforms, targets, indicators and trajectories, and examine the factors contributing to progress, including by drawing on evaluation and other evidence. 

 

The political and media reaction to the Draft Review has been predictable with a large focus on the report’s implications for the Voice (which to my mind prioritises means over ends). The Australian ran a series of articles on 26 July 2023 (behind its paywall) with headlines such as ‘Closing the Gap failures “show why the vote must succeed”’ (a view espoused by Minister Burney); ‘Indigenous watchdog “with bite” called for regardless of voice vote to deal with Closing The Gap’; ‘Closing the Gap scheme flounders within states of cynical disregard’ (arguing the states have dropped the ball); and an editorial headed ‘Bureaucracy firmly in the sights’. The Chair of the PC, Michael Brennan published an article in the AFR on 30 July (link here $) titled ‘The gap won’t change without fundamental change’. The money quote was his assessment of progress on closing the gap as ‘in large part, a hotted up version of business as usual’. Crikey published an analysis (link here) with the headline ‘Why the Productivity Commission thinks a Voice is needed to Close the Gap’. This is arguably a misinterpretation of what the PC intends. In a perceptive comment on that article, Jon Altman wrote, inter alia, that the PC

continues to produce detailed and expensive report after report carefully documenting the nation’s failure to properly address Indigenous disadvantage. But it does not address the first order issue: is the National Agreement on Closing the Gap framework a sound basis for policy formation? And will valorising equality for Indigenous populations as state-defined statistical subjects generate positive wellbeing outcomes for First Nations people in all their diversity?

 

Like Jon, I wish to focus on the policy issues rather than the quotidian political debate about the Voice (important as that is).

 

The nature of the PC review

There are a number of seriously problematic issues with the draft review (which I will seek to identify below); but these can be traced in large measure to a more fundamental issue: the PC appears to have veered away from the comprehensive review envisaged in the Agreement. The terms of reference for the review provided by former Treasurer Frydenberg in April 2022 state, inter alia:

Scope of the review: In undertaking the review, the Productivity Commission should:

1. analyse progress on Closing the Gap against the four Priority Reform outcome areas in the Agreement;  2. analyse progress against all of the socioeconomic outcome areas in the Agreement; and  3. examine the factors affecting progress. 

 

These tasks can be interpreted in one of two ways. They might be pursued broadly and holistically, in effect asking the strategic question: is the current Closing the Gap process meeting the objective of the agreement laid out in clause 15 of the National Agreement? Or they might be addressed narrowly and less consequentially, in effect asking the question, are the terms of each element of the agreement being met whether or not they are impacting the overall outcome being sought. Unfortunately, on my reading of the report, the PC has adopted the latter approach. I made this argument more expansively in my submission to the review (link here submission #5) based on my reading of an early issues paper.

The result is that despite nearly 400 pages of investigative narration, we don’t really obtain an effective readout on the required new policy roadmap for closing the gap. Instead we get what seems at times an interminable litany of proposals for improved ways to hold governments accountable for particular cogs in the complex machine that comprises closing the gap. I am all for holding governments accountable, but there is an implicit assumption embedded in calls for improved accountability that governments are in fact focussed on implementing actions designed to achieve the overarching objective of the National Agreement. If that assumption is wrong, then all that will be achieved will be more complexity, more engagement/involvement, more process, more bureaucratic kludge, and no change.

 

How might we determine if that assumption if in fact correct? The answer is by examining the tangible plans that exist to achieve the objective. Take this analogy. If I have an objective to build a new home, I develop a plan (let’s call it an implementation plan). I buy some land. I consider what I need to make the home useful to me. I engage an architect, and develop detailed designs and have the design specifications costed. I allocate financial resources both for the capital costs (construction) and for the ongoing maintenance. If there is a mismatch between design and available financial resources, I either adjust the design or allocate more financial resources. This is not rocket science. If I don’t have a plan; if I don’t develop designs that provide tangible links between my aspiration/vision and the ultimate outcome; if my designs are not able to be constructed at present because the materials required are not available; or if I don’t allocate resources and have some idea about how much it will cost; then an objective observer would conclude that I am not serious…

 

In relation to closing the gap, the National Agreement sets out the aspirational plan and steps to achieve the ultimate objective (clause 15 says it is reduced inequality between indigenous and other citizens). But Governments have failed to take it further. The implementation plans produced so far (required under the agreement) are not in fact implementation plans, but lists of what governments are already doing with some marginal new monies added. The PC identified that jurisdictional implementation plans were not fulfilling their intended purpose. See Box 4 on pages 27-8. I don’t agree with the detail of the PC analysis; for example, the Joint Council has agreed that the implementation plans be produced annually, a matter which strikes me as ridiculous, yet not commented upon by the PC.

 

To return to the house construction analogy, you don’t develop an implementation plan iteratively for each month or quarter of construction, but for the complete project. Instead the PC argues for codesign of these plans which is superficially attractive to Indigenous interests, but will inevitably produce delay and a bureaucratic morass (already a problem with this whole process). The time for Indigenous codesign is in developing the targets. Governments then must deliver against them, consulting and codesigning with relevant Indigenous interests as they go. The fact that jurisdictions do not have adequate and effective implementation plans is a fundamental flaw that requires rectification.

 

In relation to identifying the cost of closing the gap, including perhaps its constitutive elements, Governments have made no commitments. Instead, they merely publicise the financial commitments they make, often with little transparency of what the expenditures are achieving. Worse still, in contrast to the original Closing the Gap architecture under COAG (known as the National Indigenous Reform Agreement or NIRA), governments do not in general utilise decade long financial allocations. The problem with this general approach is that there is no way of knowing whether the financial commitments of governments are adequate or not. It is a truism that money is not everything, but in this case, it is an essential component of strategies to reduce inequitable access to services and basic infrastructure (like housing). Adequate funding may not be sufficient, but it certainly essential.

 

In my submission to the review, I argued that the PC should seek to estimate the likely total cost of closing the gap. To return to our analogy, we don’t start building a house without knowing what it will cost. Unfortunately, the PC has ignored this element of my submission. It is bad enough that governments do not estimate these costs, but it is an egregious dereliction of responsibility for the ‘independent’ reviewer to ignore this issue. No other area of public policy is seriously analysed without a focus on cost. In areas of high ideological salience like defence, the debate over cost is assessed not just in terms of real growth rates, but the proportion of GDP allocated to the task (link here). In Indigenous affairs, all we get is an incessant flurry of media releases announcing this grant and that, often directed at squeaky wheels.

 

One of the consequences of this seemingly deliberate blindness by the PC is to promulgate and maintain the myth that closing the gap is solely of concern to Indigenous interests. If adequate resources are to be allocated to addressing Indigenous disadvantage, then mainstream attitudes need to change. This requires understanding which is best obtained by encouraging wider community involvement in the processes associated with closing the gap. [As an aside, the forthcoming vote on the Voice is another example of the importance of building wider community understanding in relation to the issues of core concern to Indigenous citizens.]

 

A further issue identified by the PC relates to the status of the targets in the Agreement. This is addressed at length in Information Paper 6, but it is too convoluted to dissect here. Instead I suggest interested readers look at the plain English Executive Summary (link here). Alternatively, see the discussion on page 5 of the draft review. Here are some choice extracts from the Summary (pp. 6-7) regarding targets and data (emphasis added):

For clear progress on the socio-economic outcomes and Priority Reforms, the Agreement says there must be: • performance tracking • public reporting. But doing this has been a big challenge.  The Priority Reforms are the basis of the Agreement. Even so, governments report no data on: • the agreed targets  • indicators that support the Priority Reforms.  These are critical gaps in data. 

Also, progress on socio-economic outcomes is measured against national targets. It is not clear how to hold governments accountable for what happens at the regional level.  There are no data developed for: • any of the targets under the Priority Reforms • 4 of the 19 socio-economic targets • roughly 140 supporting indicators  • more than 120 data development items. 

We probably will not see these data developed within 10 years from the start of the Agreement (that is, by 2030).  More effort is needed to: • improve governance  • prioritise data development.

 

In other words, we have the policy architecture, but not the means to implement it. The PC recommendation is for a dedicated government agency to drive data development. I beg to disagree. To return to the house construction analogy, we have constructed the frame, but the walls and roof are missing as the relevant materials are not yet available or developed. Do we appoint another builder to supervise the current builder, or go back to the drawing board?

 

I suggest the Commonwealth should step in and initiate an immediate process of radical simplification to take this process back to its core purpose. There is a need to consider once again what the targets are actually for: instead of providing a policy roadmap indicating that we are heading in the right direction, they have been transformed into an attempt (that is bound to fail) which seeks to guide us each and every step along the way. Nineteen targets times eight jurisdictions plus hundreds of supporting indicators and data development items again across eight jurisdictions, all under constant change and refinement, and we have a data labyrinth which is guaranteed to ensure that any one foolish enough to enter is swiftly lost in the bowels of the machine.

 

There are a range of other issues embedded in this draft review that require detailed consideration by those interested in seeing Indigenous inequality and exclusion removed from Australian society. I will address a few below in no particular order.

 

Conceptual issues

 The philosophical and ethical issues that are embedded within the notion of closing the gap receive too little attention by policymakers. The tension between the state’s rhetorical focus on removing inequality and the right of citizens, particularly Indigenous citizens, to choose fundamentally alternative ways of living (implicit in the rhetoric of self-determination), which Jon Altman alluded to in his comment to Crikey quoted above, is of enduring relevance in the policy quest to close the gap. It is an issue that is generally avoided as ‘too hard’ by policymakers, yet lies at the heart of much Indigenous distrust of governments and their bureaucratic processes. Altman explores this issue at length in this submission to the PC inquiry into an Indigenous evaluation strategy (link here sub.#23). The PC has entirely ignored these issues in its draft report; a reflection in my view of its lack of analytic interest in exploring what it is that the Closing the Gap process is seeking to achieve.

 

Deficit discourse and remote disadvantage

One of the key polemical drivers of the Closing the Gap refresh process initiated by the former LNP Government which led eventually to the National Agreement was an ostensible reaction to the notion of deficit discourse which advocates argue is designed to blame Indigenous citizens for their own disadvantage. This is clearly an important policy insight, one that has recently been highlighted in relation to mainstream disadvantage by the Robodebt Royal commission (link here page iii). Yet when this concept is taken to extremes, it undercuts the whole point of closing the gap.

 

Unfortunately throughout the draft report, the PC appears to have adopted and endorsed such an extreme interpretation uncritically, thus setting up a polemical dichotomy where governments can do no right and must be held accountable for every shortfall and (paradoxically) where Indigenous interests are ongoing victims without agency. So for example, in Information Paper 6 (Link here pp. 14-5), the PC writes:

Review participants indicated a role for performance monitoring in supporting a paradigm shift in policy narratives about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. This shift moves policy discourse away from framing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as a disadvantaged minority towards rights-bearing peoples with strong connections to diverse cultures, Countries, and communities that have withstood current and historical institutional racism …  In its submission, the Lowitja Institute explained: Data is a powerful tool. Data can be used to hold governments and the community-controlled sector to account on actions under the National Agreement, however there is a risk that this can be decontextualised and misused if data sovereignty and data governance mechanisms are not in place. The oversupply of deficit-based data has created a discourse that sees Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples presented as a problem, or as wholly responsible for inequities…. (sub. 15, p. 7). (emphasis added)

 

One consequence of this aversion to anything that even hints at deficit discourse is that important issues at the core of ongoing Indigenous exclusion and disadvantage are being deliberately written out of the policy relevant narrative and thus the policy agenda. It may not be a coincidence that given the current demography of Indigenous Australia (link here), it would be theoretically possible to conjure a positive narrative on progress in closing the gap while ignoring the needs of remote Australia. The losers from this process are the most disadvantaged Indigenous citizens, particularly those in remote regions. So for example, in the 101 pages of the draft report on the status of closing the gap, there are only seven mentions of the word ‘remote’, most just passing references, and there are no specific statement by the PC referencing the fact that Indigenous disadvantage is deepest and most severe in remote regions. The closest is a reference in a case study on the Torres Strait on p.62 where the Torres Strait Council refers to its very remote location as an issue.

 

Yet the PC itself, in its July 2023 Annual Data Compilation Report identifies (albeit in cautious bureaucratese) the dire state of disadvantage in remote regions (link here page 30):

People living in a more remote area may experience additional barriers to better outcomes; for example, not having access to key government services or infrastructure at the same level as people living in other areas. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people typically experienced poorer target outcomes as remoteness increased, which was mostly not the case for non-Indigenous people … Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in more remote areas also saw less progress toward target outcomes. Target outcomes typically only improved for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in major cities and regional areas where there may be fewer barriers, including better access to key infrastructure. There was little or no improvement in remote and very remote areas. The exception was for target 9A ‘appropriately sized housing’ where outcomes improved the most in very remote areas, though they remain well below the outcomes in less remote areas…

 

Or more starkly, in the same report the PC states (emphasis added):

One jurisdiction where the worsening outcomes are particularly concerning is the Northern Territory. The Northern Territory’s outcomes worsened across eight target indicators and in most of these they were already performing relatively poorly at baseline compared to other jurisdictions. For example, the adult imprisonment rate in the Northern Territory increased at the highest rate despite already being above the national average at baseline.

 

It is worth noting that the NT has the most geographically concentrated remote population, and has the weakest financial base in the federation.

 

Priority Reforms

The PC’s approach to assessing progress on the Priority Reforms, particularly Priority Reform 3, is in my view deeply flawed. I dealt with this in my submission to the review, so won’t duplicate it at length here. The key point is that increasingly, mainstream policies and programs are gaining greater salience across the indigenous policy domain. Ensuing mainstream agencies are focussed on addressing Indigenous disadvantage in their core activities is crucial to ensuring that there is a whole of government focus on these issues. Yet treating the priority reforms as akin to mechanically constructed targets, and measuring important but incidental issues such as levels of racism within agencies as the metric of success is a recipe for failure and non-performance. Unfortunately, the PC does not see this as they ignore this issue in its entirety.

 

Concluding comments

The problem with this draft review is that it is fundamentally misconceived, and fails to step back and look at the nation’s approach to closing the gap holistically. This was a crucial opportunity only three years into the revised process, and unfortunately, the PC has failed to grasp it. There is a lack of real policy analysis throughout this report, and the attached information papers.

 

As a consequence, the review fails to ask the hard questions and ignores many aspects that should have been front and centre. For example, there is no substantive assessment of the operations of the Joint Council. There is no assessment of the capability requirements on the Coalition of Peaks and whether the current levels of support are adequate. There are mentions of states failing to deliver on their commitments, but no real solutions offered in response. There is no recognition of the primacy of the Commonwealth in the federation, and the implications of the deliberate strategy embedded within the architecture of the agreement for the Commonwealth to outsource its overarching responsibilities to the Joint Council and the states. There is no analysis of the nature of the refreshed targets which are increasingly not focussed on comparative economic and social status, but are framed in terms of absolutes (ie improvements on current levels).

 

There is no recognition that the current design architecture for the agreement, while incomplete and thus subject to ongoing remedial work, is simultaneously over designed and in need of radical simplification. As presently configured, it guarantees that the Coalition of Peaks (representing Indigenous interests) will be wading through bureaucratic sludge for the next ten years, and thus effectively distracted from the main policy game. It also ensures that the probability of the national agreement imploding under the weight of its accumulated complexity is high and bound to grow. Proactive reform is preferable to stasis followed by abolition.

 

The bottom line however is that the six recommendations of the draft review (see pages 10-15), if implemented, would in my view not make any substantive difference to the nation’s progress on closing the gap within five or even ten years. They are an amalgam of doubling down on the current hyper-complexity of the policy architecture along with a hefty dose of blind faith in the bureaucratic leadership of the nation. Did the robodebt royal commission not make any impression at all on the PC? Notwithstanding the PC Chair’s view in his recent AFR article that governments are engaged in ‘a hotted up version of business as usual’, the draft recommendations in this report might be characterised in similar terms.

 

I have a recommendation for the Commonwealth Government. Issue the PC with revised terms of reference, and perhaps an extension of time. Request them to (a) develop an estimate of the cost of addressing the entrenched inequality facing Indigenous Australians; (b) map out a realistic timeframe and strategy for achieving that objective; (c) make a more fundamental analysis of the current status of the Closing the Gap architecture; and (d) provide options for radically simplifying the structure and design of the current architecture while retaining the four priority reforms. And for good measure, keep it to fifty pages. Such a report would then allow the Commonwealth Government to meaningfully and honestly engage with Indigenous interests and the states and territories.

 

3 August 2023

Note this post was amended on 4 August to correct a number of typographical and grammatical errors

Recent developments in mainstream evaluation: implications for Indigenous interests

 

Are these things then necessities?

Then let us meet them like necessities.

2 Henry IV, Act 3, scene 1

 

In this week’s budget, the Government has allocated new resources to improve the quality of public sector evaluations, and ultimately the quality of mainstream public sector investments across the board. It is a very minor outlay described in a short note on page 213 of Budget Paper 2 (link here):

$10.0 million over 4 years from 2023–24 (and $2.1 million per year ongoing) to establish a central evaluation function within Treasury to provide leadership and improve evaluation capability across Government, including support to agencies and leading a small number of flagship evaluations each year

 

It is too early to know what approach the new evaluation function (which hereafter I will refer to as an ‘Office’) will adopt, and thus how it is likely to impact Indigenous programs and thus ultimately Indigenous citizens and communities.

 

To provide some context, it is worth considering two separate developments from the last five years. The first development relates directly to evaluation.

 

In April 2019, then Treasurer Frydenberg commissioned the Productivity Commission to develop an Indigenous evaluation strategy. In his Direction Letter, the Treasurer described the scope of the proposed work in the following terms:

The Commission should develop an evaluation strategy for policies and programs affecting Indigenous Australians, to be utilised by all Australian Government agencies. As part of the strategy, the Commission should:

• establish a principles based framework for the evaluation of policies and programs affecting Indigenous Australians 

• identify priorities for evaluation 

• set out its approach for reviewing agencies' conduct of evaluations against the strategy.

 

The Productivity Commission published its report Indigenous Evaluation Strategy (link here) on 30 October 2020. The strategy was quite brief, but attached was a 500 page Background Paper.

 

On page 2, the Background Paper provides a one page summary of key points, which I have drastically cut back even further:

Key points

• Evaluation can answer questions about policy effectiveness, but both the quality and usefulness of evaluations of policies and programs affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are lacking…

• There is also no whole-of-government approach to evaluation priority setting. And while policy makers agree that evidence is critical for good policies, in practice there is little reliance on evaluation evidence when designing or modifying policies. 

• The Indigenous Evaluation Strategy (the Strategy) sets out a new approach. It provides a whole-of-government framework for Australian Government agencies for evaluating policies and programs affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. 

• The Strategy puts Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at its centre….

• The Strategy’s proposed governance arrangements [which are essential architecture for an effective Strategy] include an Office of Indigenous Policy Evaluation (OIPE) and an Indigenous Evaluation Council (with all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members). The OIPE and the Council would work in partnership to: monitor and report on agencies’ progress implementing the Strategy; identify evaluation priorities and potential cross-agency/topic evaluations; and provide evaluation leadership and guidance.

• A central clearinghouse for evidence on the effectiveness of policies and programs affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people would strengthen accountability for undertaking good evaluations and improve diffusion of knowledge. 

 

While the PC’s Indigenous Evaluation Strategy is not without its flaws, its overarching message that evaluation has the potential to improve policy outcomes is certainly one worth taking seriously, particularly in circumstances where virtually everyone with any detailed knowledge of the Indigenous policy domain concludes that policy outcomes over the past few decades leave much to be desired.

 

Unfortunately, over the almost three years since the proposed Strategy was published, neither the former Government who commissioned the Productivity Commission’s work, nor the current Government have taken up the opportunity to expand the use of, and focus on, evaluation within the Indigenous policy domain, and as a consequence no government has sought to implement the recommendations included in the proposed Strategy either in part of in full.

 

This simple fact ‘bells the cat’ on the real levels of commitment by governments of all complexions to ensuring policy development and outcomes at least in the Indigenous policy domain are in fact fit for purpose. See my previous post (link here) for further detail. The deep scepticism of the Executive Branch to independent evaluation of policy and programs is driven by at least two sets of pressures:

·       for politicians, they are deeply averse to any process of independent evaluation that has the potential to provide ammunition to their political opponents (and thus to constraint the political opportunities that are available);

·       for bureaucrats, they abhor any process that expands the deeply constrained levels of transparency that ensure that the scope for flexibility in shifting administrative priorities and resource allocations incrementally is not constrained.

 

These two drivers are mutually reinforcing, and their combined impact is antithetical to effective democratic accountability and high quality governance.

 

The second contextual development was the successful negotiation of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap (link here), and in particular, the commitment of all parties, including all Australian jurisdictions to four priority reforms. Of particular importance in my mind is Priority Reform three:

58. The Parties commit to systemic and structural transformation of mainstream government organisations to improve accountability and respond to the needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Priority Reform Three was strongly supported by the 2019 engagement process [emphasis added].

 

This institutional commitment is paralleled by the longstanding and inexorable increase in the comparative importance of mainstream programs to the quality of life of Indigenous citizens. One positive feature of this week’s budget was the focus on APS reform, and part of that is an explicit recognition that the National Agreement requires mainstream agencies to do better in relation to Indigenous issues and outcomes. See 2023 Budget Paper 4 at pages 8-9 (link here).

 

Given this background and context, the decision of the current Government to establish a new whole of government evaluation Office within the Treasury portfolio is to be welcomed. The Assistant Treasurer Andrew Leigh has been a longstanding advocate for greater use of evidence in policy development, particularly Randomised Control Trials.  It can be seen as a heavily cut down version of the proposal championed by Nicolas Gruen (link here) for an office of Evaluator General to be established to focus on public sector effectiveness and thus complement the focus of the ANAO in ensuring accountability and efficiency of public sector outlays (link here).

 

The challenge will be to identify a series of strategically important and high profile evaluation opportunities that lead directly to positive reform agendas. The new evaluation Office is too small to have an immediate impact, and will require time to build momentum and capability. The risk is that it will be vulnerable to abolition should it fail to demonstrate its utility in driving improved public sector outcomes. Of course, the new Office has a potential synergy with the Productivity Commission which may well be the subject of further reform over the next 12 months (link here). There may thus a strategic opportunity to build further evaluation capability across the public sector along with any future refocussing of the Productivity Commission.

 

While the ultimate shape of the new evaluation Office is still unclear, the obvious question for our purposes is what will this mean for evaluation in the Indigenous policy domain? It is too early to make definitive assessments on this issue, but it is clear that there will be a number of challenges over and above those facing mainstream agencies and policy sectors.

 

The first relates to the issue of involving Indigenous interests in evaluation activities that impact them. This becomes difficult when the subject of the evaluation is a mainstream program, especially if the data available is constrained. A second challenge is the extent to which Commonwealth policies and programs are implemented and delivered by the states, a trend reinforced by the policy architecture embedded within the National Agreement on Closing the Gap. 

No doubt there will be other issues that may arise: will the new evaluation Office differentiate between policy and programs; will the new Office have the capacity to evaluate the effectiveness of tax expenditures; what will be the relationship with the ANAO and other relevant agencies, and what will the coordination and working arrangements look like. All of these issues, and how they are decided, will impact Indigenous interests, for better or worse, but they will in very large measure be intangible impacts difficult to ascertain without the sort of close consideration that high quality evaluations might bring.

 

As someone who has taken an interest in the evaluation of Indigenous policy over thirty years, it seems useful if I lay out succinctly the key principles and policies that I would hope the new evaluation Office adopts in relation to evaluation in general and in particular in relation to the Indigenous policy domain. These are not intended to be comprehensive, but I do consider that they are among the necessary principles required to ensure mainstream evaluations make a positive contribution to the quality of policy outcomes, and importantly, to identifying potential reform agendas.

 

First, I would hope that the new evaluation Office adopts a rigorous and focussed approach to oversighting the quality of the entire approach to evaluation of each major agency. There is a potential overlap here with the role of the Department of Finance. The Office should develop a checklist of core competencies and create an overarching and publicly available data base of agency performance against a small number of core competencies. Of course, it will not be in a position to assess each agency every year, but as it does make assessments, they should be added to the data base and be published on the evaluation Office’s web site.

 

Second, I would hope that the new evaluation Office gives particular priority to assessing the independence of evaluations undertaken by agencies, rating them on a consistent scale.

 

Third, I would hope that the evaluation Office develops a mechanism which allows it to assess the extent of an agencies policy and program footprint that has been subject to evaluation over the past ten or fifteen years. See the discussion at pages 208-9 of the Indigenous Evaluation Strategy Background Paper.

 

Fourth, I would hope that the evaluation Office makes an assessment of each agency’s commitment to ensuring that ‘evaluation relevant’ data is being collected and ideally progressively made public. In the Indigenous space for example, it is now eight years since the last National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey was undertaken by the ABS (link here). The funding of the NATSIS is contributed by relevant policy agencies, and a document released by the ABS in 2017 indicated that the aim was to undertake the survey every six years. Unfortunately, this has not occurred and there appears to be no current plans to undertake another version (link here).

 

Fifth, I would hope that the evaluation Office assesses and reports on the comparative performance of agency transparency in relation to publishing evaluation results in a timely fashion.

 

The Government has identified that the new evaluation Office will undertake a small number of flagship evaluations each year.  There will be a risk that the new Office gets lost in the detail of particular exercises, and ends up keeping busy on evaluations and issues that are tangential to the overall effectiveness of the Commonwealth’s evaluation efforts. In my view, it is this latter objective that should be the primary focus for the new Office. This is the real necessity. If the Office performs that task well, it will create substantial incentives for agencies, including the NIAA and its associated entities, to undertake policy and program evaluations in a much more effective manner than has been the case over the past few decades.

 

Addendum

For those interested, I have previously published posts on this blog related to evaluation issues (link here, link here, link here, and link here).

A more comprehensive conceptual treatment of the link between evaluation and policy can be found in my policy insights paper, Evaluation and review as drivers of reform in the Indigenous policy domain, available on the CAEPR, ANU website (link here).

 

The ongoing remote housing debacle

 

They say this town is full of cozenage:
As nimble jugglers that deceive the eye,
Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind,
Soul-killing witches that deform the body,
Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,
And many such-like liberties of sin.

The Comedy of Errors, Act 1, Scene 2.

 

On 28 February, the front page of The Australian published a story and graphic photograph (link here behind paywall and Sky News link here) of a family from Utopia who had been living on a concrete slab fifteen minutes’ walk from the Alice Springs CBD for two years (‘Invisible, yet they live in plain sight’). The Australian also published an editorial (‘It’s time to change the picture’) arguing that what it termed ‘housing failure’ is yet another wake-up call from remote Australia.

 

The news stories quote South Australian Senator Kerryn Liddle raising the plight of the family, mentioning nine children, and asking why no-one has done anything over the past two years. The family had come to Alice Springs to access dialysis treatment for a family member. Graphic proof of the human cost housing crisis not just in Alice Springs, not just in the NT, but across remote Australia.

 

This blog has given the housing crisis in remote Australia significant attention over the past five years (link here and link here and link here and link here and link here and link here and link here and link here and link here) but the issue continues to bedevil the nation. In those posts I have documented how the Rudd Government allocated $5.5bn to the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Housing (NPARIH) in 2008, how the end of program review orchestrated by then Minister Scullion was deeply flawed, and characterised by an inability to come clean about the real agenda, how then Minister Scullion oversaw cuts of a couple of hundred million for Repairs and Maintenance (as it would not adversely impact statistics on new house builds), and eventually allowed NPARIH to lapse across all jurisdictions except the NT where the Commonwealth is the landlord for 5230 housing dwellings across 72 town camps and remote communities (PC 2022:429 link here).

 

I also documented reports by Infrastructure Australia that initially excluded housing as social infrastructure, then included it, and how it was then directed by the former Government to exclude it from their analysis (link here and link here and link here and link here). Those posts also demonstrated that NPARIH had a tangible and positive impact on reducing overcrowding, but that there remained an outstanding need (see below). In a more academic context (link here), I have documented how these changes were part of a deliberate and more comprehensive effort to reduce Commonwealth expenditures on Closing the Gap, and to shift funding and policy responsibility for outcomes to the states and territories. To repeat, my research documented how these strategies were intentional, and have in large measure been successful in shifting funding responsibility (and thus political responsibility) away from the Commonwealth, and to the states and territories.  

 

The effective removal of virtually all funding for remote housing, relying on the fig leaf that mainstream programs will somehow fill the void, will have already ensured declines in the quality and number of housing assets across remote Australia, and concomitant increases in overcrowding. These entirely predictable consequences (and their less predictable ramifications) will continue to play out for at least five years and probably a decade even were governments to initiate a major investment effort today. The likelihood of such a policy reversal occurring seems highly unlikely anytime soon.

 

So what is the current state of play?

 

In this post, I can only address the most salient developments and point to the relevant reports and processes that are influencing current policy developments.

 

In August 2022, the Productivity Commission published its Study Report on the mainstream National Housing and Homelessness Agreement (NHHA) (link here). Its headline finding was

The National Housing and Homelessness Agreement — intended to improve access to affordable, safe and sustainable housing — is ineffective. It does not foster collaboration between governments or hold governments to account. It is a funding contract, not a blueprint for reform…

The focus of the next Agreement should be on improving the affordability of the private rental market and the targeting of housing assistance. Improving the capacity of low-income renters to pay for housing and removing constraints on new housing supply are key to making housing more affordable… … State and Territory Governments should commit to firm targets for new housing supply, facilitated by planning reforms and better co-ordination of infrastructure…. The $16 billion governments spend each year on direct housing assistance could achieve more if it was better targeted to people in greatest need...

 

The Study Report includes a chapter which provides a comprehensive overview of the state of Indigenous housing policy nationally, sets out a persuasive case for reform and makes a series of largely sensible recommendations. To highlight just one data point amongst many, the report notes (page 33) that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, compared with other Australians are 16 times more likely to live in severely overcrowded dwellings. One of the crucial issues with adopting a mainstream approach in remote Australia is that the interplay of Aboriginal tenures and the housing system means that there is very little affordable and private housing provision. Social housing is the predominant mode of housing provision. A further point noted in the Study Report, but perhaps not given adequate emphasis is that housing (and essential services) are crucial social determinants of health, including mental health, and thus play into a much wider policy domain than the mere supply of accommodation (important as that is).

 

The next National Housing Agreement is currently being negotiated between the Commonwealth and the States and territories. Accompanying this are major changes to the mainstream policy architecture including a legislated $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) designed to assist in financing 30,000 new housing units nationally over five years, a new statutory Housing Supply and Affordability Council, and a new National Housing and Homelessness Plan. When first announced, the Greens criticised the 30, 000 new houses commitment as inadequate (link here). In her media release announcing passage of the HAFF legislation through the lower house, Minister Collins announced that $200m of the investment returns from the Fund would be allocated to repair and maintenance of housing in remote communities (link here). While welcome, it is not clear what the national quantum of necessary maintenance investment is in existing and projected remote community housing stock. It is thus impossible to determine whether this is in fact a significant investment or mere tokenism. In particular, were the Government to provide greater national context this would indicate whether this investment can or will be used to leverage increased investment from the states and territories.

 

The Indigenous Australians Minister has recently released the Commonwealth Closing the Gap Implementation Plan 2023 (link here). It lays out the Commonwealth strategy in relation to Outcome 9a and 9b which relate to reducing overcrowded housing and the provision of essential services in discrete communities. The Implementation Plan lists Minister Julie Collins (whose portfolio is situated within the Treasury portfolio) as responsible for target 9a and Ministers Catherine King (Infrastructure) and Assistant Minister Anthony Chisolm (Regional Development) as responsible for target 9b.

 

Target 9a is specified in the following terms: By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in appropriately sized (not overcrowded) housing to 88 percent. This is a national target that, in theory, can be fully met without necessarily addressing the deep housing needs across remote Australia. There is thus an imperative for explicit policy focus on allocating resources based on levels of need.

 

The ABS estimates that in 2031, there will be 1.1 million Indigenous Australians. If the target is met but not exceeded, that will leave 12 percent (or 132, 000 people) in overcrowded housing. The highest levels of Indigenous overcrowding are in remote Australia including the NT, the Kimberley and north Queensland.

 

The new target 9b is specified as follows: By 2031, all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander households: # within discrete Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities receive essential services that meet or exceed the relevant jurisdictional standard; # in or near to a town receive essential services that meet or exceed the same standard as applies generally within the town (including if the household might be classified for other purposes as a part of a discrete settlement such as a “town camp” or “town based reserve”.) There is considerable devil in the detail of this target, for example, just what are the ‘relevant jurisdictional standards’. I don’t have space to explore these issues here.

 

The Implementation Plan for targets 9a and 9b might best be described as establishing a holding pattern rather than a clear plan for achieving the target. The Plan highlights a small number of funding packages ($200 million from the HAFF; $100 million to the NT Government for homelands housing possibly from the ABA; and $150 million from the National Water Grid Fund for regional and remote water infrastructure projects). The major risk to meeting these two targets is that the sum total of resources from all sources will not be adequate. The Implementation Plan makes no effort to cross-reference or identify the levels of housing and essential services related investment in the remote state and territory jurisdictions, so there is no way that readers of the Plan can make their own assessment of risk related to targets 9a and 9b. Should any readers be inclined to go seeking this information in the state and territory Implementation Plans, they would find that they are for one year only, and comprise a bewildering array of process issues and minor funding commitments, but no accessible information assisting in understanding how the implementation process is progressing.

 

For example, the first (undated) NT Closing the Gap Implementation Plan finalised in August 2021 (link here) focusses only on the Priority Reforms, and provides no information on how the NT proposes to meet specific targets. It does mention (p.4) that 61.6% of NT Aboriginal people live in overcrowded housing. The 2021/2022 Closing the Gap Implementation Plan Annual Report (link here) provides more data on households (not individuals) (p.16) which indicates a reduction of 2.3% in remote community public household overcrowding between 2019 and 2022 — from 57% to 54.6%. This data is accompanied by a footnote warning of potential undercounting of occupancy figures. Again, there is no information on how the NT is seeking to reduce overcrowding.

 

The Commonwealth Implementation plan appears to have been developed independently of any hard headed assessment of the adequacy and projected funding from the states and territories, and perhaps more importantly, of the adequacy of the strategies adopted by the states and territories. This reflects and continues the former Government’s approach under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap of positioning the Commonwealth as (a lesser) one among equals, rather than a first among equals, or more appropriately, as the ringmaster oversighting the performance of the state and territory circus. A similar issue applies across the Commonwealth: the Implementation Plan gives primary responsibility to relevant Ministers (often multiple) yet nowhere does it state that the Minister for Indigenous Australians has an overarching remit and the authority to pull together, coordinate and in the ultimate resort to ensure compliance with the various cross agency responsibilities. Without such an explicit and formal remit, the coordination task across the Commonwealth will inevitably slide into a miasma of process.

 

Finally, the Commonwealth Implementation Plan mentions the National Housing and Homelessness Plan, but fails to commit to adopting the Productivity Commission Study Report recommendations (it will merely take them into account), in particular regarding needs based funding allocations. In my view, this is a major gap in the Implementation Plan.

 

So Where to from Here?

 

In 2018, in an article for Inside Story (‘Tactics versus Strategy in Indigenous Housing’) (link here), I identified a remote housing funding shortfall of $9 billion over the decade to 2028 if the then levels of overcrowding were to be effectively addressed. In the event, the Commonwealth walked away from the national remote housing program reducing its outlays to approximately $110 million pa focussed solely on the NT where the Commonwealth has direct landlord responsibilities for 5230 dwellings in town camps and remote communities.

 

Notwithstanding the demonstrable levels of need, the current Commonwealth Government shows no signs of reversing the previous Governments cuts. Not only will this ensure that current levels of deep disadvantage across remote Australia continue for at least a decade, it will constrain improvements in health and social well-being and likely exacerbate existing demographic shifts towards urban centres. While adequate and maintained housing is not the entire solution to the appalling conditions in many remote communities, and needs to be complemented by other infrastructure such as clean water, sewerage, power, it is a prerequisite for sustained improvements in health, employment, education, and for reductions in alcohol and drug abuse and family violence. Unfortunately, our political system is finely attuned to meeting the needs of the best organised interests and the broader electorate, within a zero-sum budgetary envelope. In these circumstances, it is worth considering what options there might be with a more constrained budgetary impact.

 

The following suggestions are high level and thus involve a degree of devil in the detail. Nevertheless, it is incumbent on advocates for improved housing, and indeed the current Government to think more laterally about such options if the option of increased investment is not feasible.

 

First, in my Inside Story article, I canvassed the idea of a Government owned corporation being established (which might joint venture with Indigenous corporations) with access to an effective Commonwealth guarantee and the capacity to borrow funds from private sector sources to build, own and rent out housing in remote communities. Such an initiative would tackle the shortage of housing, and of staff housing, in remote communities (which acts as a disincentive to attract and retain both locally engaged and external staff) and would open up new sources of private-sector capital for investment in remote locations.

 

Second, in a new environment where the majority of housing investment must be sourced from either mainstream Commonwealth programs, and / or state and territory programs, it is incumbent on the Commonwealth to adopt a much more focussed and robust approach to ensuring that these sources of investment are responding to the needs of remote communities. So for example, this would suggest that the Commonwealth Indigenous Affairs portfolio should step up and take a much more active role in encouraging states and territories to maximise their investments in remote housing, and take a much more robust  ‘coordination’ role vis a vis relevant Commonwealth agencies and programs such as the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement, and the operations of the Housing Australia Future Fund. Similarly with the operations of the Infrastructure portfolio. There is a case for looking much more closely at the operations of the North Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF), and whether there are any operational changes that might be made to increase investment in one of the major infrastructure assets across northern Australia, the totality of the remote housing and community infrastructure asset base.

 

Third, it is time the Commonwealth established a truly independent and forward looking review of the remote housing challenge the nation faces. The 2017 NPARIH Review (link here unfortunately without a link to the actual report) was fundamentally flawed (link here), and even so was then ignored. It was backward looking, whereas what is now required is a review that sets out the extent and parameters of the challenge, assesses the likely demographic changes and implications of various scenarios, identifies emerging risks arising from climate change and other societal trends, and examines in detail options for the most effective architecture of the remote housing sector (social housing, community housing, or both?) as well as innovative financing of remote housing. In proposing such a review, I am seeking to focus on the systemic and structural drivers of housing exclusion and disadvantage rather than the lived experience that flows from those systemic constraints. While there is an argument that such an independent review should be given a broader remit, the risk of a deeper crisis in the narrow housing sector emerging in the coming decade are such that I would suggest a narrow focus would be best at this point. That is not to downplay the broader challenges facing remote Australia, though I would argue that they are in most respects amenable to clear sighted policy development by policymakers.

 

Fourth, the poorly conceptualised and drafted Closing the Gap housing and essential services targets 9a and 9b need to be revised to ensure that government focus on closing the full gap, not part of the gap. The Implementation plans that have been adopted to date are next to useless and require a major overhaul. They need to be strategically focussed on the targets identified and list proposed actions. Not data, not miniscule funding grants, not good intentions, not more process. Housing and essential services are tangible and susceptible to clear measurement. Five yearly updates in the census will not cut it. Nor will national data sets that are not broken down at least into urban, regional and remote.

 

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. These issues are just one part of the wider cataclysm (link here) impacting remote Australia. I am certain that within a very few decades, Australians across the political spectrum will pass an extremely negative judgment on these decisions, and the decisionmakers that shaped them.