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

 

Cataclysm and crisis: the two sides of the policy tragedy engulfing remote northern Australia

 

This bodes some strange eruption to our state

Hamlet Act 1, scene 1.

 

Over the past two years, it has been increasingly apparent that remote communities across the north have been struggling. There has been an ongoing surge in youth crime across East Kimberley communities, particularly in Halls Creek , Fitzroy Crossing, Derby, Kununurra and elsewhere. A recent article in WA Today (link here) states:

A surge in crime across the Kimberley has been partly attributed to social media, with youths filming themselves stealing cars and challenging others. More than 300 children have been charged with offences in the region during 2022, according to figures tabled in parliament.

 

According to a January 2022 ABC news story (link here):

A surge in alcohol-fuelled crime across the Kimberley during the New Year's Eve long weekend has pushed frontline workers to the brink and angered residents who woke up to violence outside their homes. A steady stream of injuries and arrests from a night of relentless brawling in Kununurra overwhelmed paramedics, hospital staff and police officers for hours on New Year's Eve.

 

The same article reported:

In Derby, police attended more than 50 alcohol-fuelled family violence and assault incidents on New Year's Eve alone. Senior Sergeant Dave Whitnell took to Facebook the following day to announce temporary alcohol restrictions, barring the sale of spirits and full-strength beer. He told ABC Radio the restrictions had an immediate impact, giving frontline workers some respite for the rest of the long weekend.

 

In May 2022, the WA Government sent and extra 24 police to the region in Operation Regional Shield ‘to address soaring youth crime rates and criminal violence in the region’. The Operation identified over 600 ‘at risk’ children (link here). Just last week, a crisis meeting in Halls Creek of senior WA Government officials and the Halls Creek Shire met to discuss option to address the ongoing crime wave (link here). The headline says it all: ‘Kimberley crime wave prompts more police and youth 'social hub' to be built’.

 

Yet these issues are not limited just to the Kimberley nor to Western Australia.

 

In late April 2022, ABC news reported (link here) that in Wadeye in The NT:

dozens of homes have been destroyed in recent weeks, amid widespread unrest. Police said 37 homes have been extensively damaged in the past three weeks, with efforts underway to "support and relocate some of the vulnerable". About 400 people, who were living in the overcrowded homes, are seeking refuge in the bush on the fringes of the community,

 

In July, the ABC reported (link here) that the NT Government had established a Task Force to assist the 545 people who had been displaced and  oversight repairs to the 125 houses that had been damaged since March (including at least 35 destroyed). Yesterday (9 December 2022), ABC news reported (link here) that the NT Police Commissioner stated that:

around five per cent of the community of just under 2000 people is currently in jail, following police operations both in Wadeye and Darwin.

The article also commented on the role of alcohol in contributing to the ongoing unrest:

As part of a four-week operation beginning in October, police roadblocks were set up to crack down on alcohol being smuggled into the dry community….Since the police roadblocks were removed, Thamarurr Development Corporation chief executive, Scott McIntyre, said he believed alcohol-fuelled violence had increased again. "[The operation] had a big impact on reducing the amount of alcohol coming into the community," he said.

 

According to the ABC, in November, for the second time in a month, access to the Alice Springs CBD was closed off by police due to an uncontrolled surge in vehicle thefts and misuse within the CBD (link here). The NT Police Commissioner sent in 40 additional police to manage the situation.

 

Last week the Joint Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs held public hearings in Darwin and Alice Springs as part of its Inquiry into Community Safety, Support Services and Job Opportunities in the Northern Territory. The Hansard transcript is not yet available. An ABC news article (link here) reported that the Committee heard evidence of an upsurge in alcohol related domestic violence, an increase in hospital presentations involving alcohol and violence, and calls for the reinstatement of alcohol bans that were lifted earlier this year.

 

A written submission to the Committee from the Alice Springs community advocacy group, the People's Alcohol Action Coalition presents persuasive data backing up the evidence provided to the Committee (link here).Amongst other things, this submission demolishes comprehensively the disingenuous rationale provided previously by a number of NT Ministers that the continuation of the previous alcohol restrictions would breach the Racial Discrimination Act.

 

Clearly, the crisis engulfing northern Australian remote communities and towns is widespread, long lasting, and ongoing. Its causes are undoubtedly complex and the consequences for the victims of violence and social chaos far reaching and serious.

 

Yet the media reports listed above (and many I have not cited) rarely reach national attention, and if they do, they do not lead to more than a transitory response by governments aimed at downplaying their significance and more often than not framing them as isolated instances of aberrant behaviour. Rarely is there any detailed Government commentary or policy analysis seeking to explain the deeper causes, and to deepen community understanding of the conditions facing most remote Indigenous communities. This reluctance reinforces the apparent incapacity or unwillingness of governments to pursue policies directed to ameliorating underlying and systemic issues and to adequately fund the sort of services required. Instead, governments appear determined to sequestrate the social and economic chaos and insulate mainstream communities from any detailed understanding of what is transpiring effectively out of sight and out of mind.

 

Stepping into the grandstand, it is apparent that this ongoing crisis has multiple facets. It has been developing for at least two decades, and the gross levels of under-investment in basic services by governments within communities (along with active policy antipathy to supporting remote communities) has seen an inexorable shift in population towards towns and away from the bush.  While the crisis is geographically dynamic, waxing and waning in particular locations, it is also functionally dynamic, exhibiting different characteristics (symptoms if you like) and concomitantly having multiple repercussions and ramifications. To give readers just a sense of this, I thought I would list the various posts I’ve written on different aspects of the remote crisis over the past two years. I don’t claim that this is any where near a comprehensive account, reflecting as it does my own interests and limited expertise.

 

Over the past two years, I have written numerous posts on this blog on the following topics (in bold) related to remote Australia. I have included underneath the title of each post (without context or attribution) key points made in that post:

 

Deflection and inaction: the Australian Government’s formal response to the Productivity Commission Review on Expenditure on Children in the Northern Territory 27 May 2021 (link here).

… What is crystal clear — even from a cursory reading of the report — is that the system for funding and delivering children’s services in the NT is not fit for purpose….the Government’s response is deflection rather than action. It reflects the deep-seated inability of governments to come to terms with the deep structural issues confronting disadvantaged Australians in remote regions.

 

Regulating Alcohol in the Northern Territory: in whose interest? 9 June 2021 (link here).

My recommendation to the NT Government is that they should take the opportunity of the publication of this report to undertake a fundamental reconsideration of their policy approach to alcohol regulation. To do otherwise will be to deepen their complicity in an entirely preventable scourge that is taking a terrible toll on many Territorians, including a substantial proportion of Indigenous Territorians.

[In relation to the Australian Government] Silence and sitting on the fence is not an adequate response to the ongoing health crisis linked to alcohol abuse across the NT and beyond.

 

A strong start for every Indigenous child: early childhood policy and deep disadvantage 9 August 2021 (link here).

Nonetheless, almost all trends pertaining to child health and well-being in Australia are worse for Indigenous Australian children (Wise, 2013[38]). In addition, a clear gradient is evident of increasing disadvantage the further children live from major cities (Bankwest Curtin Economic Centre, 2017[39]). …  Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in remote Australia are more likely to experience a lack of access to appropriate services, known to mediate the impact of adversity in early childhood (SNAICC, 2020[40]).

 

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

Indigenous communities in remote Australia face dangerous temperature extremes. These extremes are associated with increased risk of mortality and ill health …. 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. …

 

See How We Roll [book review] 24 January 2022 (link here).

In the perilous movement of people through time and space, both places and kin are made and remade. A primary driver of movement is the opportunistic pursuit of resources: a meal, an adventurous ride, the numbing release of alcohol or ganja, the conviviality of assembled kin … All of these forms of Warlpiri movement, no matter their diversity, never seem to be in search of a destination per se.

 

Indigenous land and economic development in northern Australia 14 February 2022 (link here).

The bottom line arising from a closer reading of the Joint Standing Committee on Northern Australia’s report, …. is to reinforce how little the government has done since coming to office in 2013 to encourage the inclusion of Indigenous landowners and communities in economic activity.

 

The Commonwealth is taking us headlong into a remote policy chasm: but who cares? 18 February 2022 (link here).

In relation to alcohol, such an outcome would remove the alcohol regulation framework currently in place, and implicitly shift regulatory responsibility to the NTG. The SFNT policy framework was primarily focussed on harm minimisation. Any shift of responsibility to the NTG will introduce a number of levels of uncertainty.

 

The ANAO performance audit of the NIAA NT Remote Housing program 2 March 2022 (link here).

Of course, the more fundamental issue here is that the Commonwealth is the underlying owner of the assets, that are scheduled to revert to direct Commonwealth control in 2023. Yet it is deliberately underinvesting in the PTM, which means that the assets degrade faster than they should, will need to be replaced earlier than should, and the tenants (real families with real needs) will continue to live in sub-optimal conditions longer than they should. These are the nuts and bolts of structural racism, laid out in plain view by the ANAO, but not reflected in its findings or recommendations.

 

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

Remote Australia requires a ‘new deal’. It requires significantly increased government investment. Most importantly, it requires greater and more effective engagement with remote residents based on acknowledging their prior ownership, their violent dispossession, and an acknowledgment that mainstream Australia is the source of the fundamental disruption that is creating ongoing chaos. The ubiquitous assumption amongst mainstream Australia’s institutions dealing with remote Australia has been that the past is irrelevant and that we should all just look forward. This assumption has not worked and mainstream Australians need to be smart enough to rethink our fundamental approaches to the interaction of the nation state with remote communities.

 

Neil Westbury article on regressive changes to remote alcohol laws in the NT 3 June 2022 (link here).

In these circumstances, the current NT Government appears to have decided that rather than maintaining a system — based on their own reluctance to effectively regulate alcohol in towns — where remote residents who wish to drink have an incentive to come into town, they have decided to shift the problems back to remote communities.

 

Paying the rent: policy or politics? 26 July 2022 (link here).

…the structural issues that pervade the remote housing sector. These include gross and longstanding underinvestment by governments in addressing overcrowding, and in ensuring that existing remote housing assets are adequately managed and maintained…. In my view, the responsibility for addressing these issues falls primarily to the Commonwealth for three reasons. First, housing is central to much of the structural dysfunction that exists in remote Australia, and involves complex interaction between functional responsibilities of all three levels of government. In particular, the social security system is central to the administration of social housing in remote Australia…

 

Alcohol policy reform in remote Australia: a potential roadmap 14 August 2022 (link here).

…corporate alcohol interests have a stranglehold or veto over policy initiatives designed to address or mitigate the consequences of alcohol misuse. Notwithstanding the Commonwealth’s reluctance to engage with these issues, the Commonwealth does have a policy responsibility. It is clear that the issues involved are structural and extend beyond any one state or territory. On its own this suggests that Commonwealth action may be necessary.

 

Conclusion

 

The succession of media reports over the past two years (and in fact the previous twenty years) makes it clear that there is an ongoing cataclysm across remote northern Australia. I hope my posts over the past two years commenting on a succession of more detailed policy reports, documents and events makes out a persuasive case that from a normative policy perspective, governments are failing to coherently and comprehensively address this ongoing cataclysm. 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.

 

The implication that inevitably follows is that the solutions (for they will inevitably be multiple) must go beyond focussing on a single issue (housing, or health or food security or alcohol, or crime, or education, or incarceration, or unemployment or economic development, or land tenure, or dispossession or the impact of colonisation). The solutions if they are to be effective must simultaneously and comprehensive make significant inroads into all of these issues. This is an enormous and extraordinary challenge confronting the nation. It is a challenge that appears to be either incomprehensible or inconceivable to governments and policymakers, yet it is extraordinarily real nevertheless not least to the lives of thousands of Australian citizens it adversely impacts.

 

Addressing it will require a national effort that starts from a premise of constructive engagement with Indigenous citizens and their representative and advocacy organisations, that renounces the use of simplistic and punitive policies, and that emanates from a consensus that transcends the limited imagination of governments and included civil society more generally.

Policymaking in a maelstrom: preliminary thoughts on the longer term implications of the current crises

This world to me is as a lasting storm

Pericles Act 4, scene 1

What are the implications of the current crises for Indigenous policy in the future? At a national level, the current health and economic crises exude uncertainty at multiple levels. Neither governments, their health and economic professionals, nor the citizenry at large have answers to key questions: how long will the crises endure, where will the impacts fall most severely, which demographic cohorts will be most severely affected; what will be the most effective strategies to ameliorate adverse impacts, how will the inevitable trade-offs between competing objectives be managed and determined, and so on and so on.

In this post, I don’t wish to focus on the immediate consequences, risks and even opportunities emerging as a result of the crises. Others are doing this, and I don’t have anything substantive to add.

On the health front, I would point interested readers to the NACCHO web site and their regular updates on the virus (link here). See also recent articles from The Conversation focussed on the health implications of the crisis  (link here) and some economic implications of the crisis (link here).

On the economic front, the Treasury web site has a succinct and accessible document outlining the economic consequences of the Covid19 pandemic and the Federal Government’s most recent response (link here) which they estimate at $189 bn over the forward estimates.

At the macro/mainstream level, governments have set in train a rolling program of ever stronger health related precautions, including constraints on immigration, internal movement, on assemblies in public places, and on non-essential businesses, and are likely to extend to school closures in the near future. These all have economic costs and consequences, and will over time lose their effectiveness as the virus spreads within the community. They are likely however to be difficult to remove once in place.

The economic measures are designed to counter the macro-economic contraction of demand within the economy and to support the resilience and capabilities of firms  who are being forced to lay off employees and reduce or cease trading activities.

While huge in historical terms, the size of this intervention is likely to rise over the coming months. For example, it seems likely that the Government will have to step in to further support or effectively nationalise some or all of the nation’s airlines.

It is clear that notwithstanding the government’s intervention, the nation is facing a recession this year. What is unclear is just how deep and how prolonged it will be. A prolonged recession will itself have severe social and health costs for the nation, including perhaps increased mortality over the ensuing years, although there will be no obvious link between economic contraction and individual morbidity and mortality outcomes. Intuitively, these hidden costs and ramifications are most likely to fall on the vulnerable within the Australian community.

What is also clear is that the nation’s policymakers have a gargantuan and once in a generation policy challenge on their plate. The politicians among them have an additional side dish of diabolical political challenges to manage. The next federal election is due in mid-2022 (link here), so there is a strong likelihood that the Prime Minister will not call the next election until the first half of 2022.

Given these sudden and largely unforeseen circumstances, the question I wish to explore is what does this mean for Indigenous policy into the future?

Perhaps we should first list the known changes and their likely consequences, before moving to list the potential policy outcomes.

Known changes:

Indigenous communities and citizens are more likely to be vulnerable to the virus, and to have higher adverse morbidity and mortality outcomes . This is particularly the case in remote regions, but urban and regional populations are also vulnerable. Offsetting this is the knowledge that the Indigenous population is comparatively young, with the median age in 2016 being 23 years compared to the mainstream population median age of 34 years (link here). The virus appears less dangerous to younger cohorts.

The economic changes announced to date will allocate an extra $10 bn or so into social security payments over each of the next two years. To the extent that Indigenous citizens are over-represented amongst social security recipients they will benefit more pro-rata than mainstream interests from these allocations. They are likely under-represented in small businesses and will thus benefit less pro-rata than mainstream interests. Without a detailed study, the ultimate incidence of the stimulus in relation to Indigenous interests is unclear; however it does not appear that economically vulnerable Australians including Indigenous Australians have been given preferential treatment in the stimulus package.

Potential policy changes:

The following points are largely speculative insomuch as the future is fundamentally uncertain, and in current circumstances, even more so. Nevertheless, there seems value in at least considering what might emerge from the current crises in the Indigenous policy domain.

In terms of the Federal Government’s existing (or perhaps more accurately pre-existing) policy agenda, there are three significant policy reform initiatives in train: the development of new Closing the Gap targets in conjunction with COAG and the Coalition of Peaks under a COAG Partnership Agreement (link here); the development of proposals for an Indigenous Voice to Government; and the implementation of a northern Australia policy agenda under the recently signed Northern Australia Indigenous Development Accord (link here). A fourth policy agenda with the potential for significant policy implications is the eventual Government response to the forthcoming Productivity Commission report on an Indigenous Evaluation Strategy (link here). The Commission’s draft report is now scheduled for May 2020 (it was initially to be released in February 2020), to be followed by a final report currently scheduled for October 2020.

So how will each of these policy agendas now play out? My own assessment is that there is likely to be delays across three of the four agendas. Policy reform momentum will stall. The reasons are two-fold: the difficulty in gaining policy attention from policymakers who will be consumed with handling the implications of the health and economic crises; and the difficulty of gaining attention from Indigenous citizens and others as they strive to survive in increasingly difficult circumstances. A third, more cynical, reason worth considering is that governments generally respond to pressure, and in the absence of pressure, prefer the status quo to change. In a crisis, pressure will shift from calls for medium and longer term reform to calls for more immediate action. For all these reasons, the political incentives on the Government will be to focus on managing short term measures, and this will work against finding the time and resources to develop longer term policy reforms.

The Closing the Gap targets may well be the exception; the federal Government has an incentive to substantially shift the policy goalposts this year to avoid the reiteration of ongoing and deep-seated policy failure highlighted in the annual presentation of the report to Parliament. Moreover, the process of policy redesign is well advanced (albeit the details of the discussion have not been made public) and has the support of the national Coalition of Peaks. The Coalition of Peaks will be pushing for the target changes to proceed if they are agreed and perceived to be substantive and positive reforms. In a recent media interview (link here),  Minister Ken Wyatt went on the record confirming that the process remains on track:

Patricia Karvelas: Very briefly, Minister, before we end - the 2020 Close the Gap campaign report has been released today, and it's warned that only systemic reform will make up for the harrowing failure of the last 12 years of government policy on Closing the Gap. It seems to me closing that gap is ever more important as we now deal with the Corona virus. Are you still working to deadline on changing those targets?

Ken Wyatt: Yes, we are. And whilst we're focussing on COVID 19 we're also continuing with business as usual. And this means finalising the targets and then looking at what systemic commitment and change must occur at all levels in order for us to close those gaps. We have to do things differently. [inaudible] Closing the Gap, led by Tom Calma and then endorsed by Prime Minister Rudd, was a great way forward, but we collectively have not seen the systemic reform that would help achieve those gaps and close them.

While both the Government and the Coalition of Peaks appear to see benefit in the refresh process, I am wary and see significant risks as well as opportunities (link here). To date, there is inadequate information in the public domain to enable a close assessment of the likely results of the refresh process.

The other three policy reform agendas appear much less likely to be advanced in a timely fashion.

The process established to develop a National (and locally constituted) Voice to Government (link here) appears cumbersome, with three separate committees tasked to consult and develop proposals over a two phase process. Those Committees will find it difficult to convene over the next three to six months, and even harder to consult communities on the ground. The current schedule suggests that advice will be provided to Government by the end of 2020, with no timeframe on the Government’s own internal deliberations regarding how to proceed. I will be amazed if the Committees advice is ready before mid 2021, and see little prospect of the Government prioritising legislation or executive action to establish such a Voice before the next election.

The Indigenous component of the Government’s northern Australia agenda has been extremely slow to emerge. The Indigenous Reference Group to the Ministerial Forum was appointed in December 2017, and in its most recent meeting communique (link here), noted inter alia,

The IRG provided the Ministerial Forum an update on the extensive work undertaken to investigate access to capital, reform of the northern Australia Indigenous institutional landscape, and improve opportunities to leverage and commercialise the northern Australia Indigenous estate. This will help ensure that Traditional Owners can fully use their land and rights holdings should they choose to support economic development.

While the details of that work are not yet in the public domain, there seems little evidence to date that the Government has been serious about the structural reforms necessary to reshape the institutional and policy landscape in northern Australia to deliver a step change in Indigenous economic development outcomes. The likelihood that this will change in the current crises seems remote, not least because the two ministers who designed this policy architecture (Matt Canavan and Nigel Scullion) are no longer in place. We may see some policy change at the margin, but this would be window dressing. A close analysis of the Northern Australia Indigenous Development Accord (link here), the centrepiece of the policy process to date, suggests that it is largely process oriented: compare the proposed outcomes in clause 15, with the detailed outputs in the attached Implementation Plan. It seems likely that the IRG will continue to meet and the jurisdictional parties to the Accord will continue to ‘scope options’ and ‘engage constructively’ in working parties and the like, but actual and tangible reforms are unlikely this side of the next election.

On evaluation of Indigenous policies, the Treasurer requested the Productivity Commission to

develop a whole-of-government evaluation strategy for policies and programs affecting Indigenous Australians. The Commission will also review the performance of agencies against the strategy over time, focusing on potential improvements and on lessons that may have broader application for all governments.

Policy and program evaluation is a complex area, and I cannot do it justice here. See this previous post (link here). I expect the Commission will produce a detailed and comprehensive report, but it seems unlikely that the Government will set aside the policy resources required to institute the far reaching reforms to evaluation practice required to improve policy and program performance across the board in a time of ongoing crises. Nor do I think it is likely that the current Government will mandate ongoing Productivity Commission reviews of all agencies evaluations strategies. Let’s wait and see what the Commission recommends. The more robust its recommendations, the more likely that the Government will sit on the report and do nothing or little. In such circumstances, the existence of interrelated health and economic crises will be the perfect excuse for inaction.

It is also worth considering some ‘blue sky’ Indigenous policy ramifications of the dual crises we currently face.

On Constitutional recognition, the Government has been consistently sceptical of anything with more than symbolic content. The likelihood of any constitutional change agenda emerging over the next two years appears close to zero. Indeed, the likelihood of a post-election / post-2022 constitutional reform agenda emerging must be assessed as much lower today than may have been the case two months ago.

In terms of broad policy focus in the Indigenous domain, the stars appear to be aligning for a shift towards a much greater focus on Indigenous health issues. The Minister, Ken Wyatt has a long background in the health sector. NACCHO, the peak body for Indigenous medical services is the most effective peak body and First Nations advocacy body in the nation, ably led by Pat Turner, an experienced ex-public servant, who herself has a strong background in health sector issues. And of course, the political prominence of the impact of the Covid19 virus will propel greater focus on wider health risks and issues for Indigenous citizens, particularly vulnerable cohorts within the Indigenous community.

Of course, the corollary of a shift towards health will be shift away form focussing on other non-health policy sectors (such as land rights / native title).

More speculatively, I suspect that the impact of the dual crises, combined with the changing demographic shape of the Indigenous population, will accelerate the importance of mainstream programs in the lives of First Nations citizens. To the extent that Indigenous specific policy agendas are left to languish, this will merely serve to reinforce this trend.

While Government rhetoric will not necessarily reflect this, the reality is that mainstream institutions (the social security system; the justice system; the child protection system; the disability support system; the education system; the telecommunications system; the health system and the nation’s finance system) already dominate and shape the lives of Indigenous citizens much more than Indigenous specific policies and programs. Indigenous advocacy is yet to appreciate this reality, and if, as I suspect, the current crises represent a critical juncture which strengthen radically the influence of mainstream institutions across the Indigenous policy domain, it will become even more important that Indigenous leaders and peak bodies build the capability to advocate across mainstream policy domains, and seek out common cause with like minded mainstream advocacy bodies.

It is worth reminding ourselves that these crises will inevitably have uncertain outcomes, and the policy responses of Governments, both in the short and medium terms, will have unanticipated consequences. At the micro level, the social and health costs of mental anguish will likely be significant across the whole community. At the macro level, the potential for social and political breakdown and unrest will rise. Vulnerable members of the community (among whom First Nations citizens are over-represented) will be particularly at risk in these uncertain times. The impacts of structural inequality and exclusion are magnified in times of crisis.

Finally, it would be remiss of me if I did not turn my gaze backward rather than forward. In particular, should governments have given more attention to the risks of a pandemic, and more generally to the regularity of crises. Or to put it another way, when I stated above that the pandemic was unforeseen, was that in fact a reflection of poor and ineffective governance in relation to a foreseeable and inevitable eventuality. Part of the issue is that public policies are most effective when they operate as a neutral arbiter between competing interests, including in relation to the risk of temporal trade-offs. To the extent that policy is captured by special interests, it becomes much less attuned to managing for wider societal risks.

In the Indigenous policy domain (and beyond), this is reflected in a shift over the past two decades to privileging corporate over community interests in terms of program delivery (eg in the realm of social security). In turn, this opens up service delivery gaps when markets fail (eg in the shallow coverage of providers within the disability sector).

One outcome of the current crises is that a much stronger light will be shone on the risks and failures of recent policy settings in Indigenous affairs (and beyond). Whether future governments will have the independence, vision and political will to change course seems to me to be a moot point. One of the comparative advantages First Nations communities and citizens have is that there is widespread acknowledgement amongst the wider community and policymakers that they do have particular and unique needs and aspirations. Looking forward, this is a cause for hope that policy reforms and necessary reversals may be considered, notwithstanding the myriad reasons for pessimism in what appears to be a once in a century social, health, economic and political maelstrom.