Political and media narratives on alcohol policy in Central Australia

 

Before him he carries noise,

and behind him he leaves tears…

Coriolanus Act 2, scene 1

 

Late last week the media reported the release of NT Police crime statistics which indicate a significant drop in alcohol related crime. According the Guardian (‘Incredibly noticeable’: alcohol bans have cut family violence and crime in Alice Springs, advocates say):

NT police statistics collated by the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress revealed a 37% decrease in domestic violence assaults from January to April. All other assaults dropped 35% while property offences were down 25% over the same time period.

 

It is clear that the reinstatement of the alcohol bans on town camps in Alice Springs and surrounding communities (subject to the potential for Alcohol Management Plans to be negotiated and approved by the NT Government) has had a significant and positive impact on crime in Alice Springs and surrounds.

 

According to a 23 June 2023 front page story in The Australian (Grog bans put brake on Alice Springs violence, (link here $): “…total recorded assaults dived from more than 260 in January to 170 in April…”. The Australian also published an editorial on the issue (A sober Alice Springs starts to get its life back on track’) (link here) which is worth reading both for what it gets right and for what it gets wrong or omits.

 

The editorial’s headline is clearly misleading: Alice Springs is not yet sober and alcohol abuse remains a significant and deadly problem. The Australian’s own article notes that police continue to be concerned about illegal sales of alcohol, and quotes the Police Association President as saying that police on the ground ‘have definitely seen an increase in secondary supply…’. The article goes on to quote NT Police Acting Deputy Commissioner as stating that ‘volumetric restrictions’ on how much alcohol individuals could buy would ‘go further in helping to reduce the alcohol-related harm across the community’.

 

It is not clear what the Deputy Commissioner of Police had in mind when he referred to volumetric restrictions, but it has long been recognised by social scientists that volumetric taxation of alcohol is both more efficient and has considerable health benefits (link here). It is also widely recognised by health professionals that the harms due to alcohol consumption (and particularly over-consumption) are extremely serious. See the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare web report on Alcohol, tobacco & other drugs in Australia (link here) for a discussion of alcohol related harm. To take just two mainstream data points from that report:

(i)            AIHW analysis of the National Hospital Morbidity Database showed that alcohol accounted for nearly 3 in 5 drug-related hospitalisations in 2020–21 (57% or 86,400 hospitalisations); and

(ii)          In 2019–20 alcohol-related injuries resulted in 30,000 hospitalisations (118 per 100,000 population). The most common causes of alcohol-related injury hospitalisations were falls (39%), intentional self-harm (24%), assault (15%) and transport (7.2%)

 

The editorial goes on to allocate blame to the NT and federal governments, as well as to the NIAA and other paid advisers (it names KPMG) for being ‘too distant from the realities of life in the areas they claim to represent’. While the editorial doesn’t name former Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt, it does correctly acknowledge that the decision to allow the Stronger Futures alcohol controls to lapse was made under his watch. The editorial correctly notes that Senator Jacinta Price predicted that the removal of the alcohol bans in the NT would result in an upsurge of violence against women and children. Offsetting that, it might be observed that she was not prescient enough while the preselected candidate for the NT Senate seat to persuade Minister Wyatt to maintain the Commonwealth controls across her electorate.

 

The most egregious omission from this Editorial, and indeed from the whole political narrative related to alcohol consumption and harm (both to individual and to their families including children) is the effective capture of governments of all political persuasions in both Canberra and the NT by the alcohol production and retail industry, and those involved in the associated supply chains. There is a deep-seated and widespread pro-drinking culture across the whole NT population, and governments are terrified of antagonising industry interests because of the nascent potential for those interests to heighten and leverage political opposition in the electorate. Political donations also play a part in both Canberra and Darwin.

 

Meanwhile taxpayers nationally and in the NT are meeting the costs of the health services, the policing, the incarcerations, and the infrastructure damage associated with alcohol induced dysfunction. Aboriginal people and communities bear the direct social and psychological costs of endemic domestic and lateral violence which are exacerbated and in large measure caused by the easy availability of alcohol.

 

Australia provides almost $3bn per annum to businesses to incentivise Research and Development that would otherwise not occur because R&D is a positive externality (link here). The explicit rationale for R& D subsidies to business arhe the existence of positive externalities. That is, businesses do not accrue all the benefits of their R&D and are thus not adequately encouraged to invest in it. There is a public interest in maximising R & D. Yet alcohol harm has extensive negative externalities without government taxation linked to the harm to society generally. That is, the alcohol producers do not bear all the costs arising from the sale of their product, and are thus incentivised to over invest in producing it (and to also lobby against any regulation in the public interest).

 

While governments do tax alcohol, the taxation of alcohol is not driven by the need to internalise the costs, but rather by governments’ revenue raising strategies mediated by the counter-lobbying of particular segments of the alcohol industry. Higher rates of tax on alcohol — ideally related both to the volume of alcohol involved and the the levels of harm arising (link here) — would both reduce the demand and thus the levels of societal harm caused by alcohol consumption, and coincidentally strengthen the abilities of governments to invest in harm minimisation. The AIHW web report cited above notes that the levels of alcohol related harm are higher in remote regions than elsewhere.

 

The ABC too has a report on the new statistics (link here), based on evidence given to an ongoing coronial inquiry into the deaths of four women in NT communities arising from domestic violence by their intimate partners (link here). Two of the cases occurred in Central Australia. The Coroner will undoubtedly make finding in relation to the role, if any, alcohol abuse played in the extended cycles of domestic violence these women suffered, and which ultimately ended with their violent deaths.

 

One problem with the media coverage of many of the challenges facing remote communities is that the coverage inevitably focusses on events and not on underlying processes or causes. However, they also often go further, and actively frame the issues in ways which have the effect, or are designed, to avoid and mislead the consumers of media by focussing on trite but plausible narratives rather than acknowledging the existence of systemic and institutional forces that hold sway over virtually the entire span of public policy in Australia. Yet the government decisions in both Canberra and Darwin can be framed in different ways.

 

The decisions to allow the lapse of alcohol controls, to then resist reinstating those controls, and ultimately — in the face of irresistible political pressure from mainstream interests arising from social chaos engendered by the uncontrolled flood of alcohol into town camps and communities — to lead the Commonwealth Government to intervene and effectively coerce the NT Government to reinstate controls were both geographically and temporally complex.  The Australian editorial frames these decisions as the result of governments not listening to local (Aboriginal) voices.

 

In doing so, The Australian editorial effectively ignores an alternative framing, namely that governments do not listen to Aboriginal voices because they are beholden to the alcohol industry. The sorry history of the NT Labor Government’s approach to the proposal for a Dan Murphy superstore near Darwin airport is redolent with obsequious pandering to alcohol interests (link here). Both the NT and the Commonwealth Parliaments have strong Indigenous representation, including amongst the Ministers who were ostensibly responsible for taking these decisions. It strains credulity to conceive that these decisionmakers were somehow ‘removed from those whose interests they were supposed to protect’, or were not prepared to listen to local voices. These decisionmakers do not spend their entire lives in Canberra nor in Darwin. At their core, these decisions were political decisions, not policy decisions, and were taken because of the systemic power of the alcohol industry.

 

Subsidiary framings (also not explored by the recent media reports) include the possibility that the NT Government was committed to abolishing alcohol controls in order to reduce the flow of itinerants into Darwin and other major centres, and the federal Labor Government was unwilling to itself re-legislate in order to minimise friction with the NT Labor Government, and the concomitant perception of incompetence were it to do so directly. Hence the elaborate charade of a joint media conference to announce Commonwealth funding and the NT Government backflip (link here).

 

I do not absolve the decisionmakers in Canberra and Darwin, on both sides of politics, for their poor and socially destructive decision-making both on this issue and in relation to other shortcomings across the Indigenous policy domain. Decisions that have led to the continuation of extraordinary levels of social harm both for drinkers, but more importantly for their partners and children and local communities.  But nor should media outlets be absolved when they effectively run interference for commercial interests that are the direct cause of so much societal harm.

 

Alcohol abuse is clearly an important contributor to the challenges facing remote Indigenous communities across at least four jurisdictions. It does not however represent the totality of the challenge, and there are no panaceas. A first step however is to understand that the promulgation of misleading or tendentious policy narratives and framings will not lead to effective policy reform. A second step would be to actively consider policy options designed to limit the unrestricted supply of full strength alcoholic beverages across the whole community.

 

Addendum

For those interested, a selection of some previous posts related to alcohol issues in remote Australia are set out below:

 

Alice Springs crisis: observations on remote policy (link here)

Alcohol policy reform in remote Australia: a potential roadmap (link here)

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

Regulating Alcohol in the Northern Territory: in whose interest? (link here)

Alcohol policy reform: addressing the underlying economic incentives (link here)

Alcohol Regulation in Remote NT Communities (link here)

 

A strong start for every Indigenous child: early childhood policy and deep disadvantage

 

 

Prevent it, resist it, let it not be so,

Lest child, child’s children, cry against you woe!

Richard II, Act 4, scene 1

 

The OECD has released a new working paper on early childhood education policy. The working paper is titled A strong start for every Indigenous child and authored by Australian authors led by Inge Kral of the ANU. The working paper (link here) provides an extremely useful comparative assessment of development in early childhood education policy in Aotearoa New Zealand, Canada and Australia.

 

Early childhood is a key policy issue in the Indigenous policy domain, and arguably underappreciated insofar as it is largely subsumed by the broader mainstream policy frameworks dealing with early childhood.

 

The latest Productivity Commission annual data report (link here) provides a quick snapshot of the relevant early childhood targets:

 

TARGET 3: By 2025, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children enrolled in Year Before Full time Schooling (YBFS) early childhood education to 95 per cent.

Nationally in 2020, 93.1 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the Year Before Full time Schooling (YBFS) age cohort were enrolled in a preschool program. This is an increase from 76.7 per cent in 2016 (the baseline year). Nationally, based on the most recent year of data, the target is on track to be met.

 

TARGET 4: By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children assessed as developmentally on track in all five domains of the Australian Early Development Census (AEDC) to 55 per cent.

Nationally in 2018, 35.2 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children commencing school were assessed as being developmentally on track in all five AEDC domains. There are no new data since the baseline year of 2018.

 

In relation to Target 4, the Productivity Commission data (see Figure CtG4.1) indicates that over the decade from 2009 to 2018, the relevant figure has increased from around 25 to 35 percent. The target chosen – 55 per cent by 2031 would require the rate of improvement to double, which in turn would require significant increases in investment.

 

The Commonwealth recently announced its commitment to investing a further $122m in new funding for an Early Childhood Education Package (link here and here). This is a welcome injection of funds. What is unclear however, to reiterate points made in my previous post (link here), is that early childhood education is funded by both the Commonwealth and state and territory levels of government, and it is unclear (a) what levels of funding overall is presently being invested by both the Commonwealth and the states/territories; and (b) what level of funding would be required to increase services, particularly where need is greatest, and thus bring outcomes for Indigenous children up to the same level as for mainstream community children within a reasonable period.

 

It is clear then that the OECD working paper is timely and important, as it provides a wealth of informed insight into both what has been happening on the ground in the three national jurisdictions under consideration, and what will be required to ensure policy engagement is both effective and successful.

 

I don’t propose to attempt to summarise the OECD working paper, but will cherry pick a few paragraphs to illustrate some (but not all) of the important insights included. I recommend interested readers take the time to have a quick look at the report itself.

 

Below are a number of extracts from the working paper:

 

Here is the Abstract:

This Working Paper was developed to assist policy makers, education and Indigenous leaders, as well as education practitioners, to better support Indigenous children’s early learning and well-being. The paper focuses on early years policies and provision in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and Canada. It sets out a synthesis of evidence on children’s early development, with a particular focus on the conditions and approaches that support positive outcomes for Indigenous children. The Working Paper then outlines a set of promising initiatives that seek to create positive early learning environments for Indigenous children. Drawing on the available evidence and promising approaches, the paper presents a framework for strengthening Indigenous children’s early learning and well-being.

 

From page 12:

The size of early learning effects on adult outcomes is significant. As set out in Figure 3, four key longitudinal studies have found effect sizes on adult earnings ranging from 10% to 25%.

 

From pages 17-18:

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]).

 

From page 19

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children account for 44% of all children in remote areas in Australia, despite making up less than 6% of all children in Australia and are 12 times as likely as non-Indigenous children to live in remote areas (SNAICC, 2020[40]).

 

From page 42:

The states and territories where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are provided free or near-free access to preschool from age 3 tend to achieve the national “Closing the Gap” target of 95% enrolment of Indigenous children in the year before school, whereas this is not achieved in states where such provision is not made (Early Childhood Australia., 2019[105]).  

 

From page 45:

In Australia, a shortage of qualified Indigenous educators and difficulty in accessing training, particularly for educators in remote areas, are significant constraints.

 

According to Minister Wyatt’s media release (link here), the recent Commonwealth investment of $122m includes $82m to expand the Connected Beginnings Program to create four new replication sites in Queensland and Victoria. If we take a moment to think about this, four new sites, no matter how beneficial they will be in improving life opportunities for the Indigenous children in their footprint, will have only a marginal impact on addressing the needs of Indigenous children nationally.

 

While any increase is welcome, the increase offered here will clearly not be adequate to double the rate of progress required to achieve parity in Target 4 of the Closing the Gap framework. There is clearly a need for a much more rigorous assessment of the resourcing required to address deep seated disadvantage amongst pre-school age children in the Indigenous community. A failure to do so will perpetuate disadvantage into disadvantaged children’s adult years, and constrain the nation’s ability to address deep-seated disadvantage within a reasonable period.

 

The OECD working paper lays out a coherent rationale, and a persuasive roadmap, for improving the access of Indigenous children to early childhood education. It emphasises the sorts of interventions that work, the multiplicity of factors that can constrain the full development of children, and provides an evidence base for prioritising policy reform and increased investment in this area.

 

The OECD paper also reinforces the crucial importance of allocating available resources on the basis of relative need. It is clear from the available data that regional and remote areas require greater policy attention and significantly more investment if we are to remove both inequality within First Nations communities, and the disparity between First Nations and the wider mainstream community.

 

What the OECD working paper doesn’t do is assess the level of resources required to meet the targets adopted by all Australian Governments in the National Agreement on Closing the Gap. Yet this is a necessary step in the policy development process.

 

To my mind, the OECD working paper A strong start for every Indigenous child should be considered closely by the relevant agencies in each jurisdiction. A proactive bureaucracy could make use of the working paper to inform development of a succinct policy proposal to relevant Ministers and Cabinets, linking the strategies and approaches required with a summary of existing jurisdictional program investment, and identifying the opportunity and benefit of lifting investment in early childhood services for Indigenous communities based on a clear assessment of need. In addition, there would be benefit in the Joint Council on Closing the Gap established by the new National Partnership on Closing the Gap considering the OECD working paper, and in interrogating the issue of just what level of investment would be required to make a real and sustainable difference to the life opportunities of Indigenous children across the nation.

 

What is clear is that the policy frameworks required to address disadvantage in early childhood education are known to policymakers. What is missing is the political will to drive the necessary policy reforms, and to make the necessary policy investments. The opportunity to make a difference stares us in the face. Yet so too does the prospect of failure. We should prevent such a failure, resist such a failure, lest our children, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, cry woe!

 

Assessing Aboriginal wellbeing in the Pilbara: national policy implications

Are these things then necessities?

Then let us meet them like necessities.

2 Henry IV, Act 3, scene 1.

This post focusses on a recent report on Aboriginal wellbeing in the Pilbara (full report link here; key findings link here). John Taylor, a distinguished demographer of Indigenous Australia, authored the report.

The report was commissioned by a body known as the (Pilbara) Regional Implementation Committee, established as part of Ro Tinto’s engagement with Aboriginal interests following a series of native title agreements over the past few decades (link here and link here).

The report’s full title is ‘Change in wellbeing indicators of Pilbara Aboriginal people: 2001-2016’. It was designed to assess changes in wellbeing since 2001 amongst Aboriginal residents of the Pilbara based on a baseline study authored by Taylor and Scambary in 2005 (link here).

The approach adopted in this post is not aimed at a providing a comprehensive summary of the report. Instead, I aim to do two things: first, to select and highlight a number of the more salient points from the report (often via direct quotation), and mainly drawn from chapter nine which focusses on key findings. Second, to use those points to draw out a number of policy implications. My use of selective quotation may mean that important caveats and nuance is omitted, so I recommend readers consult the full report. It will be apparent to close readers of the report that I am standing on the shoulders of a giant, and in most respects, am wholly indebted to John Taylor’s work. Nevertheless, there seems to be value in seeking to give the report a higher profile, not least because it raises issues that extend well beyond the Pilbara.

In the Executive summary, Taylor identifies what he considers to be the core messages:

The basic message from the baseline study was that little had been achieved up to 2001 in terms of enhancing Aboriginal socioeconomic status over decades of mining activity in the Pilbara. This can no longer be claimed, at least not at a whole-of-population level. What we see instead, is a very mixed set of outcomes whereby some individuals, families and communities have clearly benefited while for others little has changed, indeed, relatively-speaking, they are now invariably worse off. If pressed to allocate an approximate ratio to this observation, the general impression would be that a third of people are now economically better off and two-thirds are not. The difference between the two is determined largely by employment, especially in mining…

… More importantly, gaps have widened within the Aboriginal population, especially in regard to income and opportunity.(p.2).

On population change, Taylor notes:

…it appears that Aboriginal people more than shared equally in the demographic wave that swept over the Pilbara in recent years such that their proportion of the regional population has risen from 16% to 19% in 2016. This growth in resident numbers reflects a decade of net migration into the region…(pp.140-41)

He then focusses on the issue of structural ageing, and concludes:

the fastest rate of population growth is actually among those at advanced ages. Given the prevalence of out-migration at retirement ages among the Pilbara population more generally, the idea of a growing resident group in need of aged care is perhaps novel for the Pilbara but it is emerging in the Aboriginal population. (p.141).

On the labour force, Taylor points to the potential risk of over-dependence on the resources industry for employment:

By 2016, fully one-third of the Aboriginal workforce was from elsewhere, mostly from Perth but also from other parts of WA as well as from across Australia…

…In 2001, barely 20% of Aboriginal males in employment were working in the mining industry and less than 5% of females. Today, mining accounts for almost two-thirds of all Aboriginal male employment and one-third of all female employment – levels that far exceed those of other resident workers. This represents a major structural shift in the composition of Aboriginal employment…(p.142).

In relation to income, Taylor points to significant absolute and relative increases over the past 15 years in Aboriginal incomes, but notes an associated downside:

…an even greater share is also now found at the lower end. In short, there is increasing income disparity within the Aboriginal population with the key difference being whether one is employed (especially in mining) or on income support…

…One reason for growing income disparity is a rise in the proportion of Aboriginal people with no income. We can see from census data that more than half of these are neither employed nor in education or training. What is less clear is whether individuals have dropped out of the income support system as well. The likelihood that substantial compliance breaching off the Community Development Program (CDP) involving no pay penalties cannot be discounted, although regional data on this are difficult to access…(p.143).

In relation to education and training, Taylor notes:

While 44% of young adults aged 15-34 years are fully engaged in employment, education or training and a further 15% are partially engaged, this means that as much as 41% of this age group are disengaged…

…A key contributor to this disengagement, at least in terms of employment participation, also includes persistently low levels of school attendance….Even average attendance rates are low at 70% in primary schools and 60% at secondary. More to the point these rates have remained fairly constant since 2008. Of more concern, however, are the very low attendance levels that indicate the proportion of students attending for more than 90% of available school days. These have also remained constant but at the much lower levels of 30% in primary schools and 20% in secondary (p.144).

On housing, Taylor concludes that the most salient observation is the lack of substantive change over the past fifteen years in the levels of disadvantage and overcrowding:

As for overcrowding, the percentage of dwellings deemed to be overcrowded has reduced but the absolute number has increased (p.145).

In relation to health status, Taylor reports:

there are signs that Aboriginal health status has improved, although across many measures this remains way behind that of the general population and all too often it detracts from the capacity of people to participate economically (p.146).

Across virtually every health indicator, while there has been improvement, Indigenous health status lags nonIndigenous rates. To take just one of the areas analysed, disability rates, Taylor reports:

Aboriginal people have consistently accounted for almost half of those in the Pilbara with a disability despite comprising only 16% of the population. This refers only to those with profound or severe core activity limitation and so should be considered a conservative metric (p.146).

Taylor’s summing up on health states:

Clearly, the collective social and economic impacts of diminished health status have been little altered by the mining boom and they present an ongoing and substantial challenge for the RIC in its quest to improve Aboriginal wellbeing (p.147).

Finally, on crime and justice, Taylor reports that:

Almost all criminal cases brought to the Children’s Court in the Pilbara refer to Aboriginal defendants and while the Aboriginal share of Magistrates Court cases is lower, this has steadily risen over recent years and is now at almost 80%. Feeding into this are rates of arrest that, while lower than they have been, still account for 19% of the Aboriginal population aged 10 years and over and reach up to 33% among males aged between 18 and 29 years. Given empirical evidence of a negative association between arrest and employability these levels are a cause for concern…

… Clearly, any notion that an economic dividend might emerge from the demographic shifts underway in the Pilbara, would have to address the scale of social and economic disengagement implied by these figures (pp.147-8).

Policy Implications

Clearly, even a cursory reading of this summary points to extremely deep-seated levels of disadvantage amongst Pilbara communities. There are glimmers of light, but also swathes of deep shade.

In terms of the impact on individual lives, it will be apparent that the levels of disadvantage identified by Taylor are such that virtually no Indigenous family in the Pilbara will be insulated from the direct impact of disadvantage of one form or another. From time to time Taylor also hints at the indirect impacts of this disadvantage on individuals and families. So for example he notes that while there are some 460 disabled Aboriginal people in the Pilbara identified in the 2016 Census, there are some 1100 carers identified (p.147).  If one were to reflect on the consequences and implications for life opportunities on those beyond the individuals directly affected by these statistics, the true levels of family and community harm begin to become apparent. Imagine the impact for families of illnesses such as renal failure, or of high levels of engagement with the justice system, or of poor educational outcomes, and so on. The consequences of deep-seated disadvantage have real life consequences which extend well beyond those included in the bare statistics.

A consistent theme throughout Taylor’s report are issues related to Government commitment to effective data collection. He points to the extraordinary levels of undercount of Indigenous citizens in the Pilbara:

Remarkably, the undercount of the Pilbara Aboriginal population at the 2016 census has been estimated by the ABS to have been as much as 41% - a rate that has increased at each census since 2001. Unfortunately, estimates of the population that are constructed to compensate for this undercount are provided without any accompanying measures of confidence…

 (p.140).

He points out the cessation of the data surveys which measured housing need, noting:

Perhaps no other area of public policy epitomises the decline in public access data on the circumstances of Aboriginal people in the Pilbara (and generally in remote areas of Australia) more than that of housing and infrastructure. From the early 1990s ATSIC lobbied for and financially supported the Community Housing and Infrastructure Needs Survey (CHINS) up to the last of four surveys in 2006. The Western Australian Government also conducted three rounds of an Environmental Health Needs Survey (EHNS) up to 2008. Since that time, the very detailed data on Aboriginal housing and infrastructure available from those sources has evaporated under the influence of the post-ATSIC new public management regime (p.144).

These issues, while relevant to the Pilbara, are national in scope and thus in consequence. It is almost as if governments have decided they would prefer not to know (and thus not understand) what is transpiring on the ground in Indigenous Australia.

One response to the lack of commitment by government to data collection and analysis has been the emergence of a movement amongst Indigenous communities for Indigenous data sovereignty. John Taylor has been a significant advocate in this area (link here). While the aspirations of Indigenous communities to take control of their data deserve support, especially by governments, there will always be a need for national level data collection and analysis, and it is a very poor reflection on governments and policymakers over the past decade that more attention has not been devoted to increasing the quality of national datasets and associated survey instruments that impact on Indigenous Australia. Similarly, it needs to be remembered that Indigenous peoples, whether in remote regions such as the Pilbara, or elsewhere, are not defined by the disadvantages they endure.

A further policy implication of this report is national in its scope and emerges from the implicit reliance of policymakers on the rising tide of private sector driven economic development to lift Indigenous people out of poverty and disadvantage. The Pilbara has been the locus of intense economic and commercial activity. It has led to many Indigenous people gaining employment (much of it going to Indigenous Fly In Fly Out workers from elsewhere). Yet what emerges from John Taylor’s report is that the levels of deep seated disadvantage are such as to undercut and constrain the potential benefits of employment and commercial activity. A second issue that appears to require further consideration (by academics, policymakers and indeed Indigenous interests) is the contribution of the significant compensatory native title payments to native title holders to broader Indigenous wellbeing.

On current policy settings, positive change, if it occurs, will take time, even generations. To my mind, this is an untenable situation. There is an ongoing need for sustained long term engagement by governments with Indigenous Australia. This also suggests that we need to reverse the failure by policymakers to focus on the underlying structural drivers of disadvantage. For example, policymakers must close the circle in terms of identifying needs, potential policy responses, and the allocation of sufficient resources to have an impact. The must also acknowledge and address the long term consequences of dispossession and discrimination in their policy approaches, if they wish to facilitate and encourage positive change to Indigenous social and economic wellbeing. This will necessarily include allowing Indigenous people a greater voice in policy development, both at regional and national levels.