Domestic and Family Violence and Closing the Gap

Th’ abuse of greatness is when it disjoins

 Remorse from power.

Julius Caesar Act 2, Scene 1

The National Agreement on Closing the gap sets out 17 targets and four priority reforms. Target 13 relates to domestic and family violence (link here).

Target 13 is specified as follows:

By 2031, the rate of all forms of family violence and abuse against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children is reduced at least by 50%, as progress towards zero.

The following text is taken from the Productivity Commission dashboard:

Nationally in 2018-19, 8.4% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander females aged 15 years and over experienced domestic physical or face-to-face threatened physical harm (figure CtG13.1). There is no new data since the baseline year of 2018-19.

The national data point of 8.4% incorporates varying jurisdictional data points rangeing from 10% in NSW to 6.4% in Qld.

If we unpack the specification of the target, it becomes clear just how meaningless it is. The benchmark data have not been updated for six years. More problematically, the AIWH (link here) cites research from 2011 that found that ‘around 90% of violence against First Nations women and most cases of sexual abuse of First Nations children are undisclosed’. [Willis M (2011) ‘Non-disclosure of violence in Australian Indigenous communities’ Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice no. 405, AIC]. Moreover, multiple instances of family violence against an individual are recorded as equivalent to one instance and thus embed the potential for systemic undercounting into the target specification.

The PC Closing the Gap dashboard section on Target specifications for Target 13 notes, inter alia:

Experiences of harm are likely to be under‑reported. Due to the sensitive nature of the questions, responses were not compulsory, and a person may have chosen not to answer some or any of the questions.

The physical and threatened physical harm data collected in the 2018–19 NATSIHS is not comparable to other ABS data sources collecting similar data, including data from: the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey; the General Social Survey; the Personal Safety Survey; or, Recorded Crime – Victims.

And also, in relation to Future Reporting:

Future reporting will seek to include the following additional disaggregations: remoteness areas and other small geographic areas (where available); disability status; gender; age; and Indigenous status.

Yet there appears to be no progress whatsoever in measuring the target trajectory, let alone updated disaggregation. Importantly, the PC dashboard also notes that comparable data on non‑Indigenous people is currently not available. Given that the problems with the target specification mean that the benchmark data points are essentially meaningless, this is perhaps not surprising.

The FDSV Summary on the AIHW website (updated July 2025) reports (link here) the following data on mainstream domestic and family violence:

Results from the 2021–22 PSS showed that an estimated 3.8 million Australian adults (20% of the population) reported experiencing physical and/or sexual family and domestic violence since the age of 15. It is estimated that of all Australian adults:

·         11.3% (2.2 million) had experienced violence from a partner (current or previous cohabiting)

·         5.9% (1.1 million) had experienced violence from a boyfriend, girlfriend or date

·         7.0% (1.4 million) had experienced violence from another family member (ABS 2023c).

Clearly this is substantial issue across all demographic segments of Australian society. The AIHW notes (link here) that:

Comparable national data are not available to compare the prevalence of FDV among different population groups.

This may be a deliberate policy by ABS and AIHW to avoid the potential misuse of such data to typecast and/or demonise ethnic groups in Australia. It does mean however that the fundamental conceptual basis of ‘closing the gap’, namely decreasing the variation in rates of domestic violence between mainstream population and First Nations populations cannot be applied to the issue of domestic violence.

There is a strong sense from the AIWH and ABS discussion of family violence that the rate of Indigenous family violence is higher than the rate in the mainstream. Yet there is no direct data available. One way to get a better sense of this is to consider national homicide rates. Intuitively, homicide rates are a function of numerous factors, but one of the obvious factors would be rates of family violence. Thus, by looking at the extreme outcomes of family violence, we can get a sense of the comparative significance of family violence within Indigenous and non-Indigenous contexts.

The Australian Institute of Criminology report Homicide in Australia 2023–24: Statistical Report 53 (link here) reports 55 intimate partner homicides nationally of which 46 were women (page 11) in 2023-24. The following extracts have been selected to shine more light on the potential significance for comparative rates of family violence, and bold text added for emphasis. The authors note (page 11):

The [national] female intimate partner homicide rate in 2023–24 was 0.43 per 100,000 female population aged 18 years and over. This is a marked increase from the rate of 0.32 per 100,000 recorded in 2022–23 and the second highest rate of female intimate partner homicide in the last 10 years.

In terms of geographic location, they note (page 14):

Excluding Western Australia, the homicide rate for incidents in regional and remote areas exceeded the national incident rate for 2023–24 (1.08 and 3.51 per 100,000 respectively vs 0.98 per 100,000), while the rate of incidents in major cities was lower than the national rate (0.77 per 100,000) [emphasis added].

In terms of Indigenous status (page 20):

Of the 277 homicide victims in 2023–24, 44 (16%) were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and 226 (82%) were non-Indigenous (see Table 13) ….. Between 1989–90 and 2023–24, 14 percent (n=1,407) of homicide victims were Indigenous and 85 percent (n=8,637) were non-Indigenous

In relation to Indigenous victims (page 24):

The homicide victimisation rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in 2023–24 was 4.31 per 100,000 relevant population (see Table 17), a decrease from the rate of 5.36 per 100,000 recorded in 2022–23.

On page 26:

Around two-thirds of Indigenous female victims from cleared incidents were killed by an intimate partner (64%, n=9; see Table 20), almost double the proportion of Indigenous women killed by an intimate partner in 2022–23 (38%, n=5). Between 1989–90 and 2023–24, over two‑thirds of Indigenous women victims of homicide were killed by a current or former intimate partner (69%, n=337). In 2023–24, Indigenous women experienced an intimate partner homicide victimisation rate seven times greater than the rate for all Australian women (2.84 per 100,000 relevant population vs 0.43 per 100,000 respectively).

In relation to non-Indigenous victims (page 27), the authors note:

The homicide victimisation rate of non-Indigenous Australians was 0.88 per 100,000 (see Table 22), an increase from the rate of 0.74 per 100,000 recorded in 2022–23.

In relation to offenders, the authors note inter alia:

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander homicide offender rate in 2023–24 was 6.87 per 100,000 relevant population). Males comprised 78 percent of Indigenous homicide offenders (n=43) with an offender rate of 10.80 per 100,000. A fifth of Indigenous offenders were female (22%, n=12) with an offender rate of 2.99 per 100,000 (page 37).

Two-thirds of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander [primary homicide offenders] … and 46 percent… of non‑Indigenous primary homicide offenders (excluding New South Wales) had a known history of domestic and family violence (page 44).

The AIC evidence that Indigenous female homicides occur at much higher rate than in the mainstream is consistent with the hypothesis that there is a very strong correlation between prior domestic violence and later homicides. While every homicide is a tragedy, my purpose here is to focus on family violence and the strong suggestions that it occurs as much higher rates within Indigenous households than mainstream households. The gap exists; we just do not know its depth and width.

Given that the current Closing the Gap target 13 is both only intermittently measurable, likely to be grossly under-reported, and deeply flawed conceptually, there is  an overwhelming case for the parties to the National Agreement on Closing the Gap to revise it into a form that both reflects the lived reality of Indigenous people’s lives and which allows progress or regression to be measured so that the results of government efforts to reduce the enormous adverse impact of family violence on Indigenous women and children will be transparent.

Last week, the Australian Government’s Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission handed down its Yearly Report to Parliament (link here). The report includes a number of recommendations relevant to First Nations (Recommendations 11, 12, 15, 1617 and 18). The report identifies the data shortcomings related to Closing the Gap target 13 but doesn’t criticise its inherent limitations as a policy target. It mentions some extraordinary statistics, for example, that in 2023-24, Indigenous women were 27 times more likely to be hospitalised for family violence than non-Indigenous women (page 33). Yet despite a detailed account of the issues confronting Indigenous families (pages 78 to 89), its recommendations were bound up in process: the establishment of more advisory bodies, more funding, and commitments to work with organisations implementing various action plans and the like. In short, more of the same.

While the DFSV Commission is clearly well-intentioned, there was no cut through policy agenda proposed despite the discussion appearing in a section headlined Priority Areas for Action. There was minimal discussion of the role of alcohol and drugs in creating the preconditions for family violence to occur, and no discussion of the desirability of constraining access to alcohol across the community at large. To be clear, I am not suggesting that alcohol use is the only cause of family violence, but it clearly of such importance that reducing and /or constraining access to it is a necessary if not sufficient policy action in addressing the epidemic of family violence in remote Australia, and probably beyond. If the argument for doing so requires further strengthening, then its complicity in contributing to Indigenous hyper-incarceration (link here) provides a rationale in its own right for taking action.

I discussed the systemic underpinnings of the domestic violence crisis in remote Australia in an earlier post this year (link here). That post argued that the domestic violence crisis in the NT is a symptom of a wider crisis, and that alcohol is a key element of that. In an even earlier post from 2023 discussing the withdrawal of alcohol controls  following the lapse of the Commonwealth Stronger Future legislation (link here), I pointed to the clear statistical links between alcohol and domestic violence:

To take just one data point, alcohol related domestic violence assault offences spiked in Alice Springs, Katherine, and outside major centres in the 12 months to March 2023 (link here). The only location where there was a decline in these offences was in Darwin. Across the NT, there were almost 1000 extra reported assault offences over the year coinciding with the nine months of reduced [alcohol] restrictions. With the majority of NT electorates in the Darwin region, it is not difficult to develop a hypothesis for why the NT Government may have been intent on removing alcohol restrictions in the bush. In the light of the issues outlined above, the unqualified confidence of the Committee (set out in para. 3.66) in the capacity and political willingness of the NTG to manage alcohol related harm astounds me. [note: the hyperlink above is to a web page that has been updated since 2023]

While alcohol is likely a key driver of the high rates of domestic violence across remote Australia (and possible more broadly) it may not be the only driver. Nevertheless, I suggest that in the absence of greater controls, domestic violence and other social dysfunction will continue unabated, and in turn this will open the flood gates for more punitive social and economic policies.

The deeper problem of course is that governments are adept at creating policy silos, commissions, action plans and advisory committees that provide a defensive fig leaf against criticism when some egregious event hits the headlines but are content to do nothing to address systemic issues facing the most disadvantaged members of the Australian community. The fact that we allow governments to pursue these fake strategies without holding them to account makes all of us complicit in creating and sustaining the existence of the conditions that engender violence against women and children.

Summing up, I see two specific policy opportunities which would make a tangible and substantive positive impact on the family violence crisis engulfing remote communities (and likely on communities beyond remote Australia). First, revise and reframe Target 13 in the Closing the Gap policy framework to replace the current unworkable and deeply flawed target with a target that is measurable and reflects the real world. Second, initiate a comprehensive policy shift based on the policy approaches recommended by experts and the World Health Organisation (WHO) to constrain and reduce unfettered access to alcohol in communities and regional towns (and ideally major cities). The adverse health impacts of alcohol use are well known, and the WHO now advises (link here):

There is no form of alcohol consumption that is risk-free. Even low levels of alcohol consumption carry some risks and can cause harm.

While the politics of controlling access to alcohol induced harm, and the consequential impacts such as family violence, are challenging, the objective case for doing so requires governments to take action even without considering the wider individual and societal costs of dealing with the fallout. These wider costs include the adverse impacts on the life opportunities of children born into families affected by alcohol abuse, family violence and whose parents are incarcerated, and the economic costs for taxpayers of excessive hospitalisations, and avoidable incarceration. Finally, what does it say about us as a nation when we can adopt without apparent remorse policies that create so much pain and harm. That truly is an abuse of our democratic power.

 

6 November 2025

Misdirected focus: the case for institutional policy reforms to alcohol supply

                                            To weep with them that weep doth ease some deal,

                                        But sorrow flouted at is double death

Titus Andronicus, Act three, Scene one.

The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Health, Aged Care and Sport has recently released a report titled Issues paper relating to the health impacts of alcohol and other drugs in Australia (link here). The report is effectively an interim report and is designed to form the basis of a more comprehensive report assuming the next Government is prepared to renew its terms of reference. While the terms of reference span mainstream society, the report unsurprisingly addresses Indigenous issues at various points.

Like most Parliamentary reports of this nature, this Issues Paper carefully navigates its way through what is a complex and at times prickly thicket. Its value in the Indigenous policy context is to remind readers of the multitude of ways in which AOD, the report’s acronym for alcohol and other drugs, impacts indigenous people and communities. Thus, there is mention of Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FASD), criminal justice, numerous health impacts and in passing the potential influence of poor social and environmental infrastructure in driving AOD use and abuse. It is not my intention to seek to summarise the report, but rather I intend to cherry pick a number of propositions as a stepping stone to further discussion.

The report provides an excellent introduction to the overwhelming numbers of research activities, advocacy NGOs and treatment and service providers all operating across the mainstream system.

In the Chapter on AOD services, at paras. 4.19 to 4.36, the report provides an extended discussion of Indigenous issues related to AOD use, relying in large measure on submissions from NACCHO and the Queensland based Institute for Urban Indigenous Health.  These submissions were largely premised on arguments for community-controlled service provision based on evidence that Indigenous people are over-represented in the statistics depicting the adverse impacts of AOD abuse. At para 3.58, the Committee records this plea:

The Institute for Urban Indigenous Health submitted that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-led research and evaluation of AOD services must be recognised as a separate, dedicated stream of research and evaluation component of the AOD system. Such an approach would recognise that AOD has a disproportionate effect on Indigenous communities. According to the Institute, more Aboriginal Australians die due to drug and alcohol-related causes than any other disease group, including suicide and cardiovascular illnesses. Among young Aboriginal people aged 15 to 24, alcohol is the number one contributor to the burden of disease.

In a discussion of the links between AOD use and the prison population generally, the report notes (para 459):

People entering adult prison are more than four times as likely to report recent illicit drug use than people in the general community, and seven times more likely to drink to excess, according to the Legal Aid Commission of New South Wales (Legal Aid NSW). Mental health conditions also tend to be over-represented in the prison population.

Given the over-representation of Indigenous citizens in the prison system, these correlations are likely to apply to that subset too.

Chapter Five of the report deals with preventing and reducing harm caused by alcohol and other drugs. This strikes me as the crucial set of issues for policymakers. At para 5.18, the report notes a submission arguing:

 there is growing evidence to support a shifting of focus away from the law enforcement response, ‘especially with regard to communities disproportionately impacted by policing, including LGBTQ+ people, but also First Nations communities and people experiencing complex mental distress’.

The crucial issues for reducing the harm of alcohol across the community are somewhat buried within the report. At para 5.18 and following, there is a discussion of regulatory oversight policy issues including product labelling. At para 5.100, there is an important point made by the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education regarding the extent to which the current regulatory regime in Australia is out of date and in effect unfit for purpose. At para 5.97, the report notes:

Multiple submissions, … drew the Committee’s attention to the World Health Organization’s three key strategies … in the regulation of alcohol beverages to reduce health harms from drinking: • restricting exposure to alcohol advertising • increasing excise taxes on alcohol beverages, and • restricting the physical availability of retailed alcohol.

There is discussion in the report in relation to each of these points, albeit largely anodyne and descriptive. There is no criticism of the fact that advertising of alcohol appears to be largely based on industry formulated schemes. As is the way with these reports, the views of diverse interests are laid out without detailed analysis or critique. It is largely an exercise in ‘He said / she said’…. Perhaps we are meant to be reassured by the Committee’s observation (para 5.123) that:

In their submissions to the inquiry, industry representatives highlighted that the majority of Australians were drinking responsibly and in moderation.

The Committee’s final commentary (para 5.131) is carefully framed to acknowledge the range of points raised, but it assiduously steers clear of suggesting that there may be a role for government in controlling alcohol advertising, and crucially in limiting access to alcohol or in raising taxes to reduce demand and to remove inconsistent volumetric rates for tax on alcohol. The Opposition members’ addendum goes further making very clear that the current report has no status whatsoever and is merely an issues paper. They go on to make crystal clear that commercial interests must be engaged before reaching any substantive policy positions:

In chapter two, in relation to the regulation and effects of alcohol there is a need to hear from both sides before coming to any concluded views. In chapter three there are a range of controversial observations that have been made about harm minimisation and the approaches of law enforcement—these need to be tested with evidence from state and territory police. In chapter five, a range of highly contested policy responses are raised. It will be important that the Committee receives submissions and takes evidence from a much wider range of stakeholders to test the evidence, on all matters contained in that chapter, before reaching any conclusions.

For Indigenous interests, this report provides a case study which should cause them to rethink their advocacy strategy in relation to alcohol. The advocacy voices representing Indigenous prison inmates, Indigenous victims of family violence, Indigenous families of individuals suffering acute health issues, Indigenous children growing up in alcohol induced poverty and trauma are either non-existent or severely muted. Instead, the Indigenous interests making submissions to this inquiry are service delivery organisations with a particular focus on accessing the resources necessary to ensure service delivery is effective. These are important and legitimate interests, but they are not the whole picture. The consequence is that the report is able to effectively ignore these hidden or muted perspectives in favour of a focus on service delivery. This amounts to a structural blind spot that will only be filled when Indigenous interests adopt a broader advocacy strategy. In my view, the Coalition of Peaks (which I acknowledge is fundamentally under-resourced) should make addressing these systemic issues a priority for its advocacy efforts. The absence of such a broader systemic perspective in Indigenous advocacy leaves the field open to those mainstream interest groups arguing against reform.

The clear if implicit message from the major parties is that they do not wish to upset the apple cart vis a vis the major alcohol industry interest groups. Instead of policy reforms aimed at reducing access to alcohol and other drugs, the major parties will focus on the provision of health services and other supports. The report made no attempt to address the particular issues facing remote Indigenous communities (but see para 6.4) notwithstanding that they arguably bear the brunt of lax regulation and encompass the most vulnerable subset of the Indigenous population. The submissions to the Committee by NACCHO and the Institute for Urban Indigenous Health (available on the Committee website link here) were premised on making the case for community-controlled service delivery and largely ignored the importance of institutional reforms to reduce easy and cheap access to alcohol, and the issues associated issues around incarceration and domestic violence. The NIAA submission ( #140 at this link but not available on its website) focusses on its financial support for AOD treatment:

Through the IAS, the NIAA provides approximately $70 million annually to deliver around 90 AOD activities across Australia. IAS AOD funding is supplementary to Health and state government funding and prioritises treatment that is culturally safe and tailored to First Nations clients. These services offer evidence based, and trauma informed models of care for First Nations people and their families. This includes individual and group based therapeutic care, client-based family support, case management, referrals, and AOD prevention and education activities.

In relation to regulation, the NIAA states:

There are various regulations, laws and restrictions that aim to reduce alcohol related harms in jurisdictions around the country. While some laws, such as the legal drinking age, are in place across Australia, the majority of alcohol regulation is the responsibility of the states and territories. The weight of evidence suggests measures to reduce the availability of alcohol through strengthened controls on price and promotion can contribute to reducing harm and improving public safety.

The submission’s conclusion states:

While substance use impacts all Australians, it disproportionately affects First Nations people. The NIAA emphasises the importance of working in partnership and taking a strengths-based, trauma informed, culturally safe and holistic approach to addressing harmful AOD use. It is critical that First Nations voices are elevated throughout the Inquiry, and that the Committee’s recommendations are informed by the unique histories, cultures and experiences of First Nations people.

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 those data points don’t make the case that a national crisis exists and is ongoing for Indigenous communities in relation to the use of alcohol, then what will?

For those still unpersuaded or just interested in exploring the issues further, the following posts deal with various aspects of alcohol policy in remote Australia (link here, link here, and link here). The consistent theme of these posts has been to point out the excessive influence of the alcohol industry in shaping remote alcohol policy, to encourage the Commonwealth to engage proactively in driving reforms including in relation to the accessibility of alcohol.

Conclusion

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

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

If Australia were serious about improving Indigenous health status, we would implement significant policy reforms in relation to alcohol advertising, taxation and retail availability.

If Australia were serious about 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.

 

18 March 2025

Justice Reinvestment: divert and distract

 

Remember thee?

Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat 

In this distracted globe. Remember thee? 

Hamlet Act one, Scene five.

Justice reinvestment is one of those ideas that is thrown around incessantly in the Indigenous policy domain, but never seems to go anywhere.

Justice reinvestment aims to reduce First Nations incarceration and contact at all levels of the justice system. It is this objective which leads to one of its key components, the reinvestment or diversion of funds drawn from correctional budgets towards community-led solutions to over-representation (link here).

This idea gained traction amongst Indigenous interests in Australia after a focus on addressing justice administration issues emerged in Bourke in western NSW around 2012, and went on to have considerable success over the succeeding 12 years  (link here and link here). The Just Reinvest website includes a very useful submission from Maranguka to a NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into Community Safety in Regional and Rural Communities (link here) which identifies that addressing the challenges of justice reinvestment at a community level is not straightforward as it depends on the successful delivery of a series of inter-related services, and the maintenance of community support over the medium and longer term.

While I do not for one moment dismiss the absolute importance of community led initiatives in this space, it is also clear that the success of the Bourke community in limiting interactions with the criminal justice system has not been widely replicated across Australia. Even if we allow that local community led initiatives are necessary preconditions for successful policy reform, they are not sufficient preconditions. They do not have the innate capacity to expand horizontally across the policy domain, and they do not address the deeper systemic issues that drive hyper-incarceration of Indigenous citizens.

In response to the success of the Bourke community, First Nations interests appropriated the ‘Justice Reinvestment’ terminology and incorporated it into their advocacy. Notwithstanding this support, First Nations interests have largely failed to replicate the Bourke community initiatives more widely. One reason for this is that a close look at the Bourke issues reveals that there was an amazing amount of behind the scenes work to engage with numerous stakeholders and potential allies (including many non-Indigenous organisations). Bourke’s success was extraordinary, but beyond the capacity of other communities to replicate on their own.  

Yet the logic of Justice Reinvestment continues to resonate and is difficult to refute. As Fiona Allison notes in her paper prepared for Jumbunna and made available on the Attorney General’s Department website:

Justice reinvestment aims to reduce First Nations incarceration and contact at all levels of the justice system. It is this objective which leads to one of its key components, the reinvestment or diversion of funds drawn from correctional budgets towards community-led solutions to over-representation.

 Justice reinvestment’s focus on incarceration is a pivot around which multiple other outcomes might be enhanced, including in areas like health, education or other ‘social determinants of justice’. More fundamentally, however, justice reinvestment aims to achieve a cultural and political shift in First Nations/government relations.

[Allison, F (2023) Design of the National Justice Reinvestment Program. Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research, UTS. (link here).]

Governments responded to the aspirational advocacy in favour of ‘Justice Reinvestment’ with what have become the standard template for managing difficult issues. The Attorney General’s Department established a program focussed on justice reinvestment, which is outlined in some detail on its website (link here). The first paragraph of the web page states:

More than 30 years after the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples remain over-represented at every point in the criminal justice system. In the 2022–2023 Budget, the Australian Government announced a commitment to pursue meaningful change by investing in place-based initiatives, led and implemented by First Nations communities and organisations, to help turn the tide on incarceration and deaths in custody (emphasis added).

The subsequent paragraphs list the detail of an allocation totalling $80m over four years, along with a commitment to ongoing funding of $20m per annum. Also included are sections dealing with place-based projects, a list of projects funded under the program, and a section on the purpose of funding states:

The National Justice Reinvestment Program is a long-term, community-led approach to shifting people’s interactions away from the justice system by investing in preventative and rehabilitation measures, informed by local stories, evidence and data.

A section on the establishment of a co-designed national justice reinvestment unit explains its purpose as

 ‘to coordinate and support justice reinvestment initiatives at a national level, as recommended by the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) Pathways to Justice report.’ 

It is not clear whether this means the coordination will be at a national level, or the justice reinvestment initiatives will be national.

The 2017 Pathways to Justice Report by the ALRC made the following recommendation in relation to Justice Reinvestment:

Recommendation 4–1 Commonwealth, state and territory governments should provide support for the establishment of an independent justice reinvestment body. The purpose of the body should be to promote the reinvestment of resources from the criminal justice system to community-led, place-based initiatives that address the drivers of crime and incarceration, and to provide expertise on the implementation of justice reinvestment. Its functions should include: providing technical expertise in relation to justice reinvestment; assisting in developing justice reinvestment plans in local sites; and maintaining a database of evidence-based justice reinvestment strategies. The justice reinvestment body should be overseen by a board with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leadership. (emphasis added)

A close reading of this recommendation suggests that its intention was the establishment of something akin to a national peak body for justice reinvestment, not a unit established within the A-G’s portfolio. The website claims there has been extensive consultation on the proposal and has spent the best part of $12m in working towards its establishment. Consultations were outsourced t the Jumbunna Institute, and a report on the national consultations in relation to the program was published by Jumbunna in June 2023. The website continues:

The National Justice Reinvestment Unit is being designed by a working group of the Justice Policy Partnership, and informed by the recommendation of the ALRC, written submissions from the public consultation process, and the views of First Nations communities through the national design consultations.

The Justice Policy Partnership is a mechanism established as part of the policy architecture for Closing the Gap. It has a web page on the Attorney General’s Department site (link here), which outlines the purpose of the Justice Policy Partnership as follows:

Focused on providing a national joined up approach to improving Outcomes 10 (Adults are not overrepresented in the criminal justice system) and 11 (Young people are not overrepresented in the criminal justice system) of the National Agreement, the Justice Policy Partnership is co-chaired by the Attorney-General’s Department and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Legal Services.

Its membership comprises 10 First Nationals representatives nominated by the Coalition of Peaks and nine senior officials from the Commonwealth and all states and territories (see the terms of reference for a list of all members). The Partnership meets four times a year. The web page for the JPP lists a summary of discussions from all meetings over the past few years, though I haven’t had a chance to review the content of those discussions.

It will be interesting to see what emerges from the working group in relation to the Justice Reinvestment Unit. I will be amazed if it aligns with the vision implicit in the ALRC recommendation.

Returning to the Justice Reinvestment web page, it also includes the following paragraph:

Grant opportunities to apply for funding under the National Justice Reinvestment Program were closed in November 2024 as the program was close to being fully subscribed (emphasis added).

I am aware that this has caused significant dismay amongst groups who were in the process of preparing funding submissions.

What then can we make of this rather convoluted policy architecture?

The first point to make is that it is broadly consistent with First Nations’ consistent advocacy seeking greater involvement and consultation in policy formulation. It is consistent with the process requirements embedded within the National Agreement on Closing the Gap. My personal view (which of course counts for nothing) is that it is a highly over-engineered policy architecture which prioritises process over outcomes.

Second, as an experienced former public servant, it strikes me that it might be described as management by committee, which essentially means everything becomes a negotiation, delays abound, and there are multiple veto points available for any stakeholder who seeks to avoid a specific outcome. This might be described as a co-designed policy framework, but I would describe it as a poorly designed policy framework, one that virtually guarantees gridlock and policy stasis. Of course, a cynic might conclude that this is exactly what governments have intended.

Third, and most importantly, it strikes me that this whole policy framework edifice is not fit for purpose because it is fundamentally lacking in ambition and has lost sight of the underlying levels of over-representation of First Nations citizens in the justice system. The costs of Australia’s prison systems are enormous, so the potential savings from reducing incarceration levels are similarly large.

The IPA Research note dated June 2024 titled The Cost of Australia’s Prisons (link here) is an essential read for all those interested in understanding the misallocation of expenses involved in hyper incarceration of citizens, particularly Indigenous citizens.

Its key findings include:

State and federal governments are now spending $6.4 billion each year on the construction and operation of prisons, with spending having almost doubled in just 10 years. • Incarceration costs Australian taxpayers $422 per prisoner per day, or $153,895 per prisoner per year. • The adult incarceration rate is now 205.7 per 100,000 of the adult population, an increase of 12 per cent over the last 10 years. • Of the 43,305 prisoners in Australia, 62 per cent have been incarcerated for a violent offence, 23 per cent for a non-violent victimless offence and 15 per cent for a non-violent property offence. • In 2023 governments spent $2.4 billion on imprisoning non-violent offenders posing minimal risk to community safety. (emphasis added).

According to the most recent June 2024 ABS data (link here), there were 44,051 (average daily number) prisoners in Australia. Of these, there were 15,424 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners. Indigenous prisoners thus comprise a third of the total prison population. Notionally, we might attribute $2.1bn of the annual costs of the carceral state to the imprisonment of Indigenous people. The Attorney General’s Department Justice Reinvestment program of $20m is thus less than one percent of the total costs allocated to incarceration of Indigenous citizens.

Whatever the merits of the place-based initiatives being pursued by the Commonwealth, they are not at a scale which will have an impact on in reversing the negative trends on incarceration of First Nations people. Moreover, recent research from the Australian Institute of Criminology, which sits in the Attorney General’s portfolio, points unequivocally to the role of much wider policy issues in driving arrest rates and imprisonment rates for Indigenous citizens (link here). As I noted in my previous blog post on that research, this report represents the most important policy relevant research paper published in relation to Indigenous Australia in recent memory (link here).

In the recently released Northern Australia Action Plan (link here) the Commonwealth authors state at page 61:

The Australian Government is committed to working in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations and communities to improve justice outcomes….

…. While criminal justice, policing and corrections are primarily the responsibility of state and territory governments, the Australian Government acknowledges it has a leadership role to work in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, the Coalition of Peaks and states and territories to achieve justice targets (emphasis added).

Given the consistently regressive trends in Indigenous incarceration even against the artificially constructed closing the gap targets (as discussed in my previous post link here), it is difficult to discern substantive leadership either from the Attorney General, the Minister for Indigenous Australians and their respective agencies. They ignore their own policy relevant research. Instead, we have the tried-and-true approach of seeking to manage the issue by creating reams of process and allocating just enough funding to be able to claim that something is being done. And for good measure, seeking to divert responsibility to the states and territories who are directly responsible for criminal justice matters. The overarching strategy in relation to First Nations policy might be summed up in two words: ‘divert’ and ‘distract’.

This begs the question, what would an effective response to hyper-incarceration look like?

One approach which has some attractions, but which I consider to be inadequate, is to amend the criminal law to remove the use of incarceration for certain offenses. The Institute of Public Affairs research note referred to above suggests doing so for non-violent offenses. The recent NT Coroners report (link here) suggests doing so for domestic violence offenses (see recommendation 20). Such approaches will have difficulty in achieving broad political support, and raise the unanswered question, what then is the appropriate punishment for these offences? While I would be prepared to change my mind if presented with a persuasive argument, on its face these approaches appear to address the policy problem by addressing the incarceration metric, but not the underlying criminal behaviour, thus shifting the problem elsewhere.

Clearly, finding an effective response to hyper-incarceration is complicated, and thus the response will necessarily be complex. But it is possible to identify some essential core features.

An effective response must be substantive, not intangible. It must be systemic in its reach, addressing underlying drivers of incarceration, not just the immediate causes (that is it must lead to less criminal behaviour). It must involve policy change, not merely setting an aspirations target (without policy change) as is the case with the Closing the Gap framework. In turn, this suggests that there must be a program logic: if we aim to achieve A, we will do B, we will allocate Y funding or amend law Z. An effective response must be national in its operation, whether by obtaining the agreement of all states and territories, or through national policy action. Importantly, it must be sustained over time, evaluated for effectiveness, and amended if necessary. Ideally, it should have wide political support; if this is not possible, there must at least be a public explanation of the policy and its aims. In short, it must become a national project and a national priority. This will require political leadership and commitment.

Readers will note that I have not proposed specific policy actions. The reason is that there will be a need for a suite or portfolio of integrated policy responses at jurisdiction wide levels and ideally nationally. Key policy areas would include, at a minimum, alcohol controls, employment creation, better housing and infrastructure, better education services, continued access to effective health services, food security, improved policing, and effective support services. Solutions for remote regions (where social disadvantage is more deep-seated) will not be the same as those required in urban and regional contexts.

None of the elements laid out in the preceding paragraphs are impossible or unthinkable. Yet it is immediately clear that in relation to such a policy strategy, our existing political institutions are unlikely to find the motivation to go down this path. The incentives for those involved in managing our national political life do not align with addressing the issue of hyper-incarceration. In John Dryzek’s formulation, the problem of hyper-incarceration is not seen as a ‘core state imperative.’

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

My point in emphasising the societal costs is to point to the necessity for engaged citizens to build on this platform to advocate for the substantive policy reform that is both essential if non-Indigenous Australians are to live side by side with Indigenous Australians, but also if we Australians are to take our place in global society as nation built on social justice. We may be blind to the necessity of engaging with hyper-incarceration of First Nations citizens, but the rest of the world is not similarly blind.

If we were to find a way to successfully implement the systemic and broad-scale reforms required, then there would be a ‘justice reinvestment’ dividend. But talking up Justice Reinvestment while tinkering with the substantive policy challenge by allocating $20m per annum nationally should be seen for what it is: a hypocritically distraction with no discernible policy impact.

Finally, for those interested in delving deeper into these issues, below I provide links to three of my previous posts on Indigenous incarceration going back to 2017. Over those seven years, the underlying analysis has not changed much, which tells us something about the powerlessness of Indigenous Australians, and the challenges the nation faces in driving substantive reform.

ALRC Discussion Paper on Indigenous incarceration (link here)

Indigenous incarceration reform (link here)

The drivers of stratospheric rates of Indigenous incarceration (link here)

 

 

28 November 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Youth detention, incarceration, closing the gap, and who we are

 

Your dishonour

Mangles true judgement, and bereaves the state

Of that integrity which should become it.

Coriolanus Act three, Scene one.

 

According to ABS census data from 2021 (link here), one-third (33.1%) of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians were aged under 15 years compared with 17.9% of non-Indigenous people in the same age group.  The median age nationally of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population was 24 years. While remote and very remote Indigenous populations comprise only 15 percent of the national Indigenous population, and two less than one percent of the Australian population, they are amongst the most disadvantaged citizens across virtually every social indicator.

In recent months, there have been several articles focussed on the plight of remote communities; places where the demographic profile is heavily slanted toward those under 24.

In October, Daniel James, a Yorta Yorta man wrote a searing indictment of government policy in Central Australia in The Monthly titled Children of the intervention (link here). More recently in The Saturday Paper (link here), Ben Abbatangelo, a Gunaikurnai and Wotjobaluk writer wrote a searing — yet hopeful —  indictment of the situation in Wadeye titled  Yidiyi Festival returns hope to Wadeye. I have quibbles with both articles related to their focus on particular places thus de-emphasising the wider structural drivers of disadvantage across remote Australia generally, and their implicit choice of temporal perspectives. Both articles are nevertheless extremely powerful critiques of Government policy neglect and ineptitude, while not ignoring the complexity and nuance which bedevils any close analysis of these issues.

It was within this overarching policy context that the Joint Council on Closing the Gap met last week. The Joint Council includes every Minister for Indigenous Affairs in the federation plus representatives of the Coalition of Peaks. Their communique (link here) mentioned a number of issues, but focussed particular attention on one specific issue:

Joint Council discussed critical matters regarding youth justice and agreed that Target 11 of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap (the National Agreement) is an urgent priority that requires collective action across multiple government portfolios and jurisdictions to deliver on the ground results. Target 11, to reduce the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people (10 – 17 years) in detention by at least 30 per cent by 2031 is not on track to be met. Joint Council agreed to escalate this urgent priority and progress work that will achieve improved accountability, coordinated jurisdictional actions and outcomes. It was agreed that Joint Council Co-Chairs write to First Ministers to seek details of how their governments are currently taking steps to meet Target 11, including consideration of remand, alternative accommodation and health and disability care and education in youth justice facilities.(emphasis added).

According to the Productivity Commission Closing the Gap dashboard (link here):  

Nationally in 2022-23, the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people aged 10–⁠17 years in detention on an average day was 29.8 per 10,000 young people in the population (figure CtG11.1). The 2022‑23 rate is above the previous three years (from a low of 23.6 per 10,000 young people in 2020‑21) but it is a decrease from 32.1 per 10,000 young people in 2018‑19 (the baseline year). Nationally, the trend for the target shows no change from the baseline. This assessment is provided with a low level of confidence.

So while current levels of youth detention are less than the baseline, they have been rising in the last year.

The Joint Council response is entirely bureaucratic in nature, and reeks of going through the motions. It is unclear why they focus on youth detention and not also on incarceration more generally. Writing to First Ministers for information that should be in the Implementation Plans required by the National Agreement will take months, and as it turns out, if you dig deep enough in the Productivity Commission dashboard, half of the jurisdictions will be able to point to recent improvements and those that can’t will find some other bureaucratic formulation to describe their efforts as deeply committed and focussed on improving accountability and coordinated consultation to prioritise urgent action….or some such …

The real problem, which goes to the heart of the renegotiated targets under the 2020 National Agreement is that nationally, detention rates for First Nations youth are currently 28.8 per 10,000 compared to mainstream youth detention rates of 1.1 per 10,000. In Queensland, detention rates for First Nations youth are 46 per 10,000. Of particular interest is the fact that in Western Australia in 2010, youth detention rates were 79.7 per 10,000 and have dropped to 34.6 in 2022-23, a halving of the rates over twelve years (although still at levels above the national rate for Indigenous youth detention). I don’t know how WA have achieved that outcome, but that would be a question worth asking. It demonstrates that progress can be made. But the bottom line is that nationally, First Nations youth are 28 times more likely to be in detention than non-Indigenous youth. That is the real issue and the real tragedy. It should be cause for a national strategy to fully (not partially) close the gap, to bring Indigenous youth detention rates down to 1.1 per 10,000. It is worth remembering that these are point-in-time statistics; the levels of Indigenous youth that are placed in detention in any one year will be considerably higher. The current levels of Indigenous youth detention should be a national scandal. And it should be a focus for governments to commission detailed and independent analysis from criminologists, sociologists and anthropologists as well as their policy advisers.

Instead, governments have squibbed the issue by inventing an arbitrary target, with the aim of lowering the detention rate from 32.1 in the baseline year to 22.5 in 2031. Not only did they invent an arbitrary target, they have failed to articulate a coherent national strategy (and coherent state and territory strategies) to meet this arbitrary and inherently unambitious target. By their inaction, they are continuing to squib this issue day in and day out.

This is bad enough. But target 11 under the Closing the Gap process is just one of numerous targets which replicate the same strategy. Invent an arbitrary target that is reasonably achievable; shift the responsibility from the Commonwealth to nine separate jurisdictions each with their own policies and approaches, thus making real accountability impossible. Avoid developing coherent and realistic policy implementation plans by loading them up with hundreds of pages of bureaucratic flim flam, thus avoiding real political accountability.  And whenever an issue arises that emerges into the public consciousness, claim to be concerned and throw a few dollars at it.

So for example, there was no mention by the Joint Council of the challenges related to Target 10 which is framed as follows: By 2031, reduce the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults held in incarceration by at least 15%. The baseline adopted in the National Agreement was from 2019 a convenient and almost surreptitious way of diminishing the magnitude of the trends that point to not only an extraordinary level of hyper-incarceration of First Nations citizens, but a substantial increase in indigenous incarceration rates vis a vis mainstream population rates over the past fifteen years.

Interrogating the dashboard reveals the following key data points:

• Nationally the level of mainstream incarceration in 2023 is 149 per 100,000. It has barely changed from 2009, when the national rate was 137 per 100,000.
• For Indigenous citizens, the national level of incarceration is 2235 per 100,000 in 2023, up from 1539 per 100,000 in 2009.
• In WA, the Indigenous incarceration rate is 3469 per 100,000 in 2023, up from 2817 per 100,000 in 2009.
• In the NT, the Indigenous incarceration rate is 3029 per 100, 000, up from 1700 per 100,000 in 2009.

The national indigenous incarceration rate in 2023 is thus 15 times higher than the mainstream rate. In 2009, it was 11.2 times higher.

While it is difficult to visualise the impact of these statistics, Ben Abbatangelo’s article includes a description of the internal community violence that sporadically breaks out, its consequences for the whole community, and notes, almost in passing, the extraordinary statistic that that today, around 5 percent of the Wadeye’s population is incarcerated.

What I find particularly frustrating is that the blatant hypocrisy of governments, laid out in plain view, fails to resonate in the public domain. Political Oppositions across the federation (whether progressive or conservative) find it easier to look away or pretend that the issue is being dealt with appropriately; after all they hope to be in government at some future date and don’t wish to have made commitments they don’t intend to make meet.

The media (with honourable exceptions mentioned above) largely doesn’t look beyond the scandals or antics of the previous week.

Indigenous citizens become inured to the normalisation of violence in their lives, much of it is lateral violence and fuelled by poorly regulated and controlled alcohol and drugs.

The Indigenous members of the Coalition of Peaks on the Joint Council appear to be unable to see a way to go back to basics and call governments out for their inaction. They fear (probably correctly) that if they were to criticise government too openly, and too directly, they would first be defunded, and ultimately the whole edifice of the National Agreement would be dismantled as it would not be serving its purpose. The risks however are that they will ultimately be tainted by their perceived complicity (link here). And eventually a future, more punitive government will just decide to dismantle the whole edifice wile blaming the victims for the ongoing catastrophe.

Notwithstanding the irony of my reliance on their data in this post, the Productivity Commission blithely compiles and updates a plethora of data and statistics, apparently oblivious to its role in diverting attention from the extent and depth of the real-world crises and challenges confronting First Nations citizens. The Commission’s appears focussed on compiling a profusion of data and statistics which have limited relevance to the lived reality of many First Nations citizens, and no relationship to either policy or the concerns of governments.

For our political class and elites, the whole edifice has become an elaborate exercise in convincing mainstream Australia that our democratically elected governments really do care about First Nations when the reality is that they do not give a fig about closing the gap. In their mistaken and fundamentally narcissistic view, it is just too hard.  

Closing the gap is as much about mainstream Australia as First Nations; it is about changing the way mainstream Australia operates and shares this continent. I don’t claim that there are simple solutions to these issues. They require hard policy work, substantive political commitment, visionary political leadership, an ability to see beyond simplistic ideological humbug, and a sense of empathy and understanding that is exemplified in Australian notions of mateship, concern for the underdog and for a fair go for all. What fundamentally concerns me, to the point of disconsolation, is the deepening realisation that we live in a nation where these ideas no longer reflect who we really are.

 

Addendum: for those who might be interested in a more academic critique of closing the gap that reflects the ideas outlined here, I refer you to a couple of Discussion Papers I wrote in 2021 (link here and link here).

 

 

20 November 2024

amended to corrrect two minor typos (original struck through) 24 November 2024.