An Institutional approach to analysing Indigenous policy (Part One)

I like not fair terms, and a villain’s mind

Merchant of Venice, Act one, Scene three

 

Last week the Nobel prize in economics was awarded to three economists, Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson “for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity” (link here). There have been several prominent economists write short overviews of the prize winners’ work (link here and link here). The economic historian Adam Tooze wrote a thought provoking critique (link here) which questions the prize winners’ interpretation of the modern history of China’s rise, but implicitly endorsed the underlying importance of institutions. The overview I found most useful was by Alice Evans (link here).

Evans succinctly summarises the considerable academic output of AJR (as the prize winners are often referred to) in a very accessible way. She emphasises the importance of institutions (defined as ‘the rules of the game’) in shaping policy outcomes, the role of inclusive institutions in driving sustained social and economic equity, and the more recent research of AJR in exploring the complementary roles of expectations and prestige in shaping the ideological frameworks within which institutions operate and which thus shape societal outcomes. I recommend interested readers have a look at her Substack post as she explains these issues in very accessible terms.

The bottom line is that ARG have made an enormous contribution to explaining the importance of institutions in shaping and determining policy outcomes, and point to the underlying roles of elites, dominant coalitions of interest groups, and ideology in the creation and protection of institutions that allocate benefits to those dominant interests, in maintaining institutional stability over time, and by implication in weakening institutions which either no longer serve their interests or which allocate societal resources in ways they dislike. A core element in ARG’s analyses is to argue that inclusive institutions (ie institutions that allocate societal resources more broadly) lead to stronger economic and social development; whereas non-inclusive institutions lead to weaker outcomes and ultimately to state failure.

How then might we describe the institutional frameworks which shape the Indigenous policy domain in Australia? The summary below is more a thumbnail sketch than an attempt at absolute accuracy and comprehensiveness.

The first point to note is that mainstream institutions are the predominant influence over Indigenous policy outcomes: the Constitution, the Parliament, the dominance of the Executive Government over the Parliament, the Commonwealth’s extraordinary reach across mainstream policy sectors such as education, health, employment, social security, the disability support policy, taxation, the economy, and so on. The Commonwealth retains very strong institutional influence over Territories both direct and latent (notwithstanding legislation providing for self-government), and its mainstream legislation outlawing racial discrimination has had an outsized influence over Indigenous policy. Mainstream state and territory institutions focussed on essential services and mainstream land laws, housing regulation, social housing provision and criminal justice are also extremely influential in shaping Indigenous life opportunities across urban, regional and remote contexts. While these are generally considered inclusive institutions, the reality is that in many cases, particular institutions, or the synergies between institutions lead to exclusionary outcomes for particular segments of society. Indigenous interests are strongly represented amongst those disadvantaged segments as the Productivity Commission Closing the Gap dashboard demonstrates very clearly.

The second point is that Indigenous specific institutions are in a state of prolonged stasis: there has been virtually no new Indigenous specific institutional initiatives for almost three decades. A high-level list of Indigenous specific institutional initiatives over the past half century would include the following policy measures and reforms.

The Whitlam and Fraser Government enacted land rights legislation in the NT in 1976. States such as NSW, SA, Queensland and Victoria enacted much more limited land rights regimes during the seventies and eighties. The Fraser Government enacted the Aboriginal Councils and Associations Act in 1976 (updated in 2006 as the CATSI Act) and the Aboriginal Development Commission in 1980. The Hawke Government enacted ATSIC in 1989 (incorporating the ADC) and established alongside a more commercial entity now known as Indigenous Business Australia. The Native Title Act was enacted in 1993 by the Keating Government after the High Court forced the Commonwealth’s hand when it handed down its decision in Mabo No.2. In 1995, the Keating Government legislated the Indigenous Land Corporation and an associated Land Fund acknowledging the reality that native title did not benefit all Indigenous people. In 2007, the Howard Government (with ALP support) initiated the Northern Territory National Emergency Response, involving the deployment of unarmed ADF personnel and a suite of largely time limited legislative measures to ensure Commonwealth freedom of action in undertaking various mainstream and Indigenous specific measures. This legislation included provisions over-riding the operation of the Racial Discrimination Act.

Most recently, in 2023, the Albanese Government took a referendum on constitutional reform built around the proposal for a Voice to Parliament to the Australian people, and following the loss of bipartisanship, it was comprehensively defeated. Had the referendum been successful, it would have made a significant contribution to the recognition of First Nations people at an institutional level. However, the contribution of the Voice to driving better policy outcomes was never guaranteed, as it depended on subsequent legislation to scope out the detailed design and mechanics of is operations. There is no guarantee that this subsequent legislation would have been effective (much like expectation that the National Anti-Corruption Commission appears to have been substantially weakened by the compromises made during the design and passage of its establishing legislation (link here).

Perhaps the highest profile non-legislated Indigenous specific institution is the Closing the Gap framework established by COAG in 2008 along with the National Indigenous Reform Agreement which provided around $16bn in associated funding over ten years (link here: pages 7/8)  and fundamentally revised and updated in 2020. These latter revisions saw the reframing of the Closing the Gap framework in a National Agreement signed by all Australian Governments and the newly established Coalition of Peaks. The new National Agreement was fundamentally flawed insofar as there was no overarching long-term funding package built into it, and it was deliberately designed by governments to ensure that political accountability was both deferred and widely shared, thus undercutting the likely impetus for substantive ongoing reform. As a result of the large number of ‘targets’, the devolution of responsibility to states and territories, the complexity of the measurement approaches adopted, and the absence of any direct alignment between targets and financial investments means that its accountability frameworks in relation to government performance are effectively non-existent.  The ‘codesign’ of the Agreement was in my view effectively a sham and has not worked for Indigenous interests. The establishment of the Coalition of Peaks was necessary to make this sleight of hand work, but the Coalition has not been funded adequately to engage with governments across the huge breadth covered by the Agreement and Closing the Gap framework. The refresh of Closing the Gap by the Morrison Government was institutional change, but not institutional reform; it was a means of shifting the goalposts with the result that Indigenous interests have, in my view, been thwarted at virtually every turn. My submissions to the Productivity Commission Review of Closing the Gap made this argument at some length but were effectively ignored (link here and link here).

The third point to note is that notwithstanding the 1967 referendum, the Commonwealth has for the last decade been actively shifting Indigenous policy responsibilities to the states and territories, in the process reducing the Commonwealth’s Indigenous policy footprint in regional and remote areas, and thus limiting its capacity to know and understand what is actually happening amongst the most disadvantaged segments of the Indigenous population. I won’t seek to spell out every instance, but the following examples are illustrative of the wider trend. IN 2018, the former LNP Government discontinued the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing and its associated $5.5bn in funding (except in the NT) when the ten-year term expired arguing it was a state responsibility. More recently, following the Voice referendum defeat, the Albanese Government has left the treaty and truth telling processes its formerly promised to the states and territories (link here).

The combined effect of these three points is to build a very strong case for the proposition that there has been virtually no significant institutional policy reform directed to the Indigenous policy domain over the past thirty years. I use the word ‘reform’ to mean ‘positive change’, not just change. This is the institutional stasis referred to above. But this institutional stasis has been reinforced and amplified by a series of major institutional setbacks for Indigenous interests which have undoubtedly had a cumulative impact.

So over those same thirty years we have seen (even as increasing amounts of land have been recognised as native title) largely retrograde amendments to the Native Title Act including the so-called Wik amendments; the pre-emptive abolition of ATSIC in 2005; the retrograde imposition of punitive policies under the Northern Territory Intervention (which continue to resonate in First Nations’ narratives even after the actual policies imposed have run their course); the failure of the Closing the Gap framework to drive tangible improvements in Indigenous socio-economic status (for reasons I explored in two related Discussion Papers in 2021: link here and link here). Indeed, key socio-economic indicators have been worsening over time (I wont rehearse the data available in the Productivity Commission Closing the Gap Information Repository (link here).  To pick out two that I find incomprehensible, extraordinary national incarceration rates and the extremely concerning education outcomes in remote regions and the concomitant levels of social dysfunction particularly amongst school age youth point to a conjunction of multiple social, economic and cultural crises which adjectives such as ‘deep-seated disadvantage’ and ‘deep poverty’ do not do justice.

Perhaps the most significant institutional reform failures have been successive governments’ unpreparedness to take up opportunities that have one way or another been proposed. The Australian Law reform Commission delivered a major report on potential reforms to the Native Title legislative and policy framework in 2015 (link here); it sank without trace and without a Government response. In June this year, the Attorney General commissioned a new review of the Native Title Act Future Acts regime (the core of the legislation) (link here) to report by December 2025. My prediction is that it too will sink without trace. To take one native title example that particularly annoys me, through all these reviews, governments have known that the Prescribed Bodies Corporate that are required to be established under the Act to hold native title have no comprehensive operational funding framework and are beholden to siphoning fees off third parties (such as miners and developers) seeking access to native title lands to fund their operations. Yet governments prefer to undertake reviews rather than take decisions to adequately fund bodies established by legislation of the Parliament. Another lost opportunity is the failure of governments to respond to the Indigenous Evaluation Strategy review undertaken by the Productivity Commission in 2019/20 (link here). And of course, the failure of the referendum related to the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament is another lost opportunity to reform the institutional framework that shapes the Indigenous policy domain.

While it is possible to argue about the detail of each of the retrograde changes and lost institutional reform opportunities of the past thirty years, the absence of major reforms with the substantive financial and intellectual capital resources to make a difference (summarised by the cop out phrase ‘Indigenous affairs policy is intractable’) and the sheer accumulation of retrograde changes over the past thirty years provides irrefutable evidence that there are deep and powerful systemic or structural forces at work (link here).

The existing coalitions of interests that benefit from the institutional status quo (often referred to as ‘elites’) are not prepared to give up their shared benefits and allow new interests access to the ongoing implicit negotiation of institutional adjustments with their concomitant adjustment of shared benefits. Those with the power and influence to force their way to the negotiating table are included, and those without the power and influence are ignored and effectively excluded. The latter group includes the vast majority of Indigenous interests, particularly in regional and remote Australia. It is this dynamic that Alice Evans described when she wrote in the Substack linked above:

Contending coalitions are constantly vying for ideological and institutional dominance. In the past, they primarily sought conquest. But now it’s a battle for persuasion - in which prestige reigns supreme.

The problem for Indigenous interests is that they are not losing just one or two fights. They are losing comprehensively, and continuously. In the battle for institutional influence, Indigenous interests are either excluded by governments (who are the mediator between contending interest based coalitions) either by ignoring Indigenous aspirations, or by using delay, complex processes and ultimately window dressing to ensure that the status quo ante between the powerful interests is not upset. 

The challenge then for Indigenous interests is how to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and somehow gain a guaranteed and unquestioned seat at the table at least when key issues of concern are being discussed (or are sought to be ignored). The Indigenous Voice to Parliament as conceptualised by Noel Pearson and Megan Davis was an attempt to be granted, by constitutional right, a seat at the table in relation to the consideration of laws affecting Indigenous interests. That opportunity has been refused at best for the next decade or two, and at worst perhaps forever. But it is not the only opportunity on offer, and nor was it the only pathway forward.

What then are the strategies available to Indigenous interests to increase the likelihood of gaining seats at the table when key decisions are being taken on institutional design and development that impacts their interests and their lives? That is the topic I turn to in Part Two of this post.

21 October 2024

 

 

Looking ahead: the architecture of Indigenous policy in 2050

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

Hamlet Act 3, scene 4.

 

This post seeks to unravel the factors and trends that will shape the life opportunities of Indigenous Australians in 2050. It is not an attempt at prediction, but rather an attempt to identify in a hardheaded way the factors that will shape the Indigenous policy domain going forward.

 

We live in a world of constant and rapid change, yet the key drivers of where we are today, and where we will be in 25 years are nevertheless amenable to analytic examination. Yet there is very little analysis available discussing these issues.

 

Of course, the wider world is undergoing a range of potentially catastrophic changes, linked to climate change, the ongoing transformation of the current global order linked to the rise of nations such as India, China, Indonesia and others, the stalling of unfettered globalisation, and the inexorable increase in the salience of national security and the related worldwide shift towards authoritarian systems of governance. These changes will shape Australia in ways which no-one can predict and may well overshadow or make irrelevant the factors laid out here which are expected to shape the 2050 Indigenous policy domain.

 

Nevertheless, if we look back 25 years, the Indigenous policy domain is both recognisable and, in many respects, familiar, albeit also substantially changed. In other words, there are systemic continuities, and seeking to identify the impact of those going forward may well highlight issues and potential changes to current policy settings.

 

A recent book on the sources of economic growth, How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth (link here) by economic historians Mark Koyama and Jared Rubin identified and assessed each of the most commonly suggested determinants of national wealth and wellbeing: geography, institutions, culture, fertility, and colonisation. While not necessarily endorsing the appropriateness of a narrow economic growth metric, these factors provide a useful template for considering the determinants of the shape of the Indigenous policy domain and the place of Indigenous people in Australia in 2050.

 

In my view, each of these factors will play a role in shaping the 2050 state of affairs and are also potentially arenas of policy focus and political debate. Moreover, as Koyama and Rubin argue, these factors often operate synergistically and reinforce each other.

 

The demography of Indigenous Australia is undergoing a significant counter-intuitive change. A combination of the definition of Indigeneity, fertility levels, high levels of inter-marriage between non-Indigenous and Indigenous partners and increasing rates of self-identification have led to a significant growth in the Indigenous population of Australia over the past 25 years. This growth is well in excess of natural increase. There is no reason to think that these dynamics are about to change. In 1991, the Indigenous population was recorded as 265,500, or 1.6 percent of the Australian population. As of 30 June 2021, the Australian Bureau of Statistics' (ABS) estimates an Indigenous population of 984,000 people representing 3.8% of the total Australian population.

 

In thirty years, the population has almost quadrupled, and its comparative size has more than doubled. The vast bulk of these changes have occurred in urban and regional Australia. By 2050, on current trends, we could easily see an Indigenous population of around two to three million people, comprising in excess of 6 percent of the national population. What is less clear is the likely socio-economic status of this larger population. However, as the growth effectively involves the re-categorisation of individuals shifting from the mainstream to the Indigenous population, its primary impact is likely to involve an expansion of the Indigenous ‘middle class’.

 

While nationally comparative Indigenous disadvantage will fall (a function of ongoing intermarriage and self-identification), a significant proportion of the Indigenous population will remain severely disadvantaged, thus driving a socio-economic wedge into the Indigenous demographic profile. A strongly bifurcated demographic profile will have significant policy implications, and if disadvantage is to be addressed, will likely require a shift towards greater ‘needs based’ policies to address the most disadvantaged segment of the Indigenous population. Whether such a shift occurs will likely become a highly politicised issue.

 

Geographical issues will not be the primary driver of policy in relation to the majority of the Indigenous population. They are resident in urban and regional Australia and have access to mainstream provision of infrastructure and essential services, and have access to private sector markets. It will however be a crucial issue in relation to remote Australia, where infrastructure investment is low or absent, and where markets have weak penetration. It is in these regions that economic and social disadvantage is currently deepest, and on present trends (e.g. climate risks) are likely to worsen.

 

There is currently no coherent remote Indigenous policy framework in place nationally, nor in the various remote jurisdictions. Across almost every indicator, remote Indigenous citizens are amongst the most disadvantaged in the country. While the remote population of some 150,000 citizens currently comprise only 15.4 percent of the Indigenous population (the urban population is 40.8 percent; regional population is 43.8 percent), if present trends continue, remote population increases through to 2050 may be very limited as fertility drops and out migration increases. Overall the remote Indigenous population in 2050 may remain well below 200, 000, and comprise only around 8 percent of the total Indigenous population.

 

The long-standing absence of a coherent policy framework suggests that the likelihood of governments devising one by 2050 is low and suggests that the present socio-economic crisis combined with endemic community dysfunction driven in large measure by governance and public investment shortfalls (a responsibility of mainstream governments) will continue. The likely exponential rise in climate induced environmental challenges across northern and remote Australia will merely serve to exacerbate these crisis level challenges. One very real possibility is that the current steady population shift from remote communities to regional towns will strengthen and even transform into a significant surge.

 

While Indigenous disadvantage is not limited to remote Australia, the challenges of remote Australia will certainly complicate the challenge of addressing Indigenous disadvantage nationally. It will deepen the demographic bifurcation, place serious pressure on the ideological rhetoric of pan-Indigeneity amongst First Nations interests, and in the absence of a coherent policy framework increasingly require governments to devise short-term crisis policy responses (with all the concomitant risks and costs).

 

The other geographical factor in play in the substantial growth in Indigenous land ownership across the continent over the past 50 years, and particularly the last twenty-five years following on from the 1992 Mabo Decision of the High Court and the Native Title Act of 1993. First Nations currently own interests in land (not all exclusive possession) covering some 55 percent of the Australian land mass. The quantum of land ownership will increase but seems likely to slow over the next 25 years. However, even the present extent of Indigenous landholding provides both opportunities and creates risks for both landowners and the nation.

 

Policy momentum in this area appears to have stalled for a range of reasons too complex to explore here. In essence, governments have shied away from important task of bedding down and shoring up what has been a revolutionary change in Australian land law. The 2015 Review of the Native Title Act by the Australian Law Reform Commission has been comprehensively ignored by governments. Key structural flaws and omission in the legislative framework persist. The policy challenge here for Indigenous interests is to progressively build coalitions of interest to ensure that the seismic changes embedded in the Native Title Act are finetuned and progressively improved. Public sector support for ongoing land management should be a national priority for both environmental and social justice reasons. Moreover, such support would counter the current trends for Indigenous people to shift off country and into towns. The alternative will be the gradual emergence of lost opportunities and regressive outcomes for both Indigenous landowners and the nation.

 

The role of culture in shaping policy outcomes is huge. Mainstream culture is a pervasive presence in shaping policy generally, albeit largely unacknowledged, though from time to time it rises in salience. For example, when former Treasurer Joe Hockey categorised Australians as either ‘leaners or lifters’, or when Scott Morrison talked of ‘giving a go to those who have ago’, these were both ideological but at a deeper level cultural statements designed to justify particular policies. Core Australian cultural values include a version of the protestant work ethic, mateship, distrust of authority, and dislike of tall poppies, to name a few.

 

Indigenous cultural beliefs and values are clearly different and unique (I am not going to try to summarise them) and are likely undergoing a process of progressive adjustment since colonisation. The key point to make in a policy setting however is that the implicit mainstream values and norms that underpin much mainstream policy development may not apply in relation to the interaction of mainstream policies and Indigenous citizens. Obvious examples include assumptions that threats to cut income support for breaches of mainstream norms will induce Indigenous citizens to comply. The reality is that such incentives don’t work in remote communities, probably because income support recipients can rely on cultural norms such as reciprocal kin obligations to offset the consequences of income loss. The existence of different cultural norms is one of the reasons that Indigenous interests have advocated so strongly for greater involvement in shaping policies that affect them. Governments are yet to fully comprehend the importance of doing this, and to date have tended to promise more than they deliver.

 

My sense is that the need for a bicultural approach to setting policy will persist well beyond 2050, as one of the consequences of ongoing policy exclusion of Indigenous interests from full participation in the mainstream will be to strengthen the importance for First Nations of maintaining their unique cultural perspectives.

 

In relation to the role of colonisation in shaping policy outcomes, in economic terms the argument boils down to two factors: the initial transfer (theft) or loss of capital assets, most notably land, but also of the opportunity to fully use the intellectual capital that allowed Indigenous societies to successfully continue over many thousands of years across the wide spectrum of ecological environments. Second, the ongoing exclusion of Indigenous people from sharing in any of the benefits that accrued from the economic use and development of the assets that were transferred. This exclusion was not anodyne, but was often violent and explicitly racist, and has led to the development of widespread intergenerational trauma. Both these factors have contributed significantly to the challenges Governments face in devising appropriate policy framework for First Nations.

 

Looking forward to 2050, there seems little likelihood that the Australian nation will take any substantive systemic action to reverse the ongoing impact of colonisation. Clearly, the granting of land rights and recognition of native title were seen as one mechanism to attempt to reverse the adverse impacts of colonisation, but while the cultural benefits have been significant, the economic benefits are limited (albeit in some specific locations such as the Pilbara, they have been very substantial). Moreover, the rapid and ongoing onset of disruptive technological change has in many respects outweighed the benefits of reclaimed land ownership. The more insidious issues of intergenerational trauma are arguably evident in the extremely high rates of incarceration, mental illness, substance abuse and intimate partner violence amongst First Nations population. There is no practical retrospectively framed policy framework that will undo these issues, notwithstanding the injustice involved in the colonial project. Moreover, to date governments have lacked the political will to effectively address these consequences of colonisation using a prospective framing built around closing the gap. There is thus no extant evidence available to suggest that there will be any sustained policy initiative with the potential to effectively address the ongoing consequences of colonisation by 2050. [See the discussion of treaties below.]

 

Finally, the role of institutions in shaping the architecture of the Indigenous policy domain is crucial. By institutions, I mean the ‘rules of the game’ set out in societal norms, laws, the modus operandi of key decision-making organisations such as the reserve bank, the courts, the parliament, and the like, along with informal operational modes adopted by state agencies. The reason institutions are crucial is that they both determine the overall revenue of the state, and the distribution of those revenues to state priorities. Most public policy development can be framed as disputes between peak interest groups vying for a greater share of the net benefits flowing through existing institutions. The primary role of the bureaucracy can be conceptualised as ensuring the continued efficient operation of the nation’s institutional framework.

 

Over the past fifty years, Indigenous interests have succeeded in persuading the nation to establish a suite of Indigenous specific institutions, and to modify at the margin mainstream institutions in various ways to benefit Indigenous interests. These successes have been the result of sustained and determined advocacy involving both Indigenous interests and their mainstream allies. However, the economic impact of these changes as a proportion of total economic activity (GDP) has been miniscule. All the factors outlined above have played a part in shaping these institutional reforms. They have largely been the result of decisions taken by the Commonwealth rather than the states. A listing of institutions (past and present) relevant to the Indigenous policy domain would include land rights legislation in the states and territory, and the Native Title Act, the Indigenous Land and Sea Corporation, Indigenous Business Austrlaia, Aboriginal Hostels, the CDEP scheme, the Aboriginal Benefit Account in the NT, heritage legislation in the states and the Commonwealth, the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, and some of the major Commonwealth-state programs such as the National Partnership on Remote Indigenous Housing.

 

Arguably the zenith of institutional development in relation to the indigenous policy domain was the 1990s with the establishment of ATSIC and the passage of the Native Title Act. The last 25 years has seen the progressive wind-back of Commonwealth engagement (with the NT Intervention being an outlier) and a concomitant loss of policy reform momentum. The abolition of ATSIC, the failure of the National Congress of First Peoples to survive beyond its initial funding injection, the inattention to the unimplemented recommendations of the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the stasis in relation to the fine-tuning of the Native Title Act, and notwithstanding its potential, the shift of policy responsibility to the states and territories under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap have all been retrograde steps. The failure of the Voice Referendum and the tangible reluctance of the Government to enthusiastically implement the outstanding elements of the Uluru Statement are merely the latest developments in a long litany of retrograde steps to weaken or not pursue institutional reform. In other words the policy reform tide in Indigenous Affairs has been receding for at least a quarter fo a century.

 

What does this mean for 2050? Based on the factors above, the likelihood that the tide will turn anytime soon appears slim. The demographic bifurcation seems set to continue. Remote policy challenges are split between four jurisdictions, with minimal Commonwealth interest or involvement except for a receding legacy in the NT. A culture of neo-assimilationism appears to be taking hold in significant sectors of mainstream culture and politics. Despite the talk of treaties and the like on the progressive side of mainstream politics, the lack of an explicit and tangible agenda from Indigenous interests, and the increasing reluctance of conservative parties in the states and the NT to commit to taking these treaty development processes forward suggests that the requisite bipartisanship for sustained institutional policy reforms to deal with the impacts of colonisation are absent. Any attempt to move forward with a tangible policy agenda for a treaty or related reform appears likely to attract a heated and politically lethal campaign for reversal from conservative political forces.

 

My own assessment, for what it is worth, is that we are unlikely to see significant Indigenous specific institutional reforms over the next two and a half decades, and there are significant risks of further institutional regression across the Indigenous policy domain.

 

My advice to First Nations and progressive mainstream interests, and in particular their peak advocacy groups, would be to invest as much as possible in building their capabilities to advocate for Indigenous interests, to focus squarely on the absolute deficits in remote policy outcomes, including education, employment, housing and essential infrastructure, and to pursue a strategy of simultaneously protecting the institutional frameworks that presently exist, while pursing incremental change across the breadth of the public sector. In particular, Indigenous advocacy interests should explore avenues to gain much greater independence from Government funding as it comes with a hidden cost; the silence it implicitly requires reduces the necessary pressure on governments to fix the extraordinary policy problems that exist across the board, and the social and economic catastrophe that exists in remote Australia.

 

In the absence of such a strategy, it seems to me that by 2050, the nascent neo-assimilationist surge will become bipartisan, and will force most disadvantaged Indigenous citizens into mainstream support programs, while the remote Indigenous populations will remain deeply disadvantaged and reliant on social security, inadequate social housing, and a continuing diet of rhetoric, promises and social control. The lack of employment opportunities and the complete failure of the education system across remote Australia will ensure that social crises, endemic violence, and severely constrained life opportunities, will endure well beyond 2050. This is the legacy our policies today will likely bequeath to Australians generally, and particularly First Nations in 2050.

 

1 March 2024

Food for thought: lessons from Singapore for remote Australia

I came across this article from the Global Times recently (h/t Pearls and Irritations). The following extracts are from a longer interview article focussed on China / US Relations and the future of Hong Kong. The article is titled ‘US needs to decide its core interests: Mahbubani’ dated 25 December 2019 (link here). I republish the following extracts without detailed comment or analysis, and merely note that this Blog has argued repeatedly over the past two years (eg link here and here and here) against the Commonwealth Government’s retrograde decision to withdraw from its historic role over the past half century in funding capital investment in remote housing.

Editor's Note:

…Are the world's two biggest powers doomed to be enemies? Kishore Mahbubani (Mahbubani), distinguished fellow at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, and a veteran diplomat, shared his insights with Global Times (GT) reporter Yu Jincui.

How do you view the problems Hong Kong faces? What could Singapore do to avoid a Hong Kong-like situation?

Mahbubani: Singapore is a very lucky country because it has clearly been one of the best governed in the world since independence in 1965…

…The second difference is that the Singaporean government decided long ago that we must take care of the interests of people at the bottom. So you must build public housing for them. So Singapore has the best public housing program in the world. In the case of Hong Kong, when Tung Chee-hwa was chief executive in 1997, he wanted to build 85,000 units of public housing per year for the people at the bottom, but he was blocked by some tycoons in Hong Kong. So no public housing was built. So if Tung had succeeded in 1997, there would have been 1.7 million units of public housing in Hong Kong in 20 years. So the problems Hong Kong is encountering today are not the results of decisions made yesterday but the result of decisions made 20 or 30 years ago. It is a deep structural problem, but at the same time, it can be fixed….

This analysis, and its recognition that public policy decisions have structural implications, should raise questions for policymakers here in Australia about our own approaches to recognising the ‘interests of the people at the bottom’. In our case, the largely invisible and definitely short-sighted decisions made over the past two years to retreat from a national program to support remote housing provision here in Australia will have long term consequences and implications for the life opportunities of thousands of remote citizens.

These decisions speak to our capacity as a nation to think strategically about our future. They highlight our apparent inability to prioritise quality of life for all over the interests of the few, and raise serious questions regarding the robustness of key governance institutions such as parliamentary oversight, ministerial responsibility, an independent public service and the effectiveness of our federal financial arrangements.