How effective is the Commonwealth’s Indigenous Procurement Policy?

My mind misgives

Some consequence yet hanging in the stars.

Romeo and Juliet Act one, Scene four.

 

The ANAO has just released a performance audit (link here) with the unwieldy and somewhat opaque title Targets for Minimum Indigenous Employment or Supply Use in Major Australian Government Procurements — Follow-up. This audit deals with the ongoing management of the Indigenous Procurement Policy, which is invariably cited by Commonwealth Governments as a crucial and successful element in its policy approach in relation to Indigenous Australians.

In this post I focus on NIAA’s management of the Indigenous Procurement Policy (IPP), a central plank in the Government strengthening focus on Indigenous economic empowerment (link here).

I previously published posts on the IPP which assessed its performance in positive terms while warning against over-reliance on the single minded focus on commercial businesses as the core of economic development policy (link here and link here).

Here are some key quotes from the ANAO’s report (paragraph numbers are from the Report; footnotes have been removed; emphasis added):

            Background

2. The Indigenous Procurement Policy (IPP) was established in 2015 with the objective ‘to stimulate Indigenous entrepreneurship, business and economic development, providing Indigenous Australians with more opportunities to participate in the economy’. One of three elements of the IPP are the mandatory minimum requirements (MMRs), which are targets for minimum Indigenous employment and/or supply use for Australian Government contracts valued from $7.5 million in certain specified industries.  The National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) is responsible for administering the IPP, including the MMRs….

Conclusion

… 9. Almost five years after the recommendations were agreed to, entities had partly implemented recommendations from Auditor-General Report No. 25 2019–20 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Participation Targets in Major Procurements. Although the NIAA had improved guidance for entities and sought to increase MMR reporting compliance, a recommendation for the NIAA as the policy owner to implement an evaluation strategy was not completed. The NIAA has not demonstrated whether the MMRs are improving Indigenous economic participation. A risk related to the inappropriate use of exemptions was not managed. Recommendations intended to address the risk that reporting on MMR contracts is incomplete and inaccurate were partly implemented by audited entities. Reforms to the Indigenous Procurement Policy were announced in February 2025 without a clear understanding of the policy’s effectiveness….

…. Exemptions from Mandatory Reporting Requirements

16. Between July 2016 and September 2024, 63 per cent (valued at $69.3 billion) of all contracts recorded in the Indigenous Procurement Policy Reporting Solution (IPPRS) were exempted from the MRRs by relevant entities. The proportion of contracts exempted by entities from the MMRs has increased over time. …. The NIAA does not provide complete guidance on the use of exemptions, or assurance over the legitimacy of exemptions. The NIAA has not considered the strategic implications of exemption usage for the achievement of policy objectives….

In a box headed Effectiveness of the Mandatory Minimum Requirements, the ANAO make the following comments:

While the application of the MMRs is trending upwards, between July 2016 and September 2024, 1,475 contracts valued at $69.3 billion were ‘exempted’ by entities from the MMRs, often for reasons that are unclear. There is a lack of performance information and evaluation data that allows for the impact and outcomes of the IPP to be assessed. The NIAA’s public reporting on the IPP does not provide information on the MMRs’ effectiveness. It is unclear if the IPP’s objectives of stimulating Indigenous entrepreneurship, business and economic development, and providing Indigenous Australians with more opportunities to participate in the economy, are achieved. (emphasis added)

There is much more of interest in the report, albeit it is comparatively technical and thus somewhat inaccessible. While the Minister’s February 2025 media release (link here) announcing an expansion of the IPP’s targets aligns with the Government’s pivot to economic empowerment as its signature Indigenous policy focus, the fine detail in this report suggests that NIAA is a long way from being on top of the policy detail. The ANAO documents in considerable detail how the NIAA dropped the ball comprehensively on commitments made in response to previous Parliamentary Committee and ANAO reports and does not appear to have the internal mechanisms in place to ensure that the IPP will be effective in meeting its stated aims.  While increased ambition for the IPP’s formal targets is creditable, Figure 2.1 in the ANAO report (page 51) suggests that the announced increased headline targets for future years are still well below current actual performance at least in terms of the numbers of contracts, thus suggesting that the targets are not intended to stretch actual performance. Meanwhile, the Minister’s commitment to addressing ‘black cladding’ appears almost nonchalant. As she states in the media release mentioned above:

The Government will also work with regulators to tackle ‘black cladding’ – disingenuous conduct designed to gain access to programs like the IPP – and explore options to make it easier to report the practice.

Let’s be clear; black cladding occurs when non-Indigenous firms engage non-contributing Indigenous partners to front a commercial entity with the aim of winning contracts paid by the taxpayer that they would not necessarily win through a merit-based process. A more accurate definition of black cladding might read: ‘dishonest conduct designed to gain access to taxpayer funded contracts’. It has been an issue of concern for a decade (link here). Working with unnamed ‘regulators’ to ‘explore options’ to report the practice [to who?] reeks of rhetorical flimflam. The NIAA expand on this on their website where they state (link here) that

The NIAA will work with relevant regulators and support services to identify opportunities to make it easier for First Nations people to report black cladding that might amount to unlawful conduct and provide targeted education, guidance and support for First Nations business owners.

The problem here is that, by definition, black cladding involves the co-option of Indigenous individuals, often involving the provision of financial incentives. The suggestion that the regulatory approach to minimising black cladding should rely on or be based primarily on voluntary reporting by Indigenous people strikes me as both naïve and destined to fail.

The combination of black cladding (at unknown levels) and exemptions from the mandatory minimum requirements (perhaps we should just call them ‘optional’ minimum requirements….though even this term is a contradiction in terms!) valued at $69 billion and comprising 63 percent of all contracts under the IPP since 2016 (see Table 3.1 on page 56 of the ANAO report) together have the potential to eviscerate the effectiveness of the IPP program. Yet despite having agreed to an evaluation after the ANAO’s previous audit of the employment programs, and after undertaking preparatory work for the evaluation, NIAA cancelled the evaluation. The ANAO in footnote 92 (page 49) note that NIAA advised it could find no evidence of the decision not to proceed. Presumably no officer within NIAA was prepared to take responsibility for the decision. It just happened! One is tempted to ask where were the members of NIAA’s Indigenous Evaluation Committee (link here) while this non-decision was rolling out? Perhaps the NIAA Audit and Risk Committee (link here) should consider how the non-decision to cancel the evaluation was made and what impact it might have on the effectiveness of the IPP. I guess not proceeding with the former commitment to undertake an evaluation does have the advantage of making it easier for the Minister to state with supreme confidence, as she does in her February media statement:

Given its success so far, the Government is also making the IPP more ambitious…

One final issue worth noting relates to ANAO Recommendation Four (see paras 3.10 to 3.13 in the ANAO report) dealing with exemptions to the minimum requirements. In para 3.11, the ANAO recommended (inter alia) that:

To ensure exemptions are accurately recorded in the Indigenous Procurement Policy Reporting Solution, non-compliance with the Indigenous Procurement Policy can be appropriately identified, all applicable contracts are subject to the mandatory minimum requirements reporting and assessment process, and the Indigenous Procurement Policy is achieving its policy objectives, the National Indigenous Australians Agency:

(d) implement a risk-based assurance process to ensure that reported exemptions or exclusions are legitimate.

In its response to this part of recommendation four, the NIAA stated:

Not Agreed to part d – The National Indigenous Australians Agency does not believe it is appropriate for it to be assuring the implementation of elements of the devolved Commonwealth procurement framework by Commonwealth entities. The National Indigenous Australians Agency maintains that it is the responsibility of each Commonwealth entity to ensure it meets its own obligations under Government legislation and guidance, including the Commonwealth procurement framework

Yet the 2019 Order establishing the NIAA as an Executive Agency, signed by the then Governor General (link here), listed the functions of the NIAA as including:

                             i.        to lead and coordinate Commonwealth policy development, program design and implementation and service delivery for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people; and ….

                            ii.        to analyse and monitor the effectiveness of programs and services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, including programs and services delivered by bodies other than the Agency…

 

The IPP is the responsibility of the NIAA, and while it is a fair expectation that other agencies will meet their obligations under the program, it is squarely within the NIAA remit for it to set in place processes that ensure all agencies involved in the program are meeting their obligations. The NIAA should view itself as the key regulator oversighting the effectiveness of the IPP’s implementation across government.

 

Conclusion

 

The takeout from this sorry tale is threefold:

·         it confirms that in relation to Indigenous economic policy, the Government is more concerned with appearance over substance;

·         it demonstrates that NIAA does not have the capability to ensure that it keeps its written commitments to the ANAO and the Parliament; and perhaps most importantly,

·         it reveals that no one inside government (including the Minister who is ultimately accountable), let alone outside government, actually knows whether the Indigenous Procurement Policy is effective or not.

 

The IPP opens a new conduit for rent seeking by businesses across the whole spectrum of government activities, and while its objectives are worthwhile, it ultimately stands or falls on the quality of the overarching regulatory oversight by NIAA as the policy owner and all the mainstream agencies in the Commonwealth responsible for letting contracts. Unfortunately, this is not the only public sector activity where regulatory oversight is in short supply (link here).

 

In relation to the IPP, the Commonwealth clearly prefers to operate in a state of blissful ignorance, a prisoner of its own rhetoric and good intentions ― assuming we give them the benefit of the doubt. If the program is in fact ineffective, or even partially ineffective, and the Government’s assessment of its undoubted success is wrong, the losers are Indigenous Australians, and taxpayers more generally.

 

The Commonwealth, and particularly successive ministers for Indigenous Australians and the NIAA, should do better.

 

 

5 June 2025

 

Regulatory inaction: implications for Indigenous interests

 

We must not make a scarecrow of the law,

Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,

And let it keep one shape till custom make it

Their perch and not their terror.

Measure for Measure Act two, Scene one.

 

A pervasive issue across the Indigenous policy domain is the absence of effective ― or in many cases any — regulation of both private and public sector activities impacting Indigenous citizens.

Conceptual scene setting

This is a much wider issue than just the impacts on Indigenous communities, organisations and citizens, but there are some factors that make it a more serious issue for these Indigenous interests.

First, the poor effectiveness of regulation across mainstream domains is the result of sustained lobbying and advocacy (much of it behind closed doors) by interest groups with a vested interest in loose or non-existent regulation.

To cite just a few examples, sub-standard regulation has received extensive media coverage in the past decade in the banking, financial services, aged care, disability services, out of home care, funeral insurance, alcohol retail, food labelling and gambling industries to mention only those areas that immediately come to mind. There are two elements involved in considering this issue: one is the adequacy of the regulatory oversight of existing regulations; the second is the degree to which the existing regulations are adequate or alternatively not required. Both elements play into the issue of regulatory failure.

In many of these cases of regulatory failure, the persistence of poor social or economic outcomes has led to the commissioning of one or more national or state level reviews, coronial inquiries, or royal commissions. It is rare for the results of such reviews and inquiries to be implemented wholeheartedly and quickly; the normal response of governments is to initiate further consultations or reviews which slow the impetus for reform and are then the subject of further lobbying and pressure from the interest groups with most to lose from substantive reform. In my observation, governments rarely do more than resort to minimal reforms, while leaving the industry interests that would be impacted by substantive reform substantially unaffected. The status quo ante is usually maintained and indeed often reinforced.

The reason these mainstream regulatory failures are more serious for Indigenous interests is that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander citizens are more likely to be economically and socially disadvantaged and are thus more vulnerable and at greater risk of being adversely impacted by mainstream commercial activities that avoid proactive regulatory oversight.

Second, Indigenous interests are not (yet?) as well organised as the industry-based interest groups to exert countervailing advocacy pressure, particularly on mainstream policy issues which are nevertheless crucial elements in their social and economic lives.

Third, the cultural and ideological narratives that are ubiquitous across the Indigenous community (e.g. the importance of self-determination, or community control in service provision), and which are crucial elements in building and maintaining notions of Indigenous identity and culture have unintended negative side-effects insofar as they shift the focus of Indigenous organisations and even peak advocacy organisations away from mainstream issues and towards Indigenous specific issues.

Fourth, the reality is that the regulation of many mainstream issues falls to the states and territories, and this means that the challenge of monitoring regulatory failures, proposing solutions, pressuring governments to pursue reform and devising policy solutions spans not just one national policy domain, but an additional eight state and territory policy jurisdictions. The result is that effective monitoring requires the creation of multiple state and territory based Indigenous advocacy organisations with the capacity to follow an expansive portfolio of public and private sector activities within their sectoral remit.  

Of course, regulatory failure is not just an issue in the mainstream. It is endemic in the Indigenous specific policy domain, and in many instances, because of the nature of the composition of the Indigenous policy domain, the activities that are in effect under-regulated are operated by Indigenous controlled corporations serving their Indigenous constituencies. There are at least three factors that contribute to sub-optimal regulation across the indigenous policy domain. First, governments who are loathe to regulate robustly in the mainstream do not wish to regulate to a higher standard in the Indigenous policy domain. Second, government regulators do not wish to be perceived as racist, or to be compromising Indigenous self-determination. And third, increasingly, regulators in the Indigenous policy domain report to Indigenous ministers, or are staffed by Indigenous bureaucrats, who may be reluctant to robustly address governance and service failures by Indigenous controlled entities.

Regulatory failure (or even regulatory weakness) whether in the mainstream or the Indigenous domain is not in the public interest. It disadvantages consumers in private sector markets and contexts, and service delivery constituencies in public sector contexts. Once embedded, it creates the preconditions for future sub-optimal performance with concomitant adverse impacts on intended beneficiaries. It is under-reported by the media with most publicity focussed on the deficiencies of organisations or individuals, and not on the absence or systemic weakness of the regulatory oversight that might have prevented the fraud or corruption or service mismanagement that attracted the media attention. A key reason for under-reporting is that regulatory failure is invariably systemic in its impacts, and it extends beyond the time horizon of most journalist and media reporting. Another is that it is not as susceptible to being framed as a simple narrative.

Another reason it is not in the public interest is that regulatory failure is a form of government failure, and in many cases, it is the result (whether intentionally or unintentionally) of implementation failure by governments. It thus contributes to the much more common elements of government dysfunction, at policy, program and even project levels; failures that inevitably contribute to the decreasing levels of trust in government in Australia (link here). While trust in government in Australia is higher that the rest of the world (link here), a trust level of fifty percent is hardly a ringing endorsement.

Regulatory failure is thus simultaneously endemic and invisible; it has multiple causes and is often both complex and systemic in its impact.

Real world examples

To bring this discussion down to tin tacks, I want to briefly point to two separate sets of media reports that recently caught my attention, both of which involve substantial and serious regulatory failure, and both of which have had, and continue to have, a disproportionate adverse impact on Indigenous citizens. The discussion of each of these cases focusses on the high-level regulatory implications, and I do not attempt to summarise or consider every aspect of each case.

On 9 May 2025, the AFR ran an investigative report headlined How a Sydney billionaire became the pokies king of Alice Springs (link here). This was followed up on 23 May 2025 by a report (link here) based on an interview with former NT Chief Minister (and longstanding backroom political operative) Shane Stone. Headlined Former NT chief’s pokies regret: ‘I wish we never had them’. Taken together, these articles point to extraordinary levels of on-site gambling in the NT’s casinos and other premises, extremely high rates of Aboriginal participation in gambling at these venues, low to non-existent levels of regulation of the use of gambling machines, high levels of revenue to the NT Government and extraordinary levels of influence by gambling industry interests over the NT Government (whichever party is in power),  and non-existent levels of accountability and responsiveness of elected governments for the community harm flowing from widespread gambling addiction. According to the AFR, the NT has the highest per capita expenditure on gambling of any jurisdiction in the nation, and the highest per capita government revenue from gambling:

The Northern Territory is the state with the least scrutiny, the loosest probity and the lowest taxes… “I would argue that the regulators, particularly in the Northern Territory, are not active participants in the regulatory process,” gambling expert Charles Livingstone says. “By and large, it’s left up to the venues to regulate themselves, which is entirely like the fox looking after the hen house.”

The AFR report spends considerable time explaining how little oversight is applied by ASIC to the owners of the major gambling venues in the NT and contrasting the numerous community activists calling for gambling reform with the slow and in-camera legal processes applied to any challenges to even the most minimal expansion of access to gambling in Territory towns. Increasingly, community activists are calling for national intervention.

Shane Stone’s statements to the AFR are simultaneously an apparent mea culpa and change of heart (“If I’d had the courage of my convictions, I would have wound back the [poker machine] numbers, but I didn’t do that,”) and a nuanced and politically astute nudge of the political discussion towards subsidiary issues such as limiting access to cash within gambling premises while making a strident argument against national intervention and in favour of state and territory led reform processes. Yet the states and territories are both part of the problem and less visible to the national constituency necessary to drive national reform. At the risk of being accused of extreme cynicism, I am left wondering whether the former Chief Minister is yet to find the courage his convictions require. The AFR sought and obtained comment from current federal ministers with gambling related responsibilities. Compared to the mountain of regulatory reform required in the NT and beyond, their comments amount to a hill of beans. I recommend interested readers take a close look at both articles.

The bottom line is that mainstream and national regulatory disinterest and failure in relation to on-site gambling has had, and continues to have, seriously adverse impacts on vulnerable Aboriginal citizens in the NT. This impact is not felt just by those who gamble, but by their families and intimate partners. Recent ANU research (link here) suggests that between 5 to 8 percent of the national mainstream population is adversely affected by gambling. Those most at risk are low income and economically disadvantaged. These figures are likely to be higher for Aboriginal residents in the NT.

The second case worth mentioning was published on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald on 24 May 2025 and in The Age (link here $) under the headline ‘Health bosses rack up $400, 000 travel bill’. The report deals with what appears to be endemic and enduring dysfunction within a major community controlled Aboriginal medical service, CTG Aboriginal Health Services, operating across at least three major western NSW towns and providing a wide range of medical services. CTG’s funding last year exceeded $11m and was sourced from the Commonwealth, the NSW Government, and Medicare rebates according to its annual report (link here). The headline focusses on what numerous complaints allege is unwarranted travel by senior executives while financial constraints limit the provision of health services to its constituency. There is no allegation of fraud, but it is clear that there are serious internal management issues not to mention an extraordinary lack of judgment by the organisation’s leadership. The article cites numerous sources alleging that the provision of health services to Indigenous residents across a large part of western NSW have suffered. Notwithstanding its ongoing funding, its annual report provides no information on its incorporation status, no financial report, and no information on its governance processes including how its Board is appointed and the extent to which it represents the wider Indigenous community across its geographic span.

These shortcomings reflect poor governance practices and, in my view, do not meet the requisite levels of downward accountability to the community let alone upward accountability to the funding agencies and taxpayers generally. It is easy to criticise the organisation, and on the facts described in the SMH article, such criticisms appear warranted. Yet in my view, these shortcomings reflect a deeper level of regulatory failure by the relevant areas within the Commonwealth Department of Health, Disability and Ageing and the NSW Government.

The standard of public accountability provided in CTG’s annual report in my view is far below what a funding body should expect in exchange for its continued funding. There is also a suggestion in the SMH report that the ongoing dysfunction has been going on for some years without being resolved. This raises the further question: if the regulation of this organisation is so lacking, then what is the quality of regulation over other similar organisations? How widespread is this regulatory failure which allows internal management dysfunction to endure for extended periods in key health services delivery organisations utilising government funds, and which adversely impacts the most disadvantaged Australians.

Again, the bottom line is that poor upward and downward accountability for key health services in one of our largest states and across an expansive area of regional communities appears to be tolerated and is likely the default modus operandi for regulatory oversight. This poor regulatory performance is a key driver of sub-optimal management performance by outsourced organisations delivering taxpayer funded programs and leaves the most vulnerable and disadvantaged citizens to ultimately pay the cost.

Conclusion

Mainstream regulatory failures in gambling, and the Indigenous specific regulatory failures in health services are contributors to the systemic drivers of deep-seated disadvantage. To the extent that these regulatory failures are widespread, and the default assumption must be that they are, then they work against closing the gap. It is worth emphasising this point: regulatory failure, which is a matter of technical capability for government, is conceptually a prime contributor to any effort address disadvantage. To the extent that the regulatory failure spans multiple sectors, or even spans the entire breadth of government responsibilities, the prospects of removing Indigenous disadvantage would be fatally undermined.

Closing the Gap (however you wish to frame it, and whatever targets you decide to use) is built upon a near ubiquitous implicit assumption that governments know what they are doing, are focussed on the public interest (and not private interests), and partner with or contract with entities that are fit for purpose. In turn, these assumptions (which take on the form of an ideologically based view of how our democratic system works), are based on a precondition of the effective regulation of entities operating within our economic and social realms to ensure that they are acting consistently with the public interest. If they are not acting in the public interest, then our political system is not fit for purpose.

The key to ensuring that private sector entities (operating behind a corporate veil designed to protect individuals against commercial losses and to encourage the risk taking that market economies rely upon) and public funded entities engaged to deliver outsourced government services are acting in the public interest is to focus on the quality of regulation of their activities. To the extent that regulatory oversight is defective, deficient or non-existent, the public interest will suffer, and in the real world, the victims will likely be disproportionately found amongst the disadvantaged whether in mainstream or Indigenous specific contexts.

Where regulatory failure is endemic, there is no easy fix. Governments will not pull themselves off the ground by their shoelaces. Those who are committed to seeing the public interest protected must find ways to exert strategic political influence, and to pursue, piece by piece, step by step, greater transparency by governments of their use of taxpayer resources and greater public dialogue encompassing the systemic issues that operate to undermine the public interest.

For Indigenous interests, and in particular the Indigenous leadership, there will be considerable benefits in pursuing strategies that build their organisational capabilities to monitor and exert persuasive influence on policy. Risks include the likelihood that governments or other interest groups will seek to co-opt Indigenous advocacy, and that internal dissension and external criticism will undermine the persuasiveness of Indigenous advocacy. The development of internal organisational processes and mechanisms that are both upwardly and downwardly accountable and as transparent as possible will serve to minimise such risks.  

 

27 May 2025

Regulatory outcomes and the mining sector: implications for Indigenous interests

 

Whiles I am a beggar, I will rail and say there is no sin but to be rich;

and being rich, my virtue then shall be to say there is no vice but beggary.

Henry IV, Part 2, Act one, Scene two.

 

New research published in the Journal Resources Policy (link here) examines the impact of the various elements of the overarching institutional prerequisites for mine approval via a comprehensive analysis of 409 mining applications subject to regulatory approval in Australia between 2000 and 2020.

The authors, Lisa Nicole Mills, Jennifer Stewart and Graeme Auld are resource policy experts based in Carleton University in Ottawa. The Abstract of their paper states (inter alia):

In this paper, we examine the pressures which affect business risk through the multiple dimensions of the “licence to operate,” in the case of federally regulated mines in Australia. Studying 409 mining applications that were under regulatory review, approved, or withdrawn between 2000 and 2020, we use competing risk hazard models and linear regressions to examine how measures of business risk (longer times in review and more conditions) and choices to withdraw are affected by: the attributes of the mine, competing rights claims and land-uses, levels of oppositional mobilization, changes in political parties in power, and market prices. We found that new projects, and those that triggered an independent assessment of their impact on water, were likely to experience longer reviews. Mines where agriculture was the competing land use also faced longer reviews, and mine proponents were more likely to withdraw their proposal. Contrary to our expectations, the mobilization of opposition to a mine was associated with faster time to approval, but also a higher number of conditions.

In section 2.1 of their article, the authors identify three broad elements of the regulatory process governing mine approvals in Australia: the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) which applies to nine potential matters of national environmental significance; the processes required to obtain secure mining title which are state based; and the provisions of the Native Title Act which apply to lands with either determined native title, or subject to claim. The empirical analysis undertaken was limited to processes under the EPBC Act.

The analysis considers interactions among licences to operate through the lenses of civil society mobilization, electoral and party politics, and competing land-uses as these combine to affect the business risk experienced by mine project proponents through the EPBC Act regulatory approval process and outcomes. I don’t propose to attempt to summarise the details of the statistical analysis and refer interested readers to the article itself. Not will I focus on the outcomes apart from the one of most interest to readers of this blog, namely in relation to Indigenous claims (emphasis added).

A third insight from the analysis concerns the role of competing rights claims and land-uses. The data indicated that Indigenous land rights claims did not have any bearing on the length of time to approval, withdrawals, or conditions; indeed, proposals to mine on land without any claims tended to take longer to be approved than those on land with claims: but this association was not statistically significant.

Further, the authors found that:

Higher levels of civil society mobilization pushed regulators in apparently different directions. When mobilization was high, more conditions were imposed upon the mine's operation, a finding that is consistent with literature that suggests social pressure may increase regulatory requirements… However, mines that faced mobilization were not subjected to longer approval times; and, in the case where mines faced opposition from actors who would be negatively economically affected by the mine's development, approval times were shorter.

The overarching conclusion of the analysis (references removed) is that

Unlike early work on social licence to operate that conceptualized social pressures as working in synergy with regulatory processes, often leading to higher requirements or even beyond compliance behavior, we provided evidence that regulatory licences can serve as a trump card to advance a project. In this respect, our analysis offers caution for those that view economic licensing [ie investor approval] and social licensing [ie community and social approval] as substitutes for, or at least complements to, regulatory licensing.

For my purposes, this research offers at least preliminary or provisional evidence that longstanding tropes embedded within Australian politics in relation to Indigenous land rights are mistaken and wrong. Those tropes, which underpinned the rationale for denying Indigenous interests a veto over mining on their lands, were that land rights would be anathema to mining development and indeed to the nation’s economic security. The experience of the past two decades is that those fears have not eventuated. That experience strongly suggests that the promulgation of those fears was designed to benefit the minerals industry and to maintain the structural exclusion of Indigenous interests within Australian society.

Having said that, hidden behind these issues, and embedded in the current institutional architecture of native title and land rights, are a set of public policy issues related to the equity of the current financial policy frameworks which

(i)            privilege native title holders of land which lies above mineral deposits over those Indigenous groups who do not have access to native title, or those native title holders whose land does not lie above commercially viable minerals; and

(ii)          with only some exceptions, fail to ensure that the funds which flow to native title holders and Indigenous landowners are disbursed within frameworks which privilege accumulation over consumption (or to put it another way, which fail to ensure that future generations will benefit from the compensatory negotiations undertaken by the current generation). If there is any merit in the arguments of many scholars (and Indigenous activists) that colonialism has ongoing impacts, and that intergenerational trauma is a reality, then any argument against intergenerational benefit provision for beneficial payments arising from mining on Indigenous land disappears.

These are public policy issues because it has been governments that have devised the institutional arrangements that underpin the implementation of native title rights and land rights, and while the issues identified above may not have been intended or even recognised, they are now of very real significance. I use the term ‘hidden’ because these issues have been largely submerged in the public debates over Indigenous land rights over the past five decades. With the turn to economic empowerment as an overarching priority in the Indigenous policy domain (link here and link here) it is time that these issues were given greater profile and attention by policymakers and Indigenous advocates.

 

5 May 2025

Why understanding what has happened at the ALC is important

To fear the worst oft cures the worse

Troilus & Cressida Act three, Scene two

 

Along with my co-author Bill Gray, a former senior Commonwealth public servant with extraordinary experience across the Northern Australia and Canberra, I recently penned a short article focussed on the importance of regulatory oversight of the Anindilyakwa Land Council in particular, and by implication, all statutory entities in general.

Published in The Mandarin, with the title  Minister McCarthy and oversight of the Anindilyakwa Land Council  (link here), the article is available for open access once readers create an account.

I wont try to summarise the article here, but instead will make a couple of more general points.

First, robust and proactive regulation is important in establishing and maintaining high quality organisations, whether in the public or private sectors. The ongoing quality of statutory corporations is particularly important because they are invariably established for public purposes and thus are intended to pursue and contribute to the public interest.

Second, over recent decades there has been a general trend towards the overt politicisation of the public service. I do not mean partisan politicisation but instead refer to the co-option of the public service to supporting the Executive arm of government in its ongoing efforts to dominate the legislative arm, that is, the Parliament. Ministers are theoretically responsible to Parliament, but in fact in recent decades it has become apparent that the tables have turned, and in practice it is Parliament that is in most respects subservient to the Executive.

This leads to a situation where Ministers no longer feel obliged to maintain standards of accountability and deference to the law that constitutional theory requires. In these circumstances, regulatory oversight is made subservient to politics, and over time the quality of institutions degrades.

Third, I suspect that in the Indigenous policy domain, there is a reluctance by many public servants to be seen to be critical of Indigenous organisations or officeholders. Such reluctance may be exacerbated when the Minister that public servants are reporting to and supporting happens to be Indigenous. My own view is that it remains important for office holders in statutory corporations to be held to high and rigorous standards of accountability whatever their background. Not only is it paternalistic to adopt lesser standards, but for the reasons outlined above, high quality regulation creates the preconditions for high quality service delivery.

I have focussed on these issues to explain why it is that I have spent so much time and effort in analysing and understanding what has been happening on Groote in this Blog and elsewhere. The issues involved are of much wider significance than the possible shortcomings of a single statutory corporation on a remote Island off the northern Australian coast. The fact that the mainstream institutions designed to hold public sector institutions to account are not working effectively is the real issue.

The reforms required to reverse these developments are structural and systemic. Without close and detailed analysis of public sector developments in locations such as Groote Eylandt, (or in policy realms such as Robodebt), the task of devising the necessary reform agendas, and finding the political coalitions necessary to advance those reform agendas becomes impossible.

This is why the issues on Groote Eylandt are so important. It is also why it is essential that there be a comprehensive and independent forensic audit of the activities of the ALC and its associated CATSI corporations in receipt of royalty equivalent payments. I recommend readers have a look at the Mandarin article with these more general points in mind.

 

12 February 2025

Imbroglio on Groote Eylandt: a high-level roadmap

                                                            I see, as in a map, the end of all.

Richard III, Act two, Scene four

 

Over the past 14 months, there has been a steady torrent of public complaints, reports and media analyses raising concerns related to the governance of the Anindilyakwa Land Council (ALC), and its then Chair and current CEO.

 

Given the complexity of the institutional environment, let alone the myriad problematic activities that have been aired, I thought it might be useful to try to lay out a very high level roadmap of how the oversight of the issues on Groote emerged, what is currently being done, and where it might go into the future. This post is not aiming for comprehensive detail, but rather aims to set out the context. For more detail, readers are referred to the reports listed below, along with the analysis of some eleven previous posts on this blog which can be accessed in the recent post, Eleven posts foretelling calamity and tribulation on Groote Eylandt (link here).

 

Key events

 

In May 2023, the ANAO issued a performance audit report (link here) into the operations of the Anindilyakwa Land Council, a Commonwealth statutory Corporation established under the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (ALRA). The content of the audit was highly critical of governance standards within the ALC, identifying numerous potential conflicts of interest involving the Chair, the CEO and his spouse, amongst numerous other issues of concern. The remit of the audit was limited to the ALC and not to the network of corporations in receipt of royalty equivalent payments, thus limiting the focus of the recommendations to the ALC’s operations. It is worth noting that the ALC and the NIAA would have been provided with a draft report in March or April 2024.

 

On February 2024, a petition signed by 235 residents of Groote Eylandt was tabled in the Federal Parliament raising a range of concerns regarding the operations of the ALC and in particular its CEO. In response, Minister Burney (who is responsible for the operation of the ALRA told a media outlet that she would ask the NIAA Integrity Unit to investigate the concerns raised. Five months later, that investigation (whose terms of reference were limited to the ANAO recommendations) has yet to be released.

 

On 11 May 2024, the SMH published an article (‘CEO’s plan for personal millions form Indigenous mine deal exposed’) by investigative reporter Nick McKenzie (link here) which revealed that in September / October 2023, the ALC CEO had sought approval from the AAAC (the formal owners of 70 percent equity in Winchelsea Mining Pty Ltd) to grant him and his wife (Ms Sophy Liu) a ten percent stake in Winchelsea Mining. Following concerns expressed by an ALC legal officer, and the provision of a second legal opinion, the CEO deferred finalising the transaction

 

On 7 June 2024, during a Senate Estimates hearing, Senator Pocock raised serious concerns with the ALC CEO regarding the negotiation of the terms of the mining agreement between the ALC and Winchelsea Mining. The ALC Chair and CEO had statutory responsibilities to protect the interests of the TOs on Groote Eylandt, yet they were also both the Chair and co-CEO of Winchelsea Mining where they had responsibilities to protect the interests of their shareholders. The terms of the Agreement are not in the public domain, however the ALC CEO claimed that he had briefed the then Minister Nigel Scullion, who had approved the agreement. None of this was made public at the time. At the same Estimates Committee Hearing, the NIAA Integrity Unit indicated that they had received a draft of the investigation and expected the report to be finalised by July.

 

In early July 2024, the Minister’s Office or the NIAA advised the media that the NIAA had referred allegations against either the CEO or the ALC to the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC). The Minister would have approved this referral. The referral likely pertains to the proposal to grant the CEO and his spouse a ten percent share in Winchelsea Mining. The NACC had already received a number of referrals related to the actions of the ALC and its CEO from private citizens prior to the NIAA referral; it is unclear if it intends to conduct an investigation, and the extent of its inquiries if such an investigation proceeds.

 

On 20 July 2024, freelance journalists Ben Abbatangelo and Rachel Hoffman published a detailed account in The Saturday Paper (link here) of numerous new allegations of problematic activities on Groote centred around the roles, activities and influence of the ALC CEO and the recently deceased Chair. Key revelations in this article include the following: the role of the ALC royalty development unit in implementing the development the Royalty Shoppa debit card which quarantined significant levels of funds to expenditures in the Royalty Shoppa Warehouse; the apparent inconsistencies in relation to advice to Minister Scullion in relation to cuts to the CEO’s salary to offset his salary from Winchelsea Mining and the actual salary paid by the ALC over subsequent years; allegations that action to mitigate and address conflicts of interest by the former Chair and the current CEO had not been implemented in relation to key ALC decisions; and that concerned TOs had complained to the Minister regarding lack of accountability for a substantial payment by the Anindilyakwa Mining Trust to the Anindilyakwa Royalties Aboriginal Corporation, but had not received a reply.

 

Ways of interpreting the current imbroglio

 

There are at least five legitimate ways to evaluate and assess the ongoing developments on Groote Eylandt, and their interaction with the accelerating momentum of accountability focussed investigation.

 

First, one might assess past, present and future developments through the narrow focus of whether or not there has been fraudulent or illegal behaviour by any of the actors involved in managing the ALC and its associated royalty distributions. Important as this is, I would argue that a focus solely on fraud and accountability is too narrow and will not address wider issues of fundamental importance to the wider community on Groote.

 

Second, one might assess the policy effectiveness of the ALC’s strategic vision and plan for the residents and TOs of the Groote archipelago. The ALC strategy as promulgated on its website is sophisticated and polished. I discussed in in some detail in my earlier post The proposed Winchelsea mine on Groote Eylandt: a strategic opportunity? (link here) where I concluded:

The high level aspirations articulated by the ALC have real merit. I support them if they can be afforded. The strategies being adopted are however deeply flawed, and in my view will likely lead to a disastrous financial meltdown on Groote at some point in the next five years. If this occurs, the socio-economic ramifications will entrench further disadvantage and possibly lead to the unravelling of social cohesion on the island.

I outlined the reasons for that conclusion in the following post (link here). That conclusion has not been refuted by the ALC or the NIAA. Time will tell.

 

If I am right, the current inaction by governments will mean that they share direct responsibility for the outcomes.

 

Third, one might assess the effectiveness of the current regulatory oversight of the activities on Groote since late 2018 when the ALC CEO wrote twice to Minister Scullion advising him of the proposals to establish Winchelsea Mining and purchase the mining tenements on Winchelsea Island. The ALC is a Commonwealth statutory corporation. Unlike private sector corporations, it is not regulated by ASIC and the ACCC, but by the provisions of the ALRA which is administered by the Minister for Indigenous Australians and the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act (2013) (PGPA Act) which is administered by the Minister for Finance.

 

See this flipchart for a listing of all PGPA Act entities (link here). Sections 25 to 29 of the PGPA Act impose the following duties on all officials: a duty of care and diligence • a duty to act in honesty, good faith and for a proper purpose • a duty in relation to use of position • a duty in relation to use of information • a duty to disclose interests.

 

Since 1976 when the ALRA was enacted, those two Ministers and their agencies have shared the bulk of the responsibility for regulatory oversight of the actions of the NT Land Councils, with the Indigenous Australians Minister in the lead. Some other accountability agencies have specific roles, for example, the ANAO which undertakes financial audits of NT land councils’ financial affairs and can undertake performance audits (such as the performance audit published in May 2023). The indigenous Australians Minister approves budget estimates for each land council and is required to approve various arrangements set out in the ALRA (eg mining agreements negotiated by a Land Council with a mining corporation).

 

Given this background, the inability of the NIAA at the Estimates Hearing of 7 June 2024 (link here: page 29) to satisfactorily respond to questions from Senator Pocock as to whether the Minister or the NIAA had been advised of Mr Hewitt’s potential conflicts of interest appeared to evoke a level of astonishment. In seeking to deflect the Senator’s apparent incredulity, the NIAA CEO explained that the ANAO Report was directed to the ALC itself. The statement and concomitant inference that the NIAA was not responsible for knowing these matters reflects a deep-seated hands-off approach that is not consistent with the statutory responsibilities of the Minister and her agency. 

 

I am not aware of any detailed analysis of the quality of the Ministerial and NIAA regulatory oversight in relation to Groote, yet the more egregious the situation being uncovered is ultimately found to be, the more we can be confident that it has been facilitated (either consciously or unconsciously) by regulatory failure. The key issue then becomes whether that regulatory failure is a one off, or systemic. Prima facie, the quality of regulatory oversight of the ALC over the past eight years appears to be seriously deficient. In my view, the NACC and the Parliament should make the assessment of this issue a primary focus on their ongoing oversight and investigations.

 

For any sceptics that question my assessment of the existence of regulatory failure, let me provide one personal anecdotal example. I wrote a considered and detailed letter to Minister Burney on 1 March 2024, copied to the Minister for Finance and the ANAO, attaching a detailed analysis of compliance with the legislative requirements for distribution of royalties and the evidence revealed in my own examination of the publicly available financial statements of the key recipient corporations. I framed my analysis as provisional and recommended a detailed forensic audit be commissioned. There are three possible acceptable answers to such a letter: one, I have considered your points and agree and am taking action; two, I have considered your points and disagree for the following reasons and am thus not taking action; three, I am considering the matters raised and will respond when I have reached a conclusion.

 

I received no acknowledgement or reply from the Minister for Finance nor from the ANAO. On 11 June (over three months later) I received a response from the NIAA CEO noting that a review into the implementation of the ANAO recommendations had been commissioned, and explicitly acknowledging that the scope of that review does not address the concerns I had raised. The CEO went on to state that it is worth noting that it is standard practice for the NIAA to refer matters to the appropriate authorities when there are identified concerns regarding the conduct of organisations or individuals that are better managed by those authorities. The letter did not indicate whether any matters had been referred to ‘appropriate authorities’.   Yet the matters I had raised related directly to the regulatory responsibilities of the NIAA and the Minister. I concluded that I had been advised, in the politest terms, to go jump in the lake.

 

Fourth, one might assess the developments on Groote in terms of their implications and consequences for macro-policy issues. These include issues such as the more general effectiveness of the policy and accountability oversight of the land councils in the NT, whether the operation of the ABA which includes funding of Land councils, distribution of royalty and royalty equivalent payments under ALRA;  wider issues related to whether mining related payments more generally are being managed effectively; whether it is time to review the operation of ALRA to assess whether it is still meeting its objectives; and whether the policy capabilities of the NIAA and other agencies (such as The Office of the Registrar of Aboriginal Corporations) have been hollowed out over the past decade leading to loss of corporate memory and policy capability.

 

Again, I am not aware of any considered research or writing, nor any reviews or parliamentary committee focus on these issues in the past decade. My recent post on the draft ANAO work program (link here) discusses some of these issues in more detail. My core point is that the imbroglio unfolding on Groote ought to be seen as an opportunity to proactively finetune and improve the broader institutional frameworks which play an important part in supporting the aspirations and interests of First Nations citizens in northern Australia.

 

Fifth and finally, one might assess the ongoing Groote imbroglio in terms of what it says about the state of our political system. Neither of the major parties appears to have covered themselves in glory so far, and the longer these issues remain unresolved, the greater the likelihood that trust in our political system and democracy will be further diminished. I have commented previously on the disenchantment of remote communities with the current state of politics in the NT (link here: data point three) and I have previously pointed to the deep-seated disinterest of both CLP and ALP Senators in pursuing these issues in the three Estimated Hearings since the ANAO report was tabled. The fact that the NT election is imminent is clearly a salient factor in both sides seeking to keep the lid on these issues.

 

My own take on this is to suggest that the dominance of the Executive over the Parliament is a fundamental issue that requires more critical analysis and attention. Notwithstanding the ubiquitous rhetoric about the importance of democracy, our major parties appear prepared to set aside the public interest (of citizens and voters) in favour of their own political self-interest. The lack of motivation and timely action to date in addressing and disentangling the complex imbroglio on Groote is in my view just one further example of this dynamic. The structural and systemic exclusion of Indigenous interests continues.

 

To sum up, the imbroglio on Groote is cascading out of control. Where it will land, and its wider ramifications, are as yet uncertain. The core argument of this post is that adopting an analytic lens focussed on identifying the existence or not of villains and villainy is crucially important. However, limiting our analytical lenses to this is both overly simplistic and short-sighted. The effectiveness of the ALCs broader strategic policies is also crucial, and so too is the quality of regulatory oversight and the fitness for purpose of broader Commonwealth (and Territory Government) policy objectives and frameworks. Finally, understanding the political drivers in play is also important, as is assessing the longer-term implications of the major political parties continuing to prioritise political self interest over the public interest.

 

 

 22 July 2024

Political and media narratives on alcohol policy in Central Australia

 

Before him he carries noise,

and behind him he leaves tears…

Coriolanus Act 2, scene 1

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Addendum

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

Alcohol Regulation in Remote NT Communities (link here)