The 2026 Report of the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee: implications for Indigenous disadvantage and exclusion

 

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt."

Measure for Measure, Act one, Scene four

 

The Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee: 2026 report to Government has been published on the DSS website (link here). The separate Appendix is of particular salience in relation to the consideration of reform priorities and options in the Indigenous policy domain as it includes a letter to the Treasurer and Minister for Finance (link here) signed by Jenny Macklin (Chair of the Advisory Committee) and Pat Turner (Lead Convenor of the Coalition of Peaks) summarising the outcomes of a December 2025 roundtable convened by the Advisory Committee on Indigenous economic inclusion.

In 2024, I published a post on this Blog in relation to that year’s Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee Report (link here). There is a direct line of sight from the recommendations in that report to this most recent one. The Committee (and its Chair) is nothing if not persistent!

Writing recently in The Conversation, Advisory Committee member Peter Whiteford, and economists Jenny Gordon and Roger Wilkins, provide a highly useful and accessible summary of the Advisory Committee Report (link here). I recommend interested readers of the report begin with this overview which provides a useful contextual background to the impressively comprehensive span of the Report. Here is a short extract from their article:

Disadvantage is a concept that goes beyond income poverty to encompass people’s outcomes, including deprivation and social exclusion….

… By far the highest rates of deep social exclusion in 2022 were experienced by people who are unemployed (38.8%), public housing tenants (36.5%), people receiving income support (20.5%), people with long-term health conditions or a disability (16.3%), people with low educational attainment (16.3%), lone parents (15.7%), and Indigenous Australians (15.5%).

For public housing tenants, people who are unemployed, people receiving income support and those with low educational attainment, rates of deep disadvantage have increased significantly.

For Indigenous Australians, rates of deep disadvantage nearly doubled between 2010 and 2014, but then fell back, although still higher than in 2010.

Turning to the issue of the salience and significance of exclusion (or low levels of economic inclusion) for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander citizens, the Report is an extraordinary resource, filled with insightful, analytically valuable and policy relevant data. However, (and this is not a criticism) the Report mirrors the reality of mainstream politics and policy insofar as the bulk of its analyses and discussion relates to the broad span of mainstream policy issues relevant to poverty, deep disadvantage and economic exclusion. There is a focus on programs and policies that deliver benefits to individuals either universally or based on needs-based criteria of one sort or another. This leads to an implicit bias against policies and programs for corporate interests (eg the diesel tax rebate) and/or focussed on capital investments such as infrastructure of defence investments. This is a function of the Committee’s terms of reference but does mean that there is a potential blind spot in terms of the incidence or impacts of these latter policies on citizens. For example, defence or infrastructure expenditures create employment ― and opportunity costs ― which have an impact (for better or worse) on equity and inclusion. While the Report’s analysis only occasionally mentions or utilises Indigenous specific data points, the focus of the analysis is invariably on issues where Indigenous citizens are over-represented amongst those most disadvantaged.

An important, but unstated element of the Report’s analysis arises from the reality that the most significant drivers of deep disadvantage for Indigenous citizens are primarily reflected within the statistics cited in the Report on mainstream unemployment, mainstream health, mainstream education, and mainstream housing. This would also be the case with the extent of economic exclusion of disabled citizens or any other group of citizens (though these are not generally mentioned as a separate category unlike the treatment of the category ‘Indigenous Australians’). My point is that Indigeneity per se is not a driver of disadvantage or poverty, but rather, that the drivers of poverty and disadvantage affect Indigenous people disproportionality. The Report (and the extract above from The Conversation) is potentially confusing on this issue. This is not merely an academic argument; it has real world consequences. The solutions to addressing Indigenous disadvantage (in the main) lie in applying needs based (or means tested) reforms to mainstream drivers of disadvantage (while of course not being blind to the incentives we might be creating in doing so).

The point I am making was recognised by the Indigenous negotiators of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap when they insisted on the inclusion of the Priority Reforms in the Agreement, and in particular Priority Reform One directed to reforming mainstream institutions to make then more inclusive.

The major exception to this point is where mainstream institutions (policies / programs) have, for one reason or another, been supplemented or replaced by Indigenous specific programs. These are a comparatively small proportion of Commonwealth outlays and are generally (but not always) utilised in remote regions where mainstream institutions have not been developed, or where the rights of Indigenous peoples are sui generis such as cultural heritage protection and native title. The classic example combining both remoteness and cultural rights relates to communal and inalienable land tenure which make individualised ownership difficult (but not impossible) in many remote communities.

The import of this discussion is that Indigenous interests and their peak bodies should be focussed not just on those elements of the report which identify an Indigenous aspect, but they have a strong imperative to support and advocate for the entirety of the Advisory Committee Report’s reform recommendations. Improving the effectiveness and needs basis of mainstream policies and programs will inevitably benefit disadvantaged Indigenous citizens, because Indigenous citizens are over-represented amongst the poorest and most in need clients and beneficiaries of mainstream policies and programs.

Bearing in mind the lengthy caveat above, I now turn to several issues identified in the Report as being of specific interest to Indigenous interests.

The Remote Area Allowance

The first issue worth mentioning is the discussion on pages 11-12 and 37-39 of the Remote Area Allowance. The Committee notes that most RAA recipients are Indigenous Australians.

The Committee acknowledged the Government has moved to subsidise food in remote stores where grocery prices are some 40 % higher than in urban and regional Australia, but points to a continuing gap in the cost of living in remote regions. Recommendation 4 states:

Substantially lift the Remote Area Allowance: • Substantially lift the Remote Area Allowance by indexing it in line with Consumer Price Index growth since its introduction in 1984, lifting the single rate to $54.20 per fortnight. • Fund the Australian Bureau of Statistics to develop a remote area index that will guide ongoing indexation of the Remote Area Allowance, in partnership with remote communities and informed by remote area costs data. Once developed, the payment should be benchmarked at a rate that reflects remote area costs and regular ongoing indexation to this new index applied. • Review and adjust the payment’s geographic boundaries to ensure it is available to people living in remote and very remote areas.

Second, the Committee makes a sustained and detailed argument in favour of Employment Services Reform (pages 16-19 and 39-40). It states, inter alia,

Effective employment services can be a powerful policy lever for creating a more inclusive society. But Australia’s employment services system has become harmful and punitive. It has been badly underperforming for some time and major reform is needed. Delayed for far too long, employment services reform must now become a national priority. The system needs to be made fit for the future and must be regarded as a necessary component of national economic reform.

While this discussion is focussed on mainstream Employment Services, the NIAA remote employment programs, the Remote Jobs and Economic Development (RJED) program and the Remote Australia Employment Service (RAES) which have their own issues not considered by the Committee (link here) are effectively a subsidiary element of the mainstream programs. They too require reform.

Third the potential for reform of the Indigenous Housing sector

On page 52, the Report reproduces an extract from a letter arising from a roundtable with the Coalition of Peaks and other Indigenous (published in full in Appendix 3). This argues, inter alia, for the ring fencing of a dedicated allocation from within all mainstream social housing allocations by the Commonwealth for Indigenous housing. The Committee limits its recommendation in the housing area to arguing for increases in mainstream Commonwealth Rental Assistance (CRA). For my part, I have previously argued against ring fencing these programs and instead relying on needs-based allocations (link here).

Fourth: the analysis of nationwide Disadvantage

Chapter Six of the Report comprises a detailed and sophisticated analysis of the composition of disadvantage across the nation. The discussion at the beginning of this post is relevant here. The Report considers a range of analytic measures to measure disadvantage including income poverty, deprivation, social exclusion, but makes no specific recommendations. One salient point is that the Report notes (page 151) that the data in the HILDA survey utilised to compile the Report’s analysis of disadvantage is not reliable for remote and very remote regions, and this may lead to an undercount of the level of disadvantage among Indigenous Australians.

Fifth: the summary of the Roundtable with Indigenous interests

Appendix 3 to the Report comprises a letter sent to Ministers from the Chair, Jenny Macklin and the (then) Convenor of the Coalition of Peaks Pat Turner (link here). The summary of the outcomes of that Roundtable is as follows:

The Roundtable emphasised that economic inclusion for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is underpinned by four key interrelated enablers:

• Adequate and accessible social services and income support, so people can meet immediate material needs, address poverty, and safely access the right income support payments when they need.

• Stable, secure, appropriate and affordable housing, as a foundational requirement for participation in employment, education and community life.

• Affordable, accessible, high-quality and culturally safe early childhood education and care, to support children’s development and enable parents and carers to participate in work and study.

• Education, training and employment opportunities that empower people, support flexible employment participation and offer meaningful career pathways, including within the community-controlled sector.

I strongly agree that these priorities are crucial to addressing Indigenous economic inclusion. However, as is often the case, the devil is in the detail. Will the quantum of support underpinning these priorities be adequate, and will implementation be effective and target those most in need. These are matters beyond the scope of this post to address.

Discussion

At 178 pages plus appendices, this report covers an extraordinary amount of the policy landscape, in varying levels of detail. In Chapter Seven, the Report provides a high-level assessment of Government responses to the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee’s recommendations since its establishment in 2022. This makes clear that this Report is in fact merely one element of a much larger policy project. The headings of the cumulative recommendations made by the Committee which clearly reflect in very large measure the longstanding concerns and priorities of the Chair Jenny Macklin, make clear the extraordinary ambition of the policy project. I list them below:

7.1 Adequacy of working age payments and rent assistance

7.2 Full employment, and reducing barriers to employment and participation

7.3 Supporting children and families

7.4 Addressing disadvantage in the places where it is concentrated

7.5 The culture, purpose and intent of the social security system

7.6 Legislated measures on economic inclusion and poverty reduction

A key characteristic of this ambitious project is that it is, by virtue of its complexity, its combination of technical economic, demographic and statistical components, and its financial and economic significance for the nation’s public expenditures (an element that is barely mentioned in the Report) is in very large measure an insider’s agenda. I can think of very few comparable policy analysts in Australia who combine the technical mastery of their subject matter with the political skill and influence that Jenny Macklin brings to this project.

A careful and (dare I say) critical reading the responses by agencies to the six reform topics listed in Chapter Seven makes clear that the inertia and incrementalism of government is quite extraordinary. The Committee, clearly influenced by Macklin, is very selective in its recommendations, clearly cognisant that this Government (and indeed any recent Australian Government) is risk averse to major reforms that have virtually irreversible budgetary implications. The recent experience with the NDIS merely serves to reinforce the mindset that the key bureaucratic agencies will bring to considering such an ambitious agenda. It is to Macklin’s credit that she doesn’t give up, and as the Report notes at the beginning of Chapter Seven (page 158):

In its first three reports the Committee made a total of 40 recommendations, of which: • 6 have been implemented in full. • 23 are still live and have been implemented in part. • 11 have not yet been advanced.

Three substantial, still live recommendations from reports 1 to 3 are advanced and updated in this report:

 • In all three reports, the Committee has called for the Government to commit to a timeframe for full increases in JobSeeker and related payments. (R3 2023, R2 2024, R2 2025) …

• In all three reports, the Committee recommends the Government commit to a full-scale redesign of Australia’s employment services system to end harm caused by the compliance system. (R4 2023, R6 2024, R7 2025) …

• In reports 1 and 2 (2023, 2024) the Committee called for reform of the way FTB A interacts with the Child Support Scheme. (R33 2023, R15 2024) Recommendation 8 of this report calls for a comprehensive modernisation of the objectives of the Family Payments and Child Support Scheme to guide further reform – these include reducing child poverty and improving economic security for women.

The point I would make related to Indigenous disadvantage and why Closing the substantive Gap is so difficult is that each of the three dot points above where the Committee has made repeated recommendations, the implications for Indigenous Australians are substantial, while simultaneously, the absolute numbers of Indigenous citizens who would benefit are comparatively low. Indeed, Indigenous Australians would arguably be amongst the biggest winners were these reforms to be implemented because they are over-represented amongst those most adversely affected.

In turn, this raises the much larger question: are the current institutional arrangements, and particularly the targets and priorities set down in the National Agreement on Closing the Gap fit for purpose in laying out a pathway to close the substantive gap (as opposed to the rhetorical gap that governments invariably discuss). My intuition tells me that the answer is no, and that a more streamlined and focussed framework built around the high-level priorities identified in the letter to Ministers in Appendix 3 to the Report would be a much better way forward. This is a separate point to the argument I have made elsewhere (link here) that the current framework is not working. But taken together the argument for reform of the Closing the Gap framework is intellectually irrefutable.

Clearly the Committee sees its role as primarily seeking to influence the policy debate on the issues that matter from ‘inside the room’. It doesn’t criticise but merely keeps knocking on the door. When the stars align, the arguments in favour of reform will have been laid out. Ultimately though, it is up to the electorate to elect representatives who are prepared to pick up the baton and run with it.

For both broader mainstream interests advocating for greater equity and inclusion in Australian society, and for Indigenous interests such as the Coalition of Peaks, the Advisory Committee’s cumulative reports offer, albeit in the arcane code of economics and bureaucratic policymaking, both a coherent and persuasive argument for pursuing reform, and (between the lines) a roadmap for how to approach government seeking to influence policy. There is a place for public advocacy, even criticism, but it will be most effective if it is focussed on a limited number of consequential priorities framed around sustained and coherent evidence-based articulation of the agenda they might seek to put forward. Even so, that will often not be enough to overcome the innate inertia that suffuses policymaking in Australia, and success will ultimately depend upon an ‘alignment of the stars’. The alignment of those stars will invariably be a function of politics as well as wider contextual pressures and opportunities.

While this may seem too pessimistic, it strikes me that to one extent or another, it was ever thus. Every major institution in existence today, every major reform, every legal framework, is the result of a good idea being developed, framed and taken forward in a way that persuaded a government to act notwithstanding the political headwinds of those who were opposed. For every institution in existence, the stars in fact aligned.

To be blunt, rhetoric serves some purposes, but it is never adequate on its own to drive reform. There is always a need for hardheaded and detailed policy analysis at all stages of the reform process. I would venture to say that Australia is suffering from a long-term decline in such analysis, and the Indigenous policy domain is not immune from this disease. For this reason, the work of the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee is both inspirational and a roadmap. It deserves to be studied closely by anyone interested in seeing the emergence of a better and more inclusive society.

 

 

Declaration of interest: I was employed as a ministerial adviser in the Office of Jenny Macklin from 2008 to 2012.

 

29 April 2026

Infrastructure shortfalls in Alices Springs town camps

Comparisons are odorous

Much Ado About Nothing, Act three, Scene five

 

According to a 2019 NT Government policy document (link here), there are 43 town camps across the NT, of which 18 are within Alice Springs.  ABS census data from 2021 (link here), identifies 1055 residents of 18 town camps in Alice Springs. The population comprised 275 families and 256 families. The median age was 30. The median weekly household income was $756. There is much more demographic information available from the ABS web page linked to above. Anecdotally (and reflected in many NT government publications) there is a large but variable cohort of temporary visitors resident in Alice’s town camps. This cohort reflects the ongoing high mobility of families between surrounding communities and Alice Springs. At peak visitation periods, the population of the town camps may reach around 2000 residents.

I recently came across an extraordinary new book on the infrastructure and essential services needs of Alice Springs town camps (h/t Brad Riley). Authored by five researchers associated with the University of Newcastle and Tangentyere Council,  Chris Tucker, Michael Klerck, Anna Flouris, Vanessa Napaltjarri Davis and Denise Foster, and published by Australian Scholarly Publishing, it is prosaically titled Guide to Housing and Infrastructure Standards in Town Camps (link here). The Guide’s design and presentation is excellent, and its photographs, maps and illustrations ensure it is both extremely accessible and intellectually persuasive. Yet counter-intuitively, it eschews an explicit narrative, leaving readers the task of imagining the underlying narrative. Instead, the Guide is simultaneously a practical and straightforward account categorising the myriad shortfalls in essential services provision within Alice Springs’ town camps, but also a window into the wider systemic challenges facing all town camp and remote community residents across the NT and beyond. I will say a little about both these contributions.

The Guide’s Alice Spring contribution

The Guide has three parts: Part One deals with the mainstream Regulation and Design Standards applicable in Alice Springs. It also includes a short and succinct history of the town camps, and their support organisation Tangentyere Council. Included is a fascinating account from 1993 of Tangentyere’s history and prospects by Geoff Shaw, its then General Manager and one of the key Indigenous leaders responsible for making Tangentyere one of the most respected and longstanding Aboriginal community-controlled organisations in Australia.

Part Two summarises issues raised in Local Decision Making meetings within town camps, identifying a list of essential infrastructure, and describing for each issue in a single page the problem, the relevant regulations, and a specific solution.  Each of these issues is complemented by maps and most powerfully, by dual sets of photographs which illustrate examples of the issue in the town camps and for comparison, photographs illustrating the provision of the same essential service in mainstream Alice Springs. The combined effect of these comparisons spanning thirty separate essential service issues (including kerbs and gutters, stormwater drains, safe play areas, street lighting, road signage and rooftop solar energy provision to name just six) is a devastatingly effective exemplification of unequal service provision. The Guide is arguably more persuasive for its matter-of-fact tone, and while it doesn’t avoid criticism, there is no ideological rhetoric, no blaming and no gratuitous emotion.

Part Three provides both high level aerial and more detailed colour coded maps of the Local Decision Making processes for each town camp. In doing so, the Guide has created in a tangible form one template amongst many potential templates, for a regional atlas.  The innovation of overlaying existing infrastructure based on aerial photographs with colour coded potential additions provides a tangible record of community aspirations at a point in time, and I suspect represents one of the first comprehensive, detailed and technically documented records of Indigenous advocacy for improved essential services provision in the country. While I am not an expert in this area, I feel confident in asserting that this Guide, and the detailed action-research that underpins it, is a pathbreaking initiative that deserves wide distribution, and more importantly, a public and thorough response from the Commonwealth Government as well as the Northen Territory Government and the Alice Springs Town Council.

There is a wealth of detailed technical and regulatory information embedded in this Guide, all referenced to academic standards, and clearly written and presented. I won’t try to summarise it. I will however pick out a couple of policy relevant issues that struck me as significant and which reinforce the implicit message that the challenges facing the residents of these town camps are both considerable and ongoing.

The first general point to be made is that the Guide explodes the commonplace misapprehension that essential services are limited to power, water and sewerage. Essential services include safe playgrounds, community shade provision, and appropriate traffic constraints, controls and crossings. It also demonstrates that housing and essential services (broadly defined) are together part of a single policy system and must be dealt with by policymakers as such.

On page 10, the Guide references almost in passing Tangentyere’s response to a 2016 Government Inquiry into housing repairs and maintenance on town camps which noted that “the Alice Springs Town Council is unprepared to deliver Municipal and Essential Services on any town camp.”

On page 12, the Guide references target 9b under the national Closing the Gap framework which identifies that Aboriginal people who live in town camps must ‘receive essential services that meet or exceed the relevant jurisdictional standard … and meet or exceed the same standard that applies generally within the town’ — in this case Alice Springs. The Guide goes on to make a point that this Blog made two years ago (link here), namely that the Productivity Commission Closing the Gap data dashboard reports that the data does not exist to enable it to monitor progress in meeting target 9b.

On page 14, the Guide refers to the Tripartite Agreement between the individual Alice Springs town camp associations, the Commonwealth and the NT government, and the requirement in that agreement for three yearly independent reviews to assess the essential services needs and the costs of meeting them for the Alice Town camps. The Guide notes that since 2009, there should have been five such reviews, but in fact there has only been one which only partially filled the obligation in the Agreement.

These four points comprise elements of a deeper policy issue which encompasses complex issues related to land tenure, local government funding, and Commonwealth/Territory financial and policy relations. While the challenges are longstanding and undoubtedly complex, they are not insurmountable. The Commonwealth in particular which is a major funder of local government, and of the NTG both through the Grants Commission and through Specific Purpose Funding, clearly has the legislative and political authority to broker or force a solution, but clearly lacks the vision or the political will to do so.

The Guide’s wider policy contribution

Over the past decade, this Blog has spilt much metaphorical ink on the systemic or structural challenges facing remote Australia (link here). They extend beyond essential services and infrastructure, and include issues such as education, economic opportunities, unemployment, policing and justice, food security and digital access to name perhaps the most obvious. Nevertheless, while the data is invariably persuasive it is also abstract, and the comparative evidence relates to remote regions (which by definition have few voters and low political influence) and non-remote regions which are more politically influential and largely oblivious to the realities of remote communities and remote regions. The bottom line is that quantitative analysis, while powerful and revealing to those prepared to devote time and energy to understanding it, is of limited value in building a political constituency for policy reform. Quantitative analysis will continue to be relevant to policy discussions within government and between jurisdictions over the design and specification of policy reforms, but what has been lacking has been the development of a political constituency. It strikes me that this Guide is important not just for what it tells us about the exclusionary treatment of town camp residents in Alice Springs, but for the innovative and pathbreaking approach that it has adopting to making the case for wider essential services reform. The template it has adopted should in my view be used more widely (and perhaps in a more simplified and targeted way) to make the case for increased policy support for remote essential services provision more generally.

Furthermore, the issues raised in the Guide are in large measure replicated not just across the other 25 town camps in the NT, but (to a greater or lesser extent) across all the significant remote communities across the north. While the NT Government, and its local governments and town councils are and have been seriously complacent about the plight of remote community residents, they are not alone. To varying degrees, the state governments of Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland are similarly complacent. So too is the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth used the 2020 revision of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap to effectively step back, leaving the policy responsibility for addressing Indigenous disadvantage and the myriad service delivery shortfalls to the states and territories. The current Government has done nothing to reverse that step.

What is particularly clear from the Guide is how exclusionary institutional complacency emerges in myriad instances of quite prosaic neglect: the absence of footpaths, of surveyed lots, of safe play grounds for children, of street signs, of shade and community shelters; in short, this neglect reflects the longstanding and widespread refusal of mainstream institutions such a local governments to see their roles as universal rather than sectional. The details vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but the impacts are longstanding and have a certain consistency.

What is absent from the Guide (this is not in any way a criticism) is a strategy to ensure the pathway forward that it lays out for essential services policy reform, both in Alice Springs and more broadly will be adopted and implemented. There is no established mechanism, either in Alice Springs, or more broadly, to take these issues forward. Which politician or bureaucrat is likely to read the Guide and commit to pursuing the solutions identified therein, or even just discuss the identified problems, across the thirty issues identified? This is an institutional gap or absence.

In economic theory there is a concept of market failure, where markets do not operate effectively to meet societal demands. In the present case, the conditions appear to exist for an analogous concept, political failure, where our democratic polity is not meeting basic societal needs and expectations. We have been here before in the Indigenous policy domain. For example, on land rights: the political system gridlocked and efforts to address dispossession were stymied. Eventually, this led the High Court to step in and recognise the existence of native title. In the case of essential services reform, the mechanism to break the gridlock remains unclear; one possibility is that the worsening climate crisis might lead to the development of a universal policy response as temperatures rise across the north (see page 34 in the Guide).

While a fully determined strategic pathway to drive action on reform is not able to be mapped out, I see at least three preliminary steps which Indigenous interests might pursue to lay the groundwork for an effective policy reform process:

First, Indigenous interests across remote Australia might ramp up their advocacy for fair and equal essential service provision, including through more robust public advocacy, pushing for parliamentary and other inquiries at both national and jurisdictional levels, and utilising the presentation methods utilised in the Guide more widely.

Second, Indigenous interests might invest more in making the National Agreement on Closing the Gap work for them in relation to essential services provision. The ABS, the AIHW and the Productivity Commission should be pushed to step up and ensure that the data required to assess progress on the target 9b (and others not yet being measured) is both collected, analysed and published.

Third, Indigenous interests could move beyond the failure of the Voice and invest more in keeping the Commonwealth engaged consistent with the constitutional reform agreed in 1967 which gave the power to the Commonwealth to legislate in relation to Indigenous citizens. This is especially important in relation to essential services in remote Australia as in contrast to urban and regional Australia, remote Indigenous communities cannot rely on mainstream interests to ensure essential services are delivered. In remote Australia, where local interests divert scarce financial resources away from Indigenous essential services (as is irrefutably happening in Alice Springs), Indigenous interests must rely on the Commonwealth to step in, or in the event that the Commonwealth continues to remain recalcitrant and complacent, use the legal system to force change.

None of these steps will be easy, but governments respond to pressure. Indigenous interests in remote Australia must devise ways to better advocate for reform if they wish to see progress and not political and social regression.

Of course, it should not fall solely to Indigenous interests to advocate for equality in service provision. All Australians have an interest in this as a principle, and Indigenous interests deserve wider support in advocating for such equality. This must go beyond bland statements of support for reconciliation, or for Closing the Gap; the devil is in the detail and governments will only respond when there is a groundswell of support for detailed change from constituents across the nation.

Conclusion

The authors and publishers of the Guide to Housing and Infrastructure Standards in Town Camps have made an extraordinarily significant contribution to laying the groundwork for better advocacy for remote Indigenous communities on essential services reform both in Alice Springs, but importantly across northern Australia. They deserve wider recognition and indeed acclamation. What is also clear is that without the efforts of Tangentyere and its community leadership over almost 50 years, the progress made to date on the town camps would not have been possible. Their historically significant work is not yet complete; I only hope that it will not be another fifty years before Aboriginal people in town camps in Alice Springs and beyond are included as fully entitled citizens in the provision of essential services.

 

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

Meta-promises: the new shape of Indigenous policy failure

                                                 

His promises fly so beyond his state

That what he speaks is all in debt; he owes

For every word...

Timon of Athens, Act one, Scene two

 

Following my previous post on ‘Unattainable expectations’ (link here), I received a number of comments from readers that raised issues that I had overlooked, or under-emphasised (though in my defence, I would state that I try to keep this blog focused on policy rather than politics (noting that the distinction is arguably artificial at best).

 

I thought it might be useful to share the comments from two anonymous readers, lightly edited to remove gratuitous comments which might colloquially be described as ‘pissing in my pocket’ along with my response to reader #1. Among the takeouts from these comments are the intensity of the intertwining of politics and policy (something which I tend to under-emphasise) and secondly the explicit and implicit trade-offs and opportunity costs involved in policy development.  I urge readers to read the commentaries both literally, but also through an interpretive lens that points to the complexities inherent in both designing, implementing and (especially from an Indigenous perspective), influencing policy.

 

Reader #1:

Mike is always an incisive commentator, and this blog is no exception - and yet I confess to having some dissatisfaction with elements of it.  In trying to sift my own responses I've had to face the fact that my own strong opinions have to some extent hindered a ready embrace of all Mike's observations.  Strong opinions can often be the enemy of good judgment, but they are also inevitable when one has been so long engaged with these issues.

 

One of the great benefits of my recent overseas sojourn was the opportunity it afforded to escape the exhausting and dispiriting barrage of argument and conjecture that had become almost unbearable when the referendum reached its miserable crescendo.  But now that I am back I must again face up to the issues Mike raises.

 

The complicating opinions of mine that I refer to can be seen as twofold:

Firstly, I harbour a deep anger towards the Prime Minister for the way he conducted the referendum discussions and I hold him primarily responsible for its failure.  His messages were weak and disingenuous and his leadership was an abject failure.  He tried to be Whitlamesque in his election night commitment, but then seemed to think that if he hugged enough people at Garma and whined enough about it being 'a gracious offer from Indigenous people' (what rubbish!) we'd all follow.  It was a shambles and I find it hard to forgive him.

 

And yet I am less inclined than Mike to condemn him for not now rushing to articulate a bold Indigenous policy agenda.  Mike fears that it signifies "a deep-seated lack of  ambition", but I think it is not inappropriate to reflect for a while after the referendum disaster, and that having already significantly raised Indigenous expectations only to have them turn to ashes, he would do well to avoid doing so again without significant pause. As Shakespeare’s words would suggest, this is not a time for more promises. And, as Aunty Pat has said, perhaps the post-referendum wasteland affords opportunity for Indigenous agency to emerge and to flourish.

 

I was really surprised that Mike seemed to make no connection with the Voice in his comments about the problems inherent in suggestions that a particular section of the community might have excessive influence over the development of national policy that directly affects them.  That was precisely a key reason the referendum went down; a lack of clarity as to whether the Parliament would indeed have ultimate control of and responsibility for the policy settings in Indigenous affairs.  The PM did not help with his lame comments about "it would be a brave government that ignored the advice of  the Voice", which raised the obvious question about whether Albo's government would in fact have the bravery Mike and the nation would have wanted it to have.

 

Secondly, I have never been at all comfortable with "closing the gap" rhetoric, which Mike appears to accept without question - (along with Pat, although she, as head of "the Peaks", is structurally locked into accepting that rhetoric).  I find myself wishing that Nugget Coombs were still with us, as I have no doubt he would be calling all this stuff out as being essentially assimilationist.  As one who has had a long and ongoing involvement with remote communities, I find the whole closing the gap agenda to be objectionable - assimilationist, and continuously viewing Aboriginal people and their communities through a negative lens.  Will they never be acceptable until they live like us and think like us?  Perish the thought!

 

My experience of remote community life at its best is that it has a vitality, a joy, an intensity of relationship, and a general exuberance that our own atomised, disconnected, self-obsessed society can never know.  When I first went to [a remote community in the NT] at age 22 I was stunned and amazed that people could live with such laughter and intense connection; it was a revelation.

 

At the risk of appearing foolish, let me put it like this: Perhaps the gap that needs to be closed is that between a society in which loneliness, unhappiness and alienation is an increasing problem and societies in which vitality and connection are a daily reality (yes, along with poverty, boredom and outbursts of violence).  My point is that there is no real gap; it all depends on what we are measuring - and the measurements we currently use are ethnocentric and assimilationist.

 

I like the way Mike finishes his piece by suggesting what Albo might have said, and his penultimate paragraph, articulating a vision for what the referendum could have achieved.  His final paragraph, however, might have said a little more - might have suggested how we actually get beyond the dismal "bipartisan mediocrity' of the last decade.  I'm not sure myself, but I think it might start with a celebration of everything that sets Aboriginal society apart from ours - not its negatives, but its joyous and exuberant connection.

 

Reader #2 provided the following commentary in response to Reader #1: 

Thanks [Reader#1] for copying me into such a thoughtful and considered response. Herewith a few comments on the post and your response from my perspective.

 

Regarding the Prime Minister-in a broader context I believe the whole referendum  campaign was misconceived from the outset. It’s death knell rang from the moment the PM was reduced to tears at its initial launch-political campaigns are only won when strategies are hard headed and identify and manage the risks - neither occurred in this context and wishful thinking abounded. Albanese needs to wear a fair proportion of the blame but when the true story ultimately emerges  there are a number of others who refused to accept,  let alone countenance considered advice.

 

One the key problems is that Labor came into office with only one discernible policy in Indigenous affairs that being the Voice as a miraculous instant cure all for all Indigenous and the nation’s ills. This was partly a product of their poor record in Opposition keeping the Coalition accountable over the past 10 years plus a chronic failure to develop any detailed in depth policies of their own.  As a result they assumed Office and merely maintained a business as usual approach consistent with the policies and structures adopted by the coalition via its 10 year program rather than pursue the necessary systemic reforms required. As Mike highlights this means Indigenous interests are still stuck with Coalition policies and its  government agency structures and the associated short term policy / reactive thinking - most of which continue to have proven disastrous for remote communities in particular.

 

I too have issues with the closing the gap assimilationist rhetoric but as it stands it remains the only remaining show in town- for remote communities it at least opens the door to press  governments to adopt an approach that commits priority resources to those areas of greatest need which are disproportionately in remote Australia -- as it stands the results of the virtual dismembering of programs by previous governments  such as CDEP, remote housing , outstation support and education have been a disaster for remote communities and are all currently on show by way of their virtual abandonment by government and the results and human suffering on display both in towns like Alice and so many remote communities. Other factors such as the negative impacts of social media, modernity and loss of agency in general are all adding other dimensions to this equation. When combined they act together effectively undermine and disrupt / displace traditional culture.

 

I responded to Reader #1 as follows (edited to remove less important points):

Thanks for your considered response!... One of the purposes of my blog is not so much to persuade people to my view, as to persuade them to think harder about the complexity of the policy issues involved, especially related to remote Australia.

 

I have set out some responses below. I do however feel that too much of the public discussion on Indigenous policy is undertaken within rather narrow and informal parameters, and often it is narrow cast to specific cohorts of recipients who do not speak to one another...hence my gratitude for receiving your own well informed and insightful views.

 

I don’t disagree with your assessment of Albanese, however I was pointing to this notion - that I consider to be deeply embedded in the way we think about these issues -  that the world can be split into two separate and cleanly divided parts, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, and hinting or suggesting that it is a key reason why mainstream Australians essentially decided that it was not their business, and they didn’t need to support it...

 

I agree that there shouldn’t be more promises that won’t be kept. And I see the logic in now taking stock following the defeat of a referendum without a plan B...When you are in a hole stop digging...My perspective however is that the whole policy edifice of the government should have been more than just one proposal, and secondly, they might have openly and actively engaged with the community (black and white) about what their policy approach beyond the Voice should be from the date of their election...in short, a smart government avoids the holes in the first place...

 

Your views about closing the gap are extraordinarily relevant, particularly for remote communities, and particularly in relation to the threat of imposed assimilation...moreover, the original closing the gap architecture was not well designed, and the Morrison refresh and current version (done supposedly in partnership with the Peaks) even less well designed...I agree that Nugget would likely be a vehement critic...and it seems that even on its own terms, the closing the gap process is unlikely to work...I do take a different view from you on the utility of a negative lens ... I agree wholeheartedly that Aboriginal communities can exude remarkable positives that are easily overlooked by outsiders and policymakers....unfortunately, a complex and insidious web of grog, drugs, anomie, the onset of modernity, coercive and at times racist policy assumptions, plus a deep-seated lack of inclusion and investment by mainstream institutions has taken a huge toll....many of my blog posts on remote Australia emphasise these negatives not because I see Indigenous society as innately negative or deficient but because a child suffering violent abuse or neglect or FASD or who cannot read and write will not have the opportunities she deserves (many of which include the positive experiences you refer to)...I see policymakers as responsible for these shortcomings, not Indigenous people...

 

[In relation to the suggestion that the gap does not exist] I disagree with you at the margin....there is a gap, but in remote communities it is qualitatively different than in non-remote, and requires different solutions, ideally which involve codesign and partnership with communities themselves....

[In relation to saying more about the policy solutions]...My intuition is that Indigenous interests have to develop an independent advocacy capability and capacity beyond the reach of government co-option.

  

Conclusion

It strikes me that the perspectives of the two readers, each of which have considerable merit, along with my response to reader #1, together demonstrate just how complicated it is to first reach a consensus on what are policy priorities, and second to determine appropriate policy responses across the breadth of the Indigenous policy domain. Yet our public discourse on Indigenous affairs generally, and Indigenous policy in particular, seems quite limited and narrow.

 

There is a deficit in the quality of public discourse on these issues, especially in relation to remote communities. This deficit is not without real world implications: it leads to deep-seated reluctance to address policy complexity in public discourse, and allows simplistic ideas and approaches to gain traction without serious public analysis and critique. This is the ecosystem in which promises are made, expectations raised, and re-raised , and re-raised again, without any government official ever taking responsibility for the absence of tangible action and the concomitant outcomes of legitimate expectations being left unaddressed, and promises breached.

 

While we all have a responsibility (at least in my view) to seek to improve the quality of public discourse on these issues, Ministers in particular have a responsibility to engage with the community at a level of sophistication that is almost entirely absent from public discussion. When was the last time we have seen a minister identify in a spirit of dialogue with the community, potential policy options, rather than making specific promises? We need more of the former and less of the latter. In turn, engaged advocates must increase the demand for greater policy sophistication (particularly in an age of codesign and partnership) if they expect the supply to increase. We have now reached a meta-state in which governments of all shades promise to have a policy, and then fail to deliver.

 

 9 January 2024