A counter-intuitive proposal to expand rooftop solar in the bush

 

The self-same sun that shines upon his court

Hides not his visage from our cottage but

Looks on all alike.

The Winter’s Tale Act four, Scene four.

 

My previous post was essentially a high-level review of an excellent book titled Guide to Housing and Infrastructure Standards in Town Camps (link here). I recommend readers peruse that post before reading this post.

In this post, I delve a bit deeper into just one of the thirty essential services issues addressed by the Guide — the under-reliance on rooftop solar power in remote communities — and make a high-level policy proposal to break the current structural deadlock that contributes to energy insecurity, poor health, and the sheer liveability of remote community housing infrastructure.  

The Guide’s analysis of rooftop solar

The Guide (section 2.28 on pp. 148 – 151) identifies solar energy as one of the thirty issues it deals with. The Problem is identified as energy insecurity. The combination of temperature extremes, poor housing design, associated high demand for electricity, in a context of high reliance on prepayment meters amongst town camp residents leads to high levels of energy insecurity. The Guide references academic research to report on extraordinary rates of multiple power disconnection events affecting 91 percent of prepayment meter households across the NT (link here). Under Regulations, the Guide notes inter alia that the payback term for installed rooftop systems is often less than five years, and suggests that the introduction of rooftop solar systems could be the key to climate proofing homes in Aboriginal Town Camps (link here). Under Solutions, the Guide points out that while the upfront costs of incorporating solar energy systems into community and housing infrastructure has often been used as an excuse for not installing them, it calculates for one town camp that the payback period from installation would be four years, and points to the additional benefit of reduced health costs arising from avoiding the adverse implications of temperature extremes.

The Guide backs up this analysis with an aerial photo of a town camp showing nine houses, with no obvious solar alignment, and with no use of solar panels: the heading is Roof-top Solar Panels are not often used in Town Camps. On the facing page is an aerial photo of 23 houses in Alice Springs, of which 16 appear to be utilising solar panels. Furthermore, it is striking that the houses are all solar aligned to maximise the benefits of solar radiation in winter and minimise costs and radiation in summer. The Heading is Roof-top Solar Panels and Solar Oriented Houses in Alice Springs.

Subsequent sections in the Guide deal with the related issues of Passive Cooling and Heating, and the use of Outdoor Rooms and Courtyards.

In a rapidly warming world, the importance of addressing these issues is inarguable. Yet very few people would be aware or conscious of the fact that there are systemic disparities between the way mainstream and Aboriginal communities are designed and operate in relation to these issues. The consequences for communities are both real and deeply unfair. The degree of unfairness is magnified when it is recognised that over the past decade there have been substantial subsidies available to homeowners designed to encourage the take up of rooftop solar infrastructure, but that social housing ‘owners’ (ie governments) have not seen fit to invest in installation of rooftop solar on public housing in the NT — and I suspect elsewhere. The levels of recognition amongst policymakers and the informed public of the degree of inequity and unfairness in solar provision appears to be close to zero.

Again, as pointed out in my previous post, the policy context is complex, but it is not beyond the technical capacity of governments to address. It does however appear to be beyond their political and policy capacity, even in circumstances where addressing the issues would harvest both financial and social benefits for disadvantaged First Nations communities and for society as a whole.

Given the lack of proactivity from governments on the issue of energy insecurity for remote community residents, it struck me that an alternative approach might pay dividends (so to speak).

A strategic reform proposal

The relatively new NT Aboriginal Investment Corporation (NTAIC) which has adopted the name Aboriginal Investment NT: (link here).  I have opted to use the name used in the legislation that establishes the entity. NTAIC is a Commonwealth statutory corporation established to administer a proportion of ABA funds. I was one of a number of critics of the design of this entity when it was first proposed in late 2021 (link here). While I am yet to be persuaded that I was wrong, the establishment of NTAIC provides a degree of Indigenous agency over the allocation of significant ABA funds which are broadly designated as being for the benefit of Aboriginal people across the Northern Territory.

My proposal (for the NT) is that NTAIC should consider initiating negotiations with the NT Government based on an offer to assist in accelerating the take up of roof top solar across remote community housing in the NT. Almost all remote community housing is social housing managed by the NTG. While arguably the responsibility for rolling out roof-top solar across remote communities belongs to the NTG, it is a responsibility that is patently not being implemented. Moreover, due to the systemic incentives in play which shape the allocation of scarce government funding, the NTG is unlikely to unilaterally initiate the roll out of roof top solar over remote community housing anytime soon.

Given this context, the NTAIC might offer to fund a significant proportion (or even all) of the capital costs of a multi-year roof-top solar installation program on the condition that the NTG commits to the ongoing maintenance of the infrastructure along with the associated repairs and maintenance of the social housing assets. A second and crucial component of any such deal would be a commitment that the financial benefits in terms of lower power costs of the installation of rooftop solar would accrue to the householder and the local community. Such an arrangement would appear to fit squarely within the statutory functions of NTAIC as laid out in section 65BB of the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (link here). While it is not entirely clear to me whether this fits within the NTAIC current Strategic Investment Plan (link here), this need not be an absolute barrier to initiating good and common sense ideas.

The same model might be explored across WA, QLD, SA, and indeed the NT by Indigenous Business Australia (IBA), or in the NT potentially by NTAIC and IBA jointly. I acknowledge that the negotiation of a pure funding transfer with state and territory jurisdictions may not fall directly within the remit of IBA (see sections 147/148 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Act 2005: link here). However, if developed along with arrangements for the utilisation of Indigenous firms to install and maintain infrastructure on behalf of these jurisdictions, the proposal could be easily brought within he IBA remit. This constraint would not apply to NTAIC in the NT, but would nevertheless be worth considering in any case.

I understand that this idea is counterintuitive insofar as it lacks a commercial rationale and may also appear to undermine the responsibilities of the relevant governments to provide and pay for social housing. However, when governments are not delivering on their responsibilities, and thus failing in their raison d’etre, and as a consequence Indigenous people are worse off than they should be, it seems to me that there is a case for Indigenous leaders appointed to roles on boards such as NTAIC and IBA to take action. While there is not a commercial return to the potential funders under my proposal (ie NTAIC and/or IBA), there is clearly a strong economic rationale.

The findings of the Guide discussed above that roof-top solar effectively pays for itself within 3 to 5 years (let’s say five years for simplicity) in effect tells us that there is a rate of return on the investment of at least 20 percent. I venture to say that NTAIC and IBA would struggle to identify any other broad scale placed base initiative across remote Australia that could match this return on investment.

The sticking point will be the definition of ‘investment’. It turns upon the difference between a commercial return (where the financial returns accrue to the investor) and an economic return where the financial returns accrue to the householder. Bearing in mind that both NTAIC and IBA are Commonwealth corporations utilising what are effectively public funds to operate, it strikes me that they should decide whether they exist merely  to beef up their own bottom lines, or to address the financial exclusion of a swathe of disadvantaged Indigenous communities. My point is strengthened when we take into account the positive externalities of addressing energy insecurity earlier rather than later, in terms of improved health, improved food security, and poverty mitigation.  

The proposal I have made has the potential to drive tangible increases in real incomes for remote families and thus deliver myriad financial and health benefits for thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander residents of the north. Moreover, the adoption of my proposal by NTAIC and/or IBA would mean that action is initiated much sooner on what would necessarily be a multiyear effort and would ensure that governments would eventually accept that they had the responsibility to replace roof top solar infrastructure as it reached its end of life as a normal part of social housing provision.

Of course, a potential argument against my proposal is that it implicitly means that other opportunities will not be funded. If so, I suggest that the responsibility falls to NTAIC and IBA to identify just what those higher priorities are. One way of mitigating this consequence, and simultaneously driving further strategic change aimed at underming structural inequity, would be for the NTAIC and/or IBA to seek to have the NAIF provide concessional finance to assist in financing their contributions. See my recnt post on the NAIF (link here).

Conclusion

We hear a lot about self-determination, and Indigenous leadership as the prerequisite for effective policy outcomes. It strikes me that the opportunity to drive a major upgrade of rooftop solar across remote communities presents the boards of NTAIC and of the IBA with a once in a generation fork in the road: they either take the initiative to drive strategic change or they accept that failing governments should be left to continue to fail remote Indigenous communities.

The evidence of egregious and myriad policy exclusion by governments is inexorably accumulating. It is incontrovertible that remote communities have unequal access to essential services and are at greater risk arising from energy insecurity in a warming world. Governments, and our system of politics and policy development, have failed because they design and implement exclusionary policy frameworks which treat remote community and town camp residents worse than the residents of major urban centres. In these circumstances, the NTAIC and the IBA should step up and use their undoubted financial leverage to drive strategic policy reform.

 

Further reading:

Longden, T., Quilty, S., Riley, B. et al. Energy insecurity during temperature extremes in remote Australia. Nat Energy 7, 43–54 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-021-00942-  (link here).

 

Solar solutions could be the key to climate-proofing homes in Aboriginal town camps By Stephanie Boltje, The Drum  (link here).

 

18 December 2024

 

A shaft of sunlight: the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee 2024 Report

                                                 Men judge by the complexion of the sky

The state and inclination of the day…

King Richard II, Act 3, Scene 2.

 

The 2024 Report of the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee (link here) chaired by Jenny Macklin was released on 26 April 2024, some two weeks before the 2024 Budget is due to be delivered. In my view, this is an excellent report, extremely well argued, quite technical at times (reflecting a bias towards identifying the evidence for its recommendations), and as one might expect, encompassing an admirable mix of ambition and pragmatism.

 

The report makes 22 broad recommendations across the span of the social security policy domain, and identifies five policy priorities for 2024:

1. Substantially increase JobSeeker and related working age payments and improve the indexation arrangements for those payments.
2. Increase the rate of Commonwealth Rent Assistance.
3. Create a new employment services system to underpin the goal of full employment and ensure a more positive focus on supporting Australians seeking work.
4. Implement a national early childhood development system that is available to every child, beginning with abolishing the Activity Test for the Child Care Subsidy to guarantee all children access to a minimum three days of high quality early childhood education and care (ECEC).
5. Renewing the culture and practice of the social security system to support economic inclusion and wellbeing.

 

In this post I propose to point to the areas of the report, and the specific recommendations, that have salience for First Nations policy outcomes.

 

Of course, while the reports overarching focus is on mainstream policy, it must be remembered that First Nations citizens will be impacted by mainstream policies as much as indigenous specific policies, and perhaps more so.

 

There are I think three elements of the Committee’s report with particular significance for Indigenous interests.

 

The first element relates to the Committee’s discussion of the Remote Area Allowance and recommendation 4. They base their analysis on work undertaken by Francis Markham from the ANU, and which I published a post about in February (link here). In that post, I extended the argument to argue for an overhaul of the Community Development Program, an issue that the Inclusion Committee has not addressed directly but see the second element below. The Committee recommendation states:

Recommendation 4. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) or an appropriate researcher or research centre in partnership with remote communities should be funded to undertake analysis of the additional costs of living in remote areas, but the case for an immediate increase in the Remote Area Allowance (RAA) seems particularly strong.

 

This recommendation, if adopted and implemented, would lay out in detail the case for much more targeted cost of living support for remote communities, including in relation to food security, energy costs, transport costs, and rent costs. At a strategic level, it begins the process of developing an evidence base for a more comprehensive policy approach to remote Australia, an issue I have been advocating for over 25 years.

 

The second element relates to employment services reform and is perhaps the most significant of the Economic Inclusion Committee’s recommendations for First Nations interests. The recommendation states:

Recommendation 6. The Government commit to a full-scale redesign of Australia’s employment services system by adopting the recommendations in the report from the Select Committee on Workforce Australia Employment Services. As a priority the Government should: a. Finalise an implementation plan and enact necessary legislative changes in 2024. b. Commit to a full redesign of the mutual obligations and compliance settings in the Workforce Australia system that focus on building capability and confidence to support people into work, consistent with the directions outlined in the Select Committee’s report. c. Build and refine a new practice model that genuinely meets the needs of people furthest from the labour market, including through: [details omitted; refer to page 10 of the report].

 

I published a post on the Select Committee’s report last December (link here) where I spelt out the specific elements that were of relevance to First Nations interests. I recommend readers look at that post. While the Economic Inclusion Committee has not framed its discussion and recommendation on these issues as mainstream, there are enormous, embedded implications for remote Indigenous interests, particularly in the Inclusion Committee’s comment about the needs of people furthest from the labour market. The elephant in the room here is the issue of direct employment creation by the Commonwealth. The Prime Minister in his comments upon the release of the most recent Commonwealth Closing the Gap Implementation Plan described the Community Development Program (CDP) as a failure, announced (link here) the creation of the Remote Jobs and Economic Development Program, and funding for the employment of 3000 CDP participants by organisations working in remote regions. Yet the result was to leave around 27,000 CDP participants in a ‘failed program’.

 

The third element relates to First Nations Housing, and in particular building a better evidence base for assessing both need and ongoing management of housing stock. Again, this is a hugely significant policy issue for Indigenous interests, with implications for disability policy, educational outcomes, the social determinants of health, child welfare outcomes, the prevalence of domestic violence, and not least, economic inclusion. Again, while not limited to remote Australia, it has long been clear that housing need for Indigenous interests is most acute in remote regions, not least because there is a limited private market in housing provision. The Committee’s recommendation (edited) is as follows:

Recommendation 10. The Government urgently commit substantial investment to address need in public housing and homelessness for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, including maintenance and upgrades, community infrastructure and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander housing sector.

To improve the economic efficiency of investments, the Government should fund a National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Data Register to improve data availability, quality and sharing… To better target existing investment, including from the Housing Australia Future Fund and Social Housing Accelerator Fund, the Government should: a. Negotiate improved performance reporting and data sharing within intergovernmental agreements and arrangements. b. Undertake rapid needs assessments of homelessness and overcrowding, maintenance, repair and community infrastructure requirements in remote hotspot areas. c. Commission a redesigned Community Housing Infrastructure Needs (CHINS)- like survey, which considers limitations of earlier iterations and subsequent advancements in data collection…

 

The import of this recommendation is that it explicitly focusses on establishing a much better and transparent evidence base for this most crucial area of policy. It will mean that Indigenous advocates such as the Coalition of Peaks and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Association will have the means to make a much more persuasive argument for needs based assistance into the future.

 

The Economic Inclusion Committee report appends an excellent detailed consultancy report addressing First Nations Housing issues. That report is too detailed for me to summarise here, but I commend it to readers as an excellent summary of the state of play in relation to First Nations housing policy in Australia today.

 

Conclusion

The Economic Inclusion Committee has made an excellent contribution towards sharpening the policy agenda for First Nations interests. Clearly there are a swathe of other issues of relevance to Indigenous interests that deserve attention by the Commonwealth Government. But there are limits to what governments, and their advisers, are prepared to take on and prioritise. From my perspective, I consider that the Inclusion Committee has done an excellent job in highlighting key areas that deserve prioritisation and continuing attention. Of course, the real issue will turn on what the Commonwealth Governments response will be, and whether they allocate the intellectual and financial resources to deliver on whatever commitments they do make.

 

In any case, the publication of this report provides a shaft of bright sunlight that bodes well for the days ahead.

 

26 April 2024

A strategically important remote housing initiative

 

 

Virtue is bold, and goodness never fearful

Measure for Measure Act three, Scene one.

 

The Commonwealth and NT Governments will today announce a major investment in remote housing. Prime Minister Albanese was interviewed on ABC radio (link here) and had this to say:

 

DAVID LIPSON, HOST: G'day. Welcome to AM. I'm David Lipson coming to you from Gadigal Land in Sydney. The Prime Minister is today unveiling a major boost to Indigenous housing in the Northern Territory. Along with the NT Government, $4 billion will be spent on the construction of 2,700 new homes over ten years. The aim is to halve overcrowding in Indigenous homes. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese joins me now. PM, thanks for being with us here on AM.

 

ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Good morning. Good to be with you, David.

 

LIPSON: There are 19 Closing the Gap targets. 15 of them aren't on track. Why have you made Indigenous housing a priority?

 

PRIME MINISTER: Because housing is the key to other opportunities in life. If you don't have a secure home over your head, if you have overcrowding, then you will have - not just housing problems - you'll have health problems, you'll have problems with justice issues, inevitably, that come from the tension that come from overcrowded homes and communities, and you'll have difficulty getting education. It's hard to see yourself having a greater opportunity in life if you don't have that security of a roof over your head and in a way that enables you to actually go about the other things that we need to close the gap on.

 

LIPSON: So, will $4 billion be enough to close the gap on Indigenous housing?

 

PRIME MINISTER: Look, it's a major step forward. This is a joint $4 billion announcement. It will go out at $400 million a year over ten years. It will see up to 270 homes being built each and every year. And importantly as well, the nature of how that construction occurs is important, because we're doing it through local Indigenous housing, what it will do is ensure that we can build into the agreements - skills development, apprenticeships, making sure that jobs are created as well. So, it goes hand in hand with the other work that we've done, abolishing the CDP Employment Program, to have real jobs with real wages, providing real opportunities for Indigenous people in remote communities.

 

LIPSON: I note you say up to 270 homes a year. Could it be less?

 

PRIME MINISTER: Well, we think that the costings that we've made, essentially, that that is spot on - the funding that is available. But of course, it won't be one size fits all. There'll be some homes that are just for smaller families, but homes that, by and large - it's based upon three bedroom homes, because we know that families in these remote communities tend to have numbers of children.

 

I will add links to the relevant media releases when they are up on the web.

 

The importance of investing in remote housing has long been a focus on this blog, so I was very pleased with the announcement. The Commonwealth Government is to be congratulated both for recognizing the strategic policy importance of housing to addressing so many other challenges (a point the PM made in his comments above) and for locking in the investment for ten years which both provides policy certainty and facilitates the planning that goes hand in hand with effective implementation.

 

The investment is limited to the NT where the Commonwealth has a contingent liability related to some thousands of remote houses due to the fact that the leases are held by the Commonwealth and sub-leased to the NTG. This arose because the NT Land Councils insisted in leasing negotiations that the Commonwealth should hold the leases. This has turned out to be a clever tactic as it has kept the Commonwealth engaged in the NT even while it has stepped back form investing in remote housing in the states of WA, Qld and SA. It is to be hoped that the Commonwealth announcement will put renewed pressure on these states to lift their games.

 

The key challenges for the future with this initiative will include the following issues.

 

Implementation. There are numerous moving parts to delivering infrastructure projects in remote communities, and the NTG has often made heavy going of this aspect fo program delivery. The Commonwealth will need to ensure that it is monitoring progress every step fo the way.

 

The trade-off between new housing and ongoing repairs and maintenance (R&M). The most effective way to manage the total hosing stock in remote communities is to ensure that R&M is undertaken in a timely way. In recent years, it has been apparent that the NTG has not been managing this adequately (or even at all). It will be imperative that the Commonwealth implement oversight systems to ensure this issue is given substantive attention.

 

Essential services infrastructure (water, sewerage, power, and even sealed roads) are crucial components of an effective and safe housing system. These ‘lumpy’ investments are often not prioritized by the NTG, with the result that the existing housing stock is less fit for purpose than it should be. Again, it will be important that the Commonwealth establishes the monitoring systems that identify when there are major gaps in essential services provision. The Commonwealth’s recent Closing the Gap implementation plan identified that work in relation to target 9(b) had stopped. No explanation was offered for this decision. This decision should be revisited, and at the very least an explanation offered.

 

The overarching issue that links each of these three issues is the need for adequate data. Some of it will be administrative in nature (and given the joint nature of the new program, it will be important that the Commonwealth has access to the NTG administrative data as a matter of course. But perhaps more importantly, there is a need for more authoritative data such as was once obtained from the Community Hosing and Infrastructure Survey (CHINS) that was funded and auspiced by ATSIC. It is time this was resuscitated.

 

Finally, it is worth noting the political drivers for this announcement. The NT election is due later this year, and housing is always a core issue in remote communities. At the Commonwealth level, this is the sort of announcement that would usually be included in the May budget. My guess is that the Government is keen to get on the front foot in the Indigenous policy space following the Voice defeat, and this announcement will go someway to doing that. By separating it from the budget, it ensures that the likely focus of the Budget on cost of living issues for middle Australia is not sidelined by an issue which is not front and centre in most Australians’ concerns.

 

To sum up, this is an excellent development from a government that has been struggling to find its feet on Indigenous issues. For the first time in a year, it is looking like it is being proactive and setting the policy agenda on Indigenous issues. However, there will be challenges in rolling out the program, and the Commonwealth will need to set in place an effective oversight function to ensure that’s its investment is rolled out efficiently and that the outcomes delivered are effective in addressing the widespread disadvantage that exists across remote Australia.

 

 

The High Court opens the door on the inexcusable dereliction of remote housing policy

Make the doors upon a woman's wit, and it will out at the casement; shut that, and 'twill out at the key-hole; stop that, 'twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney.

As You Like It, Act Four, scene one.

 

The recently decided High Court case of Young v Chief Executive Officer (Housing) [2023] HCA 31 (link here) turned on some relatively technical issues related to the interpretation of the compensation issues in NT statute law. There have been several media reports (link here and link here) making the point that this case has implications for tenants more broadly, representing an expansion of the onus on landlords. I don’t propose to attempt to summarise, nor discuss, those compensation issues. Instead I wish to point out some of the factual background to this litigation, and the policy implications. While this litigation related to the circumstances faced by one tenant, there are over 5000 houses managed by the CEO Housing in the NT, all of whom are subject to the same maintenance regime and levels of attention (or inattention as the case may be) as those that led to this litigation.

 

This extract from the Judgement of Gordon J and Edelman J is a good place to begin:

41 The premises leased to Ms Young were alleged to be defective in numerous respects . One respect was that for several years from the time that her tenancy commenced, the Chief Executive Officer (Housing) had failed to provide Ms Young with a back door. The absence of a back door was a significant impairment of security in circumstances where, as Ms Young described, roaming wild horses may have bent a fence around the property, and where a snake may have entered the house through a gap that was left between the door and the doorframe following the eventual installation of a back door by the Chief Executive Officer (Housing) . Ms Young was "an elderly woman who was left vulnerable to proven animal intruders and potentially human intruders" .

42 On 22 January 2016, a solicitor acting for Ms Young wrote to the Chief Executive Officer (Housing) saying that there had been no back door on the premises and that, although a mesh-steel door had been installed by Ms Young, a new door was required. More than six weeks later, in late March 2016, the Chief Executive Officer (Housing) installed a new back door .

43 In the Tribunal, Ms Young sought orders for repairs to be made to the premises, as well as a payment of compensation under s 122(1) of the Residential Tenancies Act. The Chief Executive Officer (Housing) was ordered to: refund rent of $4,735.80 for 540 days during which the premises were uninhabitable due to the lack of an air-conditioner; pay $4,000 in damages for distress arising from the associated physical inconvenience from the lack of an air-conditioner; and pay $200 in damages for the breach of its duty to repair Ms Young's stove for a period of 170 days . None of these matters was an issue on appeal to this Court. The relevant issue concerned the Tribunal's decision in relation to the failure by the Chief Executive Officer (Housing) to install a back door.

 

In The Saturday Paper, Rick Morton does an excellent job of contextualising and illustrating the bureaucratic nightmare for Ms Young that ultimately led to the High Court decision (link here). Here is an extract where Morton recounts evidence from 2019 at an earlier stage of the litigation:

Ms Young, who testified through a translator, showed that a shower and drain had been leaking for 2117 days, and that she had no back door for 2090 days and a toilet that flushed poorly and failed to clear waste for 534 days. In a community where animals roamed freely, including wild horses, the perimeter fence was bent all the way to the ground for 2328 days. Ms Young, who was in her late 70s when she brought the case, had no air-conditioner for 2121 days. Mr Conway had a home infested with insects for 1035 days and, on account of leaking water, slept in the kitchen for 1989 nights.

 

In his article Morton mentions another significant judicial win for Indigenous tenants in the NT (and potentially elsewhere):

Just weeks ago, Kelly [the solicitor for the applicants in the Yong case] had another win against the same government landlord operating the same sublet lease from the Commonwealth. The Northern Territory Supreme Court overturned a tribunal decision that found the residents of Laramba, west of Alice Springs, were not owed safe drinking water by their housing provider. Drinking water in the town contains uranium levels three times higher than the maximum for safe consumption.

 

The decision in this case has not yet been published on the NT Supreme Court web page. It does seem that there has been some action on Laramba’s water supply with the opening of a new water treatment plant in April this year (link here). Nevertheless, provision of safe water, power and sewerage remains a challenge across much of the NT (and probably also in other jurisdictions). This is particularly the case given the accelerating impacts of climate change on remote communities (link here and link here). Despite its inclusion as target #9B under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap, we don’t have good information on the status of infrastructure delivery in remote Australia (link here). In 2006 the national Community Housing and Infrastructure Needs Survey was discontinued, removing the only national and objective assessment of infrastructure shortfalls in remote communities [h/t Jon Altman]. Hopefully, with the addition of target #9B, the current federal Labor Government will do something about re-establishing the CHINS.

 

Without wishing to take issue with Morton’s overarching thesis, I do wish to outline an alternative and in my view more accurate analysis of the political and bureaucratic history that has contributed to the current deep seated crisis in remote housing provision, and the concomitant demographic implications which in turn are contributing to (but are not necessarily the major cause for) the substantial challenges in the NT’s major cities and towns related to homelessness, public drunkenness, and the appropriateness of police and private security firms responses (link here). While these issues are perhaps most visible to the national gaze in the NT, similar issues exist in other jurisdictions with remote communities. My interpretation is important because it plays into the policy solutions that are required.

 

I disagree with Morton in relation to his rolling up of remote housing issues (and the related 2008 NT local Government reforms) into the Howard Government Intervention. The two processes largely overlapped but were and remain conceptually separate. It is undoubtedly the case that in the minds of many Aboriginal residents of the NT, the two are conjoined. The motivation for the intervention was primarily to create an electoral distraction, which conveniently involved a subliminal dog whistle to the far right built around inflaming debate around allegations of child abuse and blaming Aboriginal people and communities for the dysfunction and disadvantage they suffered. It was deliberately punitive and sought to wedge the then Labor Opposition in the leadup to an election. Labor pragmatically went along with the associated legislation, including provisions that removed the application of the Racial Discrimination Act. As an aside, it is worth noting that there is no constitutional restraint on a future government acting similarly. The case for substantive constitutional reform is far from resolved, notwithstanding that it will be a generation before momentum to do so and the political will to do so might be tested.

 

Following the 2007 election, Labor was hamstrung by its lack of numbers in the Senate and so could not repeal the most egregious elements of the Intervention legislation. Instead, it sought to ameliorate the impact of its previous pragmatism by investing very considerable amounts of funding in its Stronger Futures policy (link here). Labor also pursued a range of national partnerships focussed on disadvantage in remote regions nationally, the major one being the National Partnership on Remote Indigenous Housing (NPARIH) which allocated $5.5 billion over ten years.

 

In relation to housing, Morton argues that it was the shift of responsibility for managing community housing that is at the root of the problem. He writes, quoting Ms Young’s niece:

“In this community we used to have our own – we called it the Progress Housing Association – that used to be owned and controlled within the community, by community people working together. “And now as soon as the [Northern Territory] Intervention came out, that was the one that wiped everything out.”

Following the NT Intervention, led by former prime minister John Howard and extended by his successor Kevin Rudd, the right to manage community housing was taken from residents, with an emergency lease handed to the NT government. Later, the Commonwealth convinced residents to sign over the housing stock on a 40-year lease to the federal government in exchange for maintenance and funding for repairs. They offered no alternative. As soon as the lease was signed, the Commonwealth sublet the entire arrangement to the NT government, which has had responsibility ever since.

 

In 2017, I published a post (link here) where I discussed these issues, and argued that the changes in responsibility were required because previously governments had not been prepared to provide adequate funding. Leasehold tenure was required to ensure that Governments had a legal responsibility to meet the needs of tenants. Previously, that responsibility was held by land trusts on Aboriginal land (this is still the case) and Indigenous community housing organisations (ICHOs) within communities, but tenants (and Indigenous controlled legal services) were never prepared to initiate litigation against Indigenous landlords. In that post, which was critiquing a supposedly independent review of NPARIH, I wrote (inter alia):

 

Fourth, property and tenancy management (PTM) is given a lot of attention in the report, again with virtually no data presented to back up the points made. The suggestion in section 5.1.1 that PTM was ‘sidelined’ in the early delivery of the program is mere assertion and in my view is just wrong. It ignores the fact that before the program existed, there was virtually no funding and no focus on PTM by ICHOs. The shift of responsibility to state housing authorities under the program, and the requirement for 40 year leases to underpin all investment, meant that the states were for the first time responsible for tenancy management as part of their landlord responsibilities. This was a key objective of the program, and so to argue that it was ‘sidelined’ is tendentious. The NPARIH Review of Progress (2008-2013) released in 2013 (link here) reached a different conclusion, noting that:

There has been considerable progress with property and tenancy management implementation overall, but key elements such as reformed rent setting and tenant support services have not kept pace with capital works delivery in all jurisdictions. (p.11).

Moreover, there is absolutely no mention of the current [ie LNP] Government’s decision in 2015 to cut $95m from the forward estimates for PTM (refer to para 2.15 and footnotes 28 and 29 in the recent ANAO report on the Community Development Program for the rationale for this cut; …. nor any analysis of the performance of the new Community Development Program in delivering housing repair and/or tenancy management services which was the rationale given by the Minister in Estimates in 2015 when he was queried on the cuts.

 

Rather than blaming the Intervention, or the shift to community leasing as the source of the current neglect, I would point directly at the issue of funding. Chronic under-investment by governments in remote housing has been the fundamental cause of the ongoing disadvantage confronting remote communities and has undoubtedly played a major role in contributing to chronic overcrowding, poor health, poor educational outcomes, drug abuse, domestic violence and other symptoms of fundamental dysfunction. I published an article on this issue in Inside Story some years ago (link here). I am not suggesting that housing is the magic bullet, merely that it is an essential element in addressing the deep-seated disadvantage that disproportionately targets residents of remote communities.

 

One further policy implication that deserves serious consideration by the Commonwealth and the NT Land Councils are the consequences of these decisions for dwellings and other facilities on Aboriginal land leased by traditional owners to Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal tenants.

 

The upside of these recent cases in the NT Supreme Court and the High Court is that it will force governments at both Commonwealth and state levels to reconsider the adequacy of their investment in remote housing, to revisit the split between capital and recurrent expenditures in their social hosing programs, and to think again about the benefits of providing much greater support to innovative community housing models of housing provision and management. The persistence of the late Ms Young, her community, and it must be said, her lawyers, has paid off and has delivered what may well turn out to be the most consequential policy change for remote communities in the last decade.

 

 

Disclosure: I was from 2002 to 2006 the CEO Housing in the NT. From 2008 to 2012, I was an adviser to the commonwealth minister responsible for remote housing programs.

 

7 November 2023

NIAA management of evaluation

Words are no deeds

Hamlet Act 1 scene 3

 

The Department of Finance publishes the Commonwealth Evaluation Policy on its website (link here). It is succinct and not particularly prescriptive nor onerous. It lays out key principles, and seeks to promote an evaluative culture. As part of such a culture, it notes that:

 Leadership that is positive about learning from performance monitoring and evaluation activities is a necessary condition for delivering effective outcomes and providing quality advice to Government, the Parliament and the public.

 

It goes on to lay out key elements in such leadership, including a series of governance actions which support an evaluative culture within agencies.  The Finance website also includes a toolkit which provides a detailed set of tools to assist agencies manage the evaluation process.

 

I took the opportunity over the weekend to examine the NIAA website (link here) so as to seek to understand its current approach to evaluation.

 

The NIAA website includes a section on areas of focus for the agency, and one of them is listed as Evidence and Evaluation. I set out below an extract from the relevant section of the NIAA website (link here):

Evaluations and Evidence

Evidence

The work of the National Indigenous Australians Agency is underpinned by effective data and evidence. The NIAA provides advice and information to the Minister for Indigenous Australians, the Australian Government, State and Territory governments, organisations, providers and communities to inform policy development, programs and monitoring of the effectiveness of programs for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples….

Evaluation

Evaluation helps us to gain an understanding of what works and what doesn't, for whom and why. This kind of knowledge can help us to learn and improve what we do, supporting decision-making with the best available evidence.

Evaluation is integral to continual improvement. It is not a one-off, or 'tick the box' exercise. Evaluation supports evidence-informed policy development, public accountability, learning and performance reporting. Evaluation needs to be planned across the lifecycle of a program, from the very start.

The NIAA promotes and supports a culture that focusses on evaluation and performance improvement. We do this by:

·         Providing information, support and advice that embeds the functions of evidence and evaluation into policy and program design cycles.

·         Ensuring that monitoring and evaluation priorities we support are well designed and delivered in collaboration with Indigenous Australians.

The Evaluation Framework guides the conduct and development of a stronger approach to evaluation of programs and activities under the Indigenous Advancement Strategy. The goals of the Framework are to:

·         Generate high quality evidence that is used to inform decision making.

·         Strengthen Indigenous leadership in evaluation.

·         Build capability by fostering a collaborative culture of evaluative thinking and continuous learning.

·         Emphasise collaboration and ethical ways of doing high quality evaluation at the forefront of evaluation practice in order to inform decision making.

·         Promote dialogue and deliberation to further develop the maturity of evaluation over time.

Indigenous Advancement Strategy Evaluation Work Plan 

Publication of the Evaluation Work Plan supports the commitment to transparency made in the Evaluation Framework. It provides details on evaluation activities and enabling activities that are planned, underway or completed by the NIAA.

Evaluation activities on the Work Plan are reviewed by members of the Indigenous Evaluation Committee and approved by the NIAA Executive Board.

 

The IAS evaluation work plan (link here) is dated 5 January and appears to have been substantially reconceptualised in recent times. The NIAA website describes what has occurred in the following terms:

The NIAA has moved to a dynamic version of the IAS Evaluation Work Plan to make it accessible to a broader audience, and to improve the timeliness of the information presented. Previous versions of the IAS Evaluation Work Plan (2017–18 through 2020–21) are still available.

In this dynamic version of the work plan, users can find information on past and current evaluations, and enabling activities, according to IAS Program areas in the tables below. New evaluations and enabling activities are added to the work plan as they come on line and updates to the status of evaluations are made as they progress through the different stages to completion.

 

In effect, the NIAA appear to have shifted away from an annual evaluation plan to one which is continuously updated. In effect, they have conflated two separate potential data sets. The first is the plan that has been adopted for each financial year. The second is the status report on progress against the plan, and recording of any additions and/or deletions. What is unclear or made more opaque with the new approach is the extent to which evaluations are progressing against the workplan (delays are not obvious unless you delve below the front page), how long completed and discontinued evaluations will stay listed (I would argue they should remain available for at least 5 years).

 

A closer examination of the listed evaluations in the ‘dynamic work plan’ reveals a number of issues that do not sit well with the Department of Finance advice regarding the development of an evaluation culture. For example, embedded in the descriptions of various evaluations are multiple inconsistencies and what might be described as deliberate circumlocutions. A number of evaluations have been completed, sometimes two years ago, and yet are listed as ‘publication pending’. Is this actually the case, or has a decision been taken to not publish them and quietly remove them from the work plan at some time in the future. Other evaluations have been discontinued, but without any real explanation as to why this has occurred, and whether funds were expended and evaluation activities undertaken before the discontinuation was decided upon.

 

My advice to the NIAA would be to develop a template for the evaluation workplan that lays out a consistent and comprehensive set of core information, ideally including dates evaluations were commissioned, were begun, were completed, and were published, the evaluator, a succinct description of the aim of the evaluation, and once completed, a succinct description of the results. Additionally, there seems no good reason why the cost of the evaluation is not provided, particularly as the value of any external consultancy payments would be available on the Commonwealth tender site.

 

A more important issue to my mind is that it is apparent that there are multiple evaluations of relatively insignificant programs, of virtually zero strategic significance. The standout example to my mind is the Dog Operations Unit evaluation listed as being underway. It was approved in August 2020, contract start in February 2022, and is (apparently) yet to be finalised. The evaluation description is:

NIAA funds the Northern Territory Police, Fire and Emergency Services (NTPFES) to provide a Dog Operations Unit within the community of Groote Eylandt with the aim to improve community safety and crime prevention through enhanced police capability. This evaluation will assess the design, implementation and outcomes of the Dog Operations Unit.

 

A September 2022 ABC media report suggests that the NT Police only have four dogs in their unit, and that they are based in Darwin (link here). A February 2023 media report relating to an arrest on Groote suggests that the Dog Operations Unit was deployed to Groote along with the Drone Unit and the Territory Response Unit (presumably from Darwin). Perhaps the NIAA funding has ceased. This evaluation strikes me as chopping wood for practice, and one must also ask, why is it that the NT Government is not prepared to fund the operations of a dog unit in a remote community if that is what is required. There are a host of further questions raised by this evaluation, but the bigger issue is why does the NIAA evaluation work plan include miniscule projects of zero strategic import and not larger programs such as remote housing.

 

When I checked the housing program, there is an item for remote housing:

Northern Territory Remote Housing National Partnership Agreement

Program: Program 1.5 - Remote Australia Strategies; Activity type: Evaluation strategy; Last updated: 5th October 2021; Not continuing.

The reporting framework under the National Partnership Agreement has only recently been endorsed, with further amendments expected. The four Northern Territory Land Councils have now prioritised a joint review of leasing and housing models in the Northern Territory over the evaluation strategy. The joint review will inform opportunities to improve remote housing delivery in the Northern Territory.

 

There are two evaluations listed for leasing and housing models in the Northern Territory:

Northern Australia White Paper: Land Tenure Reform Pilots

Program: Program 1.1 - Jobs, Land and Economy; Activity type: Evaluation; Contract start: May 2019; Provider: Yaran Business Services; Last updated: 4th February 2022. Publication pending:

The land tenure reform pilots measure supported a range of projects across Northern Australia to test innovation in land-based activities on the Indigenous estate that support economic development and boost investment in the north. The purpose of the evaluation is to understand the extent the measure has contributed to the goals of the Northern Australia White Paper which sets out the Government’s 20-year plan for investment and collaborative support to drive growth in Australia’s north.

Northern Australia White Paper: Township Leasing and Land Administration

Program: Program 1.1 - Jobs, Land and Economy; Activity type: Evaluation; Contract start: May 2019; Provider: Yaran Business Services; Last updated: 4th February 2022. Publication pending:

The Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act 1976 (Land Rights Act) was amended in 2006 to provide for section 19A ‘township leases’, which cover entire community areas on Aboriginal land to support economic development. Township leases can be held either by the Executive Director of Township Leasing (EDTL) on behalf of the Commonwealth or, more recently, by a local Aboriginal corporation representing traditional owners (community entity model).

The evaluation considers the communities that have taken up township leases in the Northern Territory (NT) from introduction to 2017 and how they have performed against initial expectations and policy objectives. As well as examining the direct benefits of township leasing to individual communities, the evaluation examines the extent to which township leasing provides social, cultural, economic benefits to Aboriginal peoples and communities in the NT.

 

These two evaluations appear to relate to the two evaluations apparently proposed by the NT Land Councils and focus on perfectly legitimate policy and program issues. It is unclear why they are yet to be made public. However, the fact that these are legitimate subjects for evaluation is hardly a justification for not evaluating what I understand is a four year $550m investment in remote housing in the NT by the Commonwealth (link here).

 

According to a February 2022 ANAO performance audit of remote housing in the NT (link here), by virtue of the existence of some 3500 forty year housing leases from traditional owners to the Commonwealth (which are subleased to the NTG), the Commonwealth retains an underlying interest in the majority of public housing in remote communities in the NT, which represent 59 percent of the remote housing portfolio in the NT (see para 1.23). That ANAO audit (which was not as broad as an evaluation) identified numerous shortcomings in the NIAA management of remote housing investment in the NT. The first 32 paragraphs provide a useful summary of the ANAO conclusions which are expressed in a dialect unique to the ANAO which I refer to as ‘muted bureaucratese’. I have cherry picked and reformatted a few sentences from that summary section to provide some concentrated flavour:

NIAA’s administration of funding for remote housing in the NT has been partly effective. The development of the National Partnership was partly effective. However, the National Partnership Implementation Plan has significant weaknesses, and advice to the minister did not include analysis of some of the National Partnership’s key parameters. NIAA has been partly effective in assessing the delivery of the program of works under the National Partnership. NIAA has not fully developed or implemented a risk-based approach to determining what assurance is necessary to verify the Northern Territory (NT) Government’s achievement against National Partnership targets. NIAA has been partly effective in ensuring that the National Partnership’s outcomes will be achieved. NIAA’s assessment of the delivery of capital works has been partly effective. NIAA’s assessment of the delivery of PTM services has been partly effective. NIAA does not gain assurance over the performance results reported to it by the NT Government, and has not always used the correct reporting period to assess the NT Government’s results and to recommend payments. NIAA has been partly effective in ensuring transparency about how money has been spent. However, NIAA does not have assurance that the NT Government will meet its $550 million co-contribution commitment over the life of the National Partnership. NIAA has not managed risks to the delivery of the National Partnership effectively…

 

Partly effective indeed. See my previous post on this performance audit for my own assessment (hint: it is tougher than the ANAO assessment: link here). Given these performance audit findings on what is a billion dollar joint Commonwealth / NTG investment program, and one which will necessarily continue into the future despite the time limits on the National Partnership, the case for discontinuing the proposed remote housing national partnership evaluation appears wafer thin. And this is just one of the issues embedded within the work plan.

 

Returning to the bigger picture, it is clear that the evaluations listed in the NIAA evaluation work plan raise myriad issues. One wonders whether there would be merit in undertaking a short sharp action oriented review of the management of the evaluation program by NIAA. I think it could be undertaken over ten days by a competent policy analyst.

 

The major problem with the NIAA evaluation workplan is that it provides no indication of the overall extent of the evaluations undertaken over the past three years and planned for the next three years. The result is that it is virtually impossible to assess the extent of NIAA’s evaluation efforts against the agency’s overall policy and program footprint.

 

A related issue is that there is no evidence of narrative provided to demonstrate how previous evaluations have contributed to revised or new program initiatives.

 

It is my assessment that the NIAA appears to be merely going through the motions: an evaluation framework document full of the expected rhetoric, a rather opaque Indigenous Evaluation Committee to provide independent strategic and technical advice, yet where it really counts, a ‘dynamic work plan’ replete with inconsistencies and an absence of strategic direction.

 

What is clear is that the reported budget announcement later this week of a centralised unit in Treasury to promote improved evaluation across the Commonwealth will have its work cut out in at least one area of public policy. In the meantime, it is worth remembering that the consequences of ineffective programs and policy is borne in large measure by disadvantaged citizens.