A steep climb ahead

 

O constancy, be strong upon my side,
Set a huge mountain 'tween my heart and tongue!
I have a man's mind, but a woman's might.

Julius Ceasar, Act 2, sc. 4

 

This post is largely for the record, and links to a recent publication in Inside Story (link here) titled A steep climb ahead, but the landscape has become clearer for Closing the Gap. The article seeks to assess the likely outcomes of the recent negotiations to refresh the Closing the Gap targets, adopting a wider than usual analytic frame of reference.

 

The title reflects my ambivalence insofar as the new National Agreement lays the foundations for a substantial move beyond the structural status quo, but governments have a record of actively preferring stasis to reform.

 

A key issue mentioned, but not deeply analysed is the pre-existing and long-term trend of the Commonwealth shifting policy responsibility for Indigenous policy to the states wherever possible; and where not possible, to mainstream programs. This topic deserves further analysis.

 

Finally, given this post is focussed on milestones, it is worth recording that this is the two hundredth post since December 2015, an average of around 40 per annum. I took the opportunity of re-reading my first post on the subject of 'COAG and Indigenous affairs policy' (link here), and thought that post's last paragraph bears repeating, as it appears to be of continuing relevance:

 

Prime Ministers are known to ask trusted experts and advisers “what are the two or three things I should do in the Indigenous policy area?” My unequivocal answer to that hypothetical question would be as follows: to replace ideology and rhetoric with substance, place a focus on policy over politics in decision-making, listen to local and regional voices, accept the inevitability of diversity amongst Indigenous interests, and put as much focus on policy implementation as on policy development, and thereby provide real, substantive and innovative leadership to the nation as a whole. The Prime Minister’s first COAG meeting falls short of this benchmark.

Indigenous turnout in the NT election: wider implications

 

Counting is still underway in the NT following last weekend’s election. It is clear that Labor retained Government albeit with a diminished majority, but a number of seats remain in doubt with extremely close two party counts yet to be finalised.

 

At least five of the 25 seats in the Legislative Assembly appear to have been won by Indigenous candidates: Lawrence Costa (ALP) in Arafura; Selena Uibo (ALP) in Arnhem, Chancey Paech (ALP) in Gwoja, Ngaree Ah Kit (ALP) in Karama, and Yingiya Mark Guyula (Independent) in Mulka. This compares with six Indigenous members in the Assembly elected in 2016.

 

One of the concerning issues relating to the NT election is the poor turnout of Aboriginal voters in the bush.

 

The following discussion is not framed as a conclusive analysis, but rather as a provisional assessment. Its intention is to stimulate a more rigorous and demographically sophisticated assessment either by the NT Electoral Commission itself, by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), by independent researchers who specialise in these issues, and perhaps most importantly, buy the respective parliaments in Canberra and Darwin.

 

The NT Electoral Commission website includes a table summarising first preference votes by division (electorates) which lists total enrolment and voting figures (link here). It identifies the total enrolment across all 25 divisions as 135,506, and total votes lodged as 100, 304; a turnout of 74 percent across the NT.

 

The seven bush electorates (Arafura, Arnhem, Barkly, Daly, Gwoja, Mulka, Namatjira) with high concentrations of Indigenous citizens of voting age had a total enrolment of 39, 091, with only 22, 624 votes cast; a turnout of 58 percent. A similar calculation for the 2016 election revealed a turnout in the bush electorates of 60 percent (noting that there have been changes to the names, and perhaps boundaries, of the relevant divisions in the intervening period).

 

These figures raise uncomfortable questions regarding the efficacy of our democratic institutions in representing the populace at large, and particularly the remote bush population in the NT.

 

One threshold issue relates to the issue of potential under-enrolment of Indigenous citizens. The enrolment figures cited above include Indigenous and non-Indigenous citizens. If we were to assume that 20 percent of enrolments in the bush electorate are non-Indigenous, this would suggest an Indigenous enrolment of around 31,000. Based on an analysis of the 2016 census by CAEPR researchers Francis Markham and Nick Biddle, (link here), there would appear to be around 53,000 remote Indigenous residents in the NT (see Table 6). If we were to assume that around 20 percent were below voting age (see Table 3) then we have a potential Indigenous enrolment of 43,000 across the NT bush electorates. In other words, these calculations suggest an unenrolled population of around 12,000 remote Indigenous citizens in the NT. Clearly these figures are rough and ready, but they do suggest that there is both an enrolment gap and a voting gap in the NT.

 

So what are the potential causes of these gaps?

 

I don’t propose to delve too deeply, but instead, aim to identify and unravel some of the potential causes, and explore the implications. Finally, I want to suggest a potential path for taking the issue forward.

 

In relation to Indigenous electoral education, the NT Electoral Commission appears to have a modest program of optional activities focussed on schools and community groups (link here).  The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has a program, the Indigenous Electoral Participation Program (link here) which works through community partnerships.  The AEC website states that the program was established in 2010 ‘to close the gap in Indigenous disadvantage in electoral participation’. In a document available on the AEC website titled IEPP Program Overviews 2018-2021 (link here), the AEC repeatedly references its ‘limited resources’ and limited capability. The document notes (p.4):

 

Working through community organisations, Commonwealth, State and Local Government entities, and other service providers to promote and distribute information on recruitment opportunities and electoral education, the AEC will be able to reach deep into communities where current resources cannot extend. [emphasis added]

To deliver this strategy the AEC will require a mix of capabilities. Direct engagement with Indigenous communities to understand and educate people about the electoral process will still be a requisite capability however this activity will be limited under the new model. [emphasis in the original].

 

Clearly the limited quantum of resources are an issue. ANU political scientist Will Sanders, writing in Marian Sawer’s edited collection Elections Full Free and Fair (Federation Press) in 2001, noted that by 1974, around one in two Aboriginal citizens in the NT were enrolled, and outlined the short history of the Aboriginal and Islander Electoral Information Service (AIEIS) which emerged following an infamous election in the Kimberley in 1977. Upon the election of the Howard Government in 1996, the AIEIS was abolished without consultation with the AEC and AEC funding for Indigenous education cut. Sanders noted (p. 166):

 

The program, which had been gradually developing and building up since 1979 and had had four positive review by 1995, was simply terminated.

 

The AEC has struggled ever since to revive an effective Indigenous enrolment and election education capability.

 

In relation to the potential reasons for extremely low enrolment levels and voter turnout, a number of hypotheses spring to mind.

 

People in remote communities have tuned out.

 

In an episode of The Drum on ABC TV in the week before the NT election (link here), NLC CEO (and former Deputy Chief Minister of the NT), Marion Scrymgour mentioned the likelihood of very low turnouts in the bush and suggested that people in the bush were effectively voting with their feet. In particular, she mentioned overcrowded housing, poor access to services, and high food prices as ongoing issues that successive governments talked about but failed to fix.

 

Social media

 

There is a considerable literature emerging related to the use of social media in remote Indigenous communities. However, I have been unable to find research which examines the potential impact of intense engagement with social media in many remote locations on levels of interest and engagement with broader political and policy issues within national and state/territory jurisdictions. My hypothesis is that intense social media use effectively crowds out use of alternative and mainstream media, and leads to significant reductions in interest in political developments in the metropolitan capital, and perhaps much greater focus on personality politics (admittedly, something difficult to ignore in the NT given the small size of all electorates). In the 2018 report by Bronwen Carlson and Ryan Frazer Social Media Mob: Being Indigenous Online (link here), there is a description (p.8) of intense social media use in a remote South Australian community which describes ways in which social media tools have been re-oriented to culturally relevant tasks and concerns.

 

Cultural concerns and local politics dominate

 

A third hypothesis (that may be reinforced by the social media factor above) is that the strength of local cultural and political concerns within small scale and closely networked societies with limited and comparatively weaker external connections to larger centres may operate to reduce the relevance of and interest in voting, electoral participation, and political engagement more generally.

 

Conclusions

 

The low levels of electoral participation in the recent NT election signal a deep and deepening disengagement between mainstream Australia and remote Indigenous communities.

 

This disengagement is paralleled by the low levels of Indigenous engagement in education; by the high levels of unemployment and under-employment; by the fraught and punitive operations of the income support program across remote Australia; and by the extraordinarily high levels of incarceration of remote community members (particularly young adult males). This deep disengagement signals extremely low levels of alignment between mainstream and remote community norms, and threatens social cohesion both now and into the future.

 

Each of these areas of disengagement has serious repercussions for Indigenous citizens and their families, but also for mainstream Australia’s ability to operate as an inclusive society.

 

The strengthening disengagement of remote communities from the mainstream electoral system is of particular concern. It threatens the process of reconciliation within the nation. It both undermines the legitimacy of our systems of governance to elect governments that represent and speak for all citizens, and it reinforces the voicelessness of a significant segment of the remote population in the decision-making processes that ultimately affect their livelihoods and opportunities.

 

There is clearly a case for a much more rigorous examination of the issue of electoral participation nationally by remote Indigenous citizens. The obvious option would be a comprehensive Parliamentary Inquiry. While it may seem like an issue for the NT Legislative Assembly, I would suggest that these issues are likely to exist in jurisdictions beyond the NT, and will be present (albeit in diluted form) in Federal elections. They may also be an issue in Local Government elections. Accordingly, there would appear to be a case for the Australian Parliament to initiate a comprehensive inquiry. Any such inquiry would be greatly assisted by commissioning a comprehensive program of independent research and analysis.

 

Finally, the Australian Government has established a process to examine options for an Indigenous Voice (link here). While we are not privy to the status of those discussions, one of the likely options the various advisory groups will consider will be elected models. In this context, it will be important to understand the underlying drivers of electoral disengagement in remote communities, as there will be a risk that disengagement with mainstream politics in those communities will spill over into the processes involved with any proposal for an elected Voice. Of course, whether an elected Voice should be comprised of elected members is a complex issue, and I am presently far from persuaded that it is the best approach. This is an issue for another day.

All hands on deck: a jobs guarantee and First Nations

 

 

Apologies for the five week interregnum. A bout of flu (I tested negative!), and other research and family priorities meant a loss of momentum.

 

Today, Inside Story published a short article of mine on Noel Pearson’s proposal for a universal job guarantee (link here). While I have not always fully agreed with Pearson’s policy proposals, I have always admired his vision, his analytical approach, and his unerring focus on issues that matter. The policy issues around  employment and underemployment are one of the five most important policy challenges facing First Nations, and should be one of the major policy priorities for mainstream policymakers.

 

Pearson’s ideas on employment and a universal jobs guarantee deserve to be the subject of ongoing advocacy and development by all Australians concerned about the future shape of our nation.

 

Amongst the issues requiring further analysis and consideration, and only hinted at in my article, are the implications of the demographic and cultural heterogeneity of remote Indigenous populations, and in particular, the need for any jobs guarantee scheme (particularly if it is a universal scheme) to be implemented rigorously yet in accordance with Indigenous priorities and cultural norms.

Indigenous evaluation: selected links

   

His promises were as he then was, mighty,

But his performance, as he is now, nothing.

Henry VIII, Act 4, scene 2.

The Productivity Commission has recently published its draft report on Indigenous Evaluation, and is seeking further submissions by 3 August from the public.

I thought it timely to post links to the PC document, and to a few documents I have authored in relation to the topic of Indigenous evaluation. I wont add further commentary here; the documents speak for themselves.

Link to a previous post, ‘Marshmallow and Fudge: evaluation and the Indigenous policy domain’, here

Link to the Productivity Commission Draft Report on Indigenous evaluation here. The final report is due by the end of the year.

Link to my initial submission to the Productivity Commission here

Link to my recent evaluation policy insights paper on the CAEPR website here. It is titled Evaluation and review as drivers of reform in the Indigenous policy domain.

From the Abstract:

This Policy Insights Paper seeks to assess the influence of evaluation and review in influencing policy in the Indigenous affairs policy domain. The paper examines four high-level case studies of strategically significant policy issues within the Indigenous policy domain to assess the impact of evaluation in driving reform over time. 

Vale John Ah Kit

I woke this morning to the very sad news that John Ah Kit had died over the weekend in Darwin. My relationship with Jack was primarily professional, as I served as his department CEO from 2002 to 2005. We had crossed paths many times previously going back to the early 1980s when he worked as the CEO of the Northern Land Council and I was working for the Central Land Council.

Both the ABC (link here) and the Guardian (link here) have stories celebrating his life, his many admirable personal qualities and noting his pathbreaking achievements across four decades. I concur with their assessments.

As usual, I went for a walk this morning. In soft rain, I found my rhythm, and my mind turned to Jack and what his life meant and continues to mean. I remembered the times we had spent together, both relaxed and enjoyable, and stressful and pressured, as we grappled with the multiple issues that inevitably confront a cabinet minister in the NT. Others knew him better, spent more time with him, and are undoubtedly better qualified than me to comment on his life.

Nevertheless, I think there are some insights that I observed over the years working with him that are worth sharing.

He had an insatiable capacity to put his ear to the ground. He always knew what was happening from a community perspective, and he brought that knowledge to bear in his policy decisions. He understood intuitively that top down policymaking was inadequate in addressing Indigenous aspirations and policy challenges. 

He also understood the value of organised action in exerting influence. He had been a key player in the 1980s in developing the Federation of Land Councils, a loose alliance of Indigenous land councils that spent a lot of time lobbying the Federal Government on national land rights issues, and created the momentum that ultimately led to the High Court recognising the existence of native title in the Mabo Case.

These qualities and perspectives made him a formidable political operator (in the best sense of the word), someone who could find solutions to tricky issues, who was prepared to drive for substantive reform and tangible policies, and who understood that compromise with progress was preferable to ideology with stasis.

The sadness I feel for his passing relates to his personal qualities: his innate decency and lively good humour, and so much more. However, his enduring contribution to Territory and indeed Australian public policy is to be found in the institutional frameworks he was instrumental in improving as a key member of a reformist Labor Government out of power for over 20 years. And perhaps most importantly, in the track he carved that has created a much more inclusive environment in Territory politics than existed before he arrived. 

The full and considered history of those times is yet to be written. When it is, John Ah Kit will be recognised as a pathbreaking reformer and contributor to shifting the Territory into the 21st century.

Joint sovereignty: is the tide coming in?

There is a tide in the affairs of men…

Julius Caesar Act 4, scene 3

The New York Times reports on the recent US Supreme Court decision in McGirt v Oklahoma relating to Treaty rights in Oklahoma (link here) which appears to confirm the ongoing operation of native American sovereignty over Native Americans residing in much of eastern Oklahoma. I recommend readers look at the report in full.

The Times report summarised the core of the case as follows:

The court’s decision means that Indigenous people who commit crimes on the eastern Oklahoma reservation, which includes much of Tulsa, cannot be prosecuted by state or local law enforcement, and must instead face justice in tribal or federal courts.

The rationale for the majority decision boils down to a decision that Congress should be required to uphold promises made. The NY Times reports states, inter alia,

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, a Westerner who has sided with tribes in previous cases and joined the court’s more liberal members to form the majority, said that Congress had granted the Creek a reservation, and that the United States needed to abide by its promises.

“Today we are asked whether the land these treaties promised remains an Indian reservation for purposes of federal criminal law,” Justice Gorsuch wrote in the majority opinion. “Because Congress has not said otherwise, we hold the government to its word.”

The case raises the obvious question for Australian readers: what does this mean for Indigenous rights in Australia?

The short answer is ‘very little’. In Australia, we do not have formal treaties, and nor did past Governments make formal and legally enforceable promises.

There are however in my view at least two broad implications for Australian policymakers to seriously consider.

First, the decision does however create yet another north American precedent of the legal system (in this case the highest court in the USA) acknowledging the legitimacy of recognising Indigenous sovereignty albeit constrained by the terms of the original Congressional commitments. 

Australian policymakers appear set on a course of resisting any substantive reform notwithstanding the huge accumulation of evidence that Indigenous citizens are the subject of structurally exclusionary policies.

Second, the decision appears to acknowledge and recognise the reality and indeed desirability of joint sovereignty in Oklahoma and by virtue of this perhaps more widely in the future. Neil Westbury and I explored the concept of joint sovereignty as a potential way forward in the Australian context in our 2019 Policy Insights Paper Overcoming Indigenous Exclusion (available online here).

Indigenous representation in the APS: more talk

I praise God for you sir: your reasons …have been sharp and sententious, pleasant without scurrility, witty without affection, audacious without impudency, learned without opinion, and strange without heresy.

                     Love’s Labour Lost, Act 5, Scene 1.

The Australian Public Service Commission last week released the Commonwealth Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Workforce Strategy 2020-2024 (link here). The core objectives of the Strategy are laid out in the text below (graphics removed):

Overall Commonwealth workforce representation targets

The Commonwealth aspires to achieve a stretch target of 3 per cent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employee representation for the Senior Executive Service by 2024, the final year of the Strategy.

To achieve the desired outcome, the Commonwealth should aim to invest in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representation at the APS 4 to APS 6 levels (or equivalent) to 5 per cent by the end of 2022, this will help build the pipeline; and representation of 5 per cent at the Executive Levels 1 and 2 by the end of 2024.

Initially this will be achieved through targeted recruitment with a longer term focus on developing employees within the public sector to enable promotion into the more senior roles.

Commonwealth stretch targets

Portfolio workforce representation targets

To support the Commonwealth in building the talent pipeline, each portfolio should aim to achieve a stretch target of 3 per cent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander representation  at each classification level in their workforce by 2024, the final year of the Strategy.

The Mandarin reported on the release of the Strategy (link here) and quoted the Public Service Commissioner, Peter Woolcott as saying the plan would set the direction for all employers across the Commonwealth, and would ‘accelerate improvements in closing the gap in social and economic outcomes between Indigenous Australians and non-Indigenous Australians’ by building on the achievements of the previous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment strategy. Unfortunately, the new strategy provides no contextual data to assist in identifying and fleshing out the ‘achievements’ of the previous strategy.

About 15 months ago, I commented on the desultory progress in reflecting the demographic composition of First Nations within the APS, particularly at SES levels. My post, titled Indigenous Employment in the APS: a policy recommendation can be found here. I argued there that what was required was a Prime Ministerial commitment to doubling the Indigenous representation in the SES within four years. Such a commitment would send the required message to Departmental Secretaries who are the key decisionmakers on SES appointments.

The present strategy adopts a rather different approach, although it appears similar to the untrained eye. It has the backing of the Public Service Commissioner and the Minister for Indigenous Australians, but relies on something termed ‘stretch targets’. A target is not a commitment, and a stretch target is a target that we acknowledge up front will be extremely difficult to attain.

Of course, targets without resources and /or incentives are unlikely to be met. I see little in the way of extra resources for the APS to prioritise these targets over the multiple other challenges they face, nor do I see persuasive incentives in place pushing agencies to take the decisive action that will be required to meet these targets. Further, while the notion of a pipeline from EL1 and EL2 levels into the SES makes intuitive sense, the reality is that there is not enough time in a four year strategy for this to have anything more than a marginal impact on SES levels of representation.

My conclusion is that this new strategy is more about rhetoric more than reality. For comparison, look to New Zealand where agency heads have been given legislative requirements to support Maori leadership within the public service (see my earlier post on New Zealand public sector reform here).

It is also worth reminding ourselves that less than a year ago, the Government published the Thodey Review and its response. It landed with a resounding silence. My assessment of the implications of the Thodey Review for Indigenous Australians can be found here…it is salient that Thodey said very little specific regarding Indigenous representation within the SES, and the Government walked away from anything which appeared to challenge the status quo. As a result there is no cross reference in the recently released workforce strategy. More significantly, the underlying message to agencies and their leadership was that Indigenous issues are not the priority. In that sense, the current Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Workforce Strategy can be seen as entirely aligned with the status quo: all talk but little action.