Dodge dip and dive: eight ‘data points’ on remote policy

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players

As You Like It, Act two, scene seven

 

A consistent theme on this Blog has been the social, economic and environmental crisis facing remote Australia, and in particular, remote Indigenous communities (link here, link here, link here, link here and link here).

 

It is perhaps time for me to chance my arm and lay out a high level outline of a potential policy strategy along with the accompanying rationale to address this crisis, albeit one that will take time to devise and implement, and longer to gain traction. Nevertheless, the alternative is to keep muddling on, at serious and ongoing cost to the life opportunities of the 150, 000 remote Indigenous residents across Australia.

 

Before doing so, hopefully sometime in the next month, I thought I would present a random and non-prioritised assembly of key remote ‘data points’ or markers that I have been collecting over the month or so. In laying out the data points, I will add some brief contextual commentary. My point in approaching this issue in what is a deliberately adventitious way, without suggesting an order of priority, importance or significance, is to provide a sense of the breadth and interdependence of the policy challenges facing remote Australia and its residents as well as the temporal cycles that permeate this domain.

 

I am hoping readers think about the underlying implications of each data point, but also consider what it means if the data point is replicated more widely. While it is clear that not every remote location and community faces the same circumstances, it is also clear that individual data points are replicated more widely, albeit to an unknown extent, creating notional data sets. Moreover, the interactions of the totality of different notional data sets operate are not independent or constrained, but reinforce each other in ways that resist the constrained and limited policy horizons of governments and policymakers confined by self-imposed bureaucratic silos. The implication of this insight is that policy responses must also be designed and implemented as assemblages of reinforcing initiatives.

 

Remote data points

Data point one: A recent ABC news article reports that in Halls Creek in the Kimberley region of WA, school attendance at the District High School has dropped from 38 per cent in 2021 to 26 per cent last year, compared to 80 per cent across Western Australia's public schools (link here). An earlier August 2022 ABC news article (link here) reported that the Western Australian Coroner had found that poor school attendance was a common factor in the deaths [by suicide] of young people in the town between 2012 and 2016.

 

Data point two: In 2022, ANU researchers finalised an extensive 140 page report on Groote Eylandt for the Anindilyakwa Land Council titled Social Indicators and Data Governance to Support Local Decision Making in the Groote Archipelago (link here). It is worth reading in full for the contextual background. Three sets of issues from the report caught my attention for their policy implications:

The first issue relates to overcrowding: The report notes (pages 87-88) that in 2006, 39% of the community-controlled housing stock was uninhabitable ...The number of Indigenous occupied dwellings in the Archipelago as defined by the census has increased by more than 50% over the past 15 years ….The percentage of census-identified dwellings that are overcrowded declined from 49% in 2016 to 37% in 2021 (pages 87-88). My comment: What the report does not do is to explicitly draw out the policy implications of this data. Notwithstanding the improvements over the past 15 years, overcrowding is clearly a significant issue with a third of houses overcrowded. Yet clearly the substantial investment included in the now discontinued National Partnership on Remote Indigenous Housing had a positive impact. What is unclear is whether the current NT Housing program at a considerably lower level of overall investment will have the momentum to overcome the ongoing rate of housing asset deterioration (in a worsening climate) and continue to eat into the overcrowding backlog. As an aside, the ANU report does not address the quantum and allocation of mining royalties by the ALC on Groote: in many respects, Groote is unique amongst remote communities in northern Australia, and it is the major driver of royalty equivalent payments that fund the operation of all four NT Land Councils plus the ABTA. Royalty allocation decisions are an important issue on Groote as mining will not last for ever. The allocation of royalties must be directed to capital investment (including private housing investment) rather than recurrent expenditure if it is to have a lasting impact. That is an issue for separate consideration and study.

The second issue relates to health: the Report notes (page 106) that for residents of Groote Eylandt, hospitalisation rates are higher now than 20 years ago for all leading causes, except in the case of genito-urinary diseases which includes renal failure …. Other notable increases in the rate of hospitalisation have occurred for external causes and alcohol-related diseases. The latter have been much higher over the decade 2011–2020 compared to 2001– 2010 … Intentional self-harm hospitalisations have also been much higher over the past 10 years, with the rate for females double that for males. My comment: the important, but unanswered question here is what has caused these retrograde developments. It may be a reduction in the quality of health services, but my intuition is that the problem lies more in the area of the social determinants of health.

The third issue relates to education: on school attendance, the report notes that the overall attendance rate at Groote Archipelago schools (% of those enrolled attending only some of the time) has been consistently low at 40–50% since 2011. The overall attendance level (those attending >90% of the time) has been consistently very low at <10% since 2011. In effect, this means that a large share of the current generation of school aged children have missed an effective education. My comment: this is an extraordinary indictment on the NT Government and its education policies.

 

Data point three: A recent academic article on the organisational depth, robustness and footprint of political parties in remote Australia, authored by Griffith University political scientists Duncan McDonnell and Bartholomew Stanford, titled The Party on Remote Ground: Disengaging and Disappearing? (link here and link here). This research documents the weakening and extremely thin footprint of organised political parties in remote electorates such as the Barkly in the NT and the Kimberley in WA, and points to the adverse implications for democratic participation and engagement, including amongst Indigenous citizens. My comment: what the authors don’t say, but perhaps should have, is to emphasise the crucial role of political parties in shaping public policy, and the concomitant consequence that political party remote disengagement risks exacerbating the ongoing remote policy vacuum. See the discussion in my submission to the Joint Select Committee on the Voice Referendum (#65 at link here). I previously posted on the low voting turnouts in remote Australia (link here).

 

Data point four: in a recent Submission (link here) to the Standing Committee on Community Affairs Legislation Committee Inquiry into the provisions of the Social Security (Administration) Amendments (Income Management Reform) Bill 2023, ANU researchers Matthew Gray and Rob Bray  used ABS and AIHW data to track Indigenous imprisonment rates in the NT over the past twenty years against non-Indigenous rates in the NT and nationally (see Figure 1) and Indigenous school attendance rates in the NT over the decade from 2009 to 2020 (Figure 4).

In relation to incarceration, they observe that compared to non-Indigenous adults, Indigenous imprisonment rates have dramatically widened since 2000, exceeding 2700 per 100, 0000 in 2020, up from just under 1000 per 100, 000 in 2000. Non-Indigenous incarceration rates have remained stable throughout these decades at about 200 per 100, 000.

In relation to school attendance, they report declining school attendance across the NT over the past decade, reaching mid sixty percent levels for remote schools and mid forty percent levels for very remote schools. To which I would add two comments: this data is consistent with the Groote statistics cited above, suggesting Groote is not an outlier; and second, the statistics in Figure 4 do not cite the most educationally significant data, namely, the proportion of students who attend 90 percent plus of the time. These data are consistent however with the extraordinary conclusion that a substantial proportion of remote Indigenous students over the past decade are missing out on an education, and there is no policy initiative on the horizon to suggest this will change over the coming decade.

 

Data point five: the Gray/Bray submission referred to above, along with a number of other submissions, comprehensively demonstrates that the continuation by the current Commonwealth Government of universal compulsory income management across remote communities in the NT lacks a robust evidence base. The submission points out that policy breaches Labor’s pre-election promises, and points to departmental efforts to ignore or not publish relevant data. My own comment on this situation is as follows: the underlying rationale for continuing this selective policy can only be a blunt and indirect attempt to limit expenditure on alcohol by remote residents in circumstances where the NT Government is incapable and unwilling to impose robust regulation of the alcohol sales across the NT. This policy is increasingly at risk of tipping into being racially discriminatory, as its status as a ‘special measure’ under the Racial Discrimination Act requires it to have a beneficial impact. Yet if the evidence does not support this, the ‘special measures’ rationale falls apart.

 

Data point six: a recent research publication by ANU researchers (led by my CAEPR colleague Bradley Riley) and representatives of two Central Australian Aboriginal organisations documented the impact of COVID on energy security amongst remote NT residents. Titled Disconnected during disruption: Energy insecurity of Indigenous Australian prepay customers during the COVID-19 pandemic (link here), the research reported that:

The risks associated with the regular de-energization of prepay households have long been overlooked by government reporting and this contributed to a lack of visibility of energy insecurity and available protections for this group during the pandemic response. In contrast to the rest of Australia, energy insecurity in the form of disconnections remained unrelentingly high or worsened for prepay households during this time. COVID-19 magnifies pre-existing health and socio-economic inequities. 

I have previously posted about this issue, and the potential destructive interplay of high levels of pre-pay disconnections and rising temperatures (link here). The recent publication pays particular attention to the lack of comprehensive data. The paper concludes:

While the national moratorium on disconnection provided to post pay customers during COVID-19 meant that experiences of energy insecurity decreased for most Australians, remote living Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prepay customers did not receive commensurate protections …. While there are few published metrics relating to avoiding or reducing the frequency and duration of involuntary self-disconnection events experienced by prepay customers, what data there is shows that frequent de-energization of Indigenous prepay households continued and, in many cases, worsened during the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Data point seven: In early February, the ABC had reported that ‘Data reveals 50 per cent spike in alcohol-related emergency presentations after lifting of bans in Alice Springs’ (link here). These bans related to the consumption of alcohol on town camps around Alice Springs, and numerous other remote communities.

 

On 20 April 2023, NT Chief Minister Natasha Fyles issued a media release which stated in part:

The Northern Territory Government will extend takeaway alcohol restrictions in Alice Springs. Over the past three months we have seen these alcohol restrictions work, and support our community and frontline workers. 

Alcohol-related emergency department presentations at Alice Springs Hospital have almost halved, and domestic violence has dropped by a third in the month since the takeaway alcohol restrictions were reintroduced into the Northern Territory town. 

 

While the Chief Minister appears to be shifting the narrative away from the earlier across the board alcohol bans which she initially opposed, and reluctantly agreed to re-introduce after pressure from the Commonwealth, the points to note for present purposes are first the extraordinary human toll of alcohol abuse, and second, the direct link between alcohol consumption levels and hospital presentations. The latest available published data on the NT Government website (link here) is for the fourth quarter of 2022, and indicates 1299 alcohol related hospital emergency presentations. There were a total of 4145 alcohol related emergency presentations at the Alice Springs hospital for the 2022 year. To put this in context, a 2018 Deloittes Report (link here) noted that there had been a total of 46, 785 alcohol related emergency presentations across Australia in 2016-17 (table 2.1). Clearly, alcohol abuse levels in the NT and in Alice Springs have been at extraordinary levels for a considerable time. 

 

Data point eight: on 28 April 2023 Guardian reported (link here) on the ABS release of updated socioeconomic indexes based on 2021 census data which take into account census data on income, education, occupation, housing, employment and family structure, among other factors, to rank each of Australia 547 local government areas (LGAs).  The data is used to create a score with an average of about 1,000. Lower scores indicate areas of relative disadvantage. Unsurprisingly, by my rough reckoning, the 33 most disadvantaged LGAs in Australia all have a substantial majority of Indigenous residents. Of course, even more advantaged LGAs can include pockets of extreme Indigenous disadvantage, but these index scores are moderated by the population mix within the LGA. According to the ABS, “disadvantaged areas tend to be in regional and remote communities, while advantaged areas tend to be in major cities”.

 

Conclusion

I am conscious that these random data points, and particularly the associated notional data sets, largely represent shortfalls in the performance of governments, and are biased towards issues that have received media coverage which in turn is likely to be a proxy for policy attention from governments. Issues that are in my view significant, but are not listed here, include wider health issues (including for example the long lasting effects of FASD); employment / unemployment, and in particular the interaction with the Community Development Program which delivers income support to some 35, 000 remote citizens; environmental management including the operation of Indigenous Protected Areas and ranger groups; the impact and operation of land rights and native title legislation; and issues related to commercial and economic development. Each of these policy domains along with others I have not mentioned undoubtedly interacts with and contributes to the quality of life for remote citizens, along with the policy issues I have addressed. Nor have I focussed on institutional structures such as the operations and effectiveness of Indigenous organisations, or the impact of federal governance.

 

What is clear however is that given the synergistic interactions of multiple policy domains, the current model of policy design and implementation has not worked. This raises the potentially unsettling prospect that, at a fundamental systemic level, governments and policymakers are not incentivised to take the policy decisions that are required to make a substantive difference to the policy challenges that exist. Instead they are incentivised to manage difficult issues, oil squeaky wheels, and engage in a performative ritual designed merely to persuade an electorally significant non-Indigenous constituency (and a less electorally significant, but more animated, Indigenous constituency) that they are doing what is required to address the policy challenges that surface periodically in the public consciousness.

 

A recent review of a book on Boris Johnson (link here) described his motto for governing as ‘dodge, duck, dip, dive and dodge’. As it turns out, this is an extraordinarily apt description of the systemic approach of Australian governments to remote policy challenges.

 

 

 

 

 

Anzac day 2023

                                                                         Lord, what fools these mortals be!

A Midsummer Night’s Dream,

Act 3, scene 2

 

ANZAC day is primarily an opportunity to remember those who died in the service of the Australian nation state. Lives cut short, or curtailed due to physical or mental injury, while serving in our name, deserve our deep and heartfelt gratitude.

 

Yet as I grow older, limiting our concern to those who died on active service, for one side only, seems increasingly unsatisfactory from an ethical and philosophical perspective. As weapons have become more effective, and hugely more consequential, war has increasingly become ‘total’ in its design and intent. Its impacts, and concomitant costs, economic, psychological, social and existential, increasingly extend beyond our limited ideologically shaped conceptual constructs.

 

There are at least two reasons for extending our purview.

 

First, it is increasingly apparent that the rationale for going to war is rarely straightforward, and is most often highly problematic. Nation states have become expert in devising and promoting rationales for considering war in terms of ‘defence’ or ‘justified interventions’, or as HG Wells famously argued in relation to the First World War, as ‘The war that will end war’. Yet in most if not all cases, wars arise because alternative policy options have not been adequately considered let alone taken, and invariably lead to extraordinary adversity and societal pain for all state and non-state protagonists.

 

Second, war in today’s world is never limited to combatants, and indeed, it is clear that its adverse impacts increasingly fall on non-combatants. Moreover, those impacts are potentially long-lasting both in their physical ramifications on the environment and climate, and on the lives of human beings wherever they reside on the planet.

 

It strikes me that it is time to re-assess the ideological underpinnings that support ANZAC day (and its ancillary institutions such as the Australian War Memorial).

 

For my part (and I am speaking only for myself here), limiting our concern to those who actively participate in war or preparing for war, and ignoring the impacts on non-combatants, seems increasingly less defensible. Today seems an appropriate day to remember the lives of the millions of lives lost in wars over the past century, whatever their nationality, their ethnicity, their religious faith, or indeed their ideological concerns. At its core human life is sacred and demands intelligent respect.

 

Seven years ago, I published a short post remembering the service of a Gallipoli veteran I met in Farina in South Australia in around 1974 named Ben Murray (link here). I often think of him on Anzac Day, and recommend the post and its hyperlinks to readers.

 

Today however, I wish to remember the lives of the innocent non-combatant Yiiji speaking people executed by a police party in June and July 1926 (97 years ago) at a number of locations to the west of the Forrest River Mission in the East Kimberley (link here). Much has been written about these events (too much for me to critically assess here), and the actual numbers of individuals summarily executed is indeterminate. A  Royal Commission which reported in 1927, found at least 11 people had been executed, and there are credible suggestions that the number was significantly higher.

 

A recent book by Kate Auty (O’Leary of the Underworld: the untold story of the Forrest River Massacre link here) and an earlier 2004 article in the journal Aboriginal History (Patrick Bernard O’Leary and the Forrest River massacres, Western Australia link here) make a persuasive argument that notes that the police party largely comprised former members of the Light Horse Brigades who had served at Gallipoli. Auty argues that at least one motivation was to revenge the death of a former comrade in arms named Hay who was a part owner of a block called Nulla Nulla south of the Forrest River mission. Hay was speared following an altercation with an Aboriginal man named Lumbia who he had shot with a revolver while on horseback. If Auty is correct, then their war service drew them together, and Auty argues, their perceptions of poor treatment by Government afterwards left them bitter and damaged, with appalling consequences for the Aboriginal people of the area near the Forrest River mission.

 

While the myriad issues thrown up by the Royal Commission that followed will never be determined with any certainty, what is clear is that the police party, comprising former soldiers with experience of war took with them over 500 rounds of ammunition. This patrol was just one of numerous similar police patrols that had taken place in the East Kimberley since the arrival of the pastoral industry in the 1880s. Take a moment to imagine the psychological impact on the traditional owners of the country involved. It was a dynamic that had been widely replicated across the continent since the early 1800s.

 

Without entering into the debate regarding whether Aboriginal people resisted the invasion of their countries, who can know or account for the distress, pain and suffering visited upon the Aboriginal men, women and children who were innocent bystanders to a process with implications and consequences truly beyond their comprehension, their world turned upside down.

 

Lest we forget.

[This post has been edited to correct two minor factual errors]

 

 

 

 

 

Transparency and the Voice: a submission to the Joint Select Committee

                                                             Look like the innocent flower, 

but be the serpent under ’t.

Macbeth, Act One, scene five

 

I will wear my heart upon my sleeve 
for daws to peck at.

Othello, Act One, scene one

 

The Parliament has established a Joint Select Committee (link here) to examine the provisions of the Bill titled Constitution Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) 2023 (link here). The Committee is presently considering submissions from interested parties before finalising its report to the Parliament, which is due by 15 May 2023.

 

On 12 April, I contributed a submission indicating my extremely strong support for the Voice, but proposing a minor amendment to the proposed section 129 (ii). The effect of my proposal would be to require representations by the Voice to both the Parliament and the Executive Government to be in the public domain. The bulk of my submission presents a detailed rationale for my proposal.

 

The conclusion of my submission serves as a useful summary of the arguments I have made to the Committee, and I reproduce that summary below:

I have identified seven key reasons in support of incorporating a transparency requirement into the constitutionally enshrined remit of the proposed Voice:

·       Advocating for policy reform is best achieved by building a network of mobilised stakeholders which will inevitable need to extend beyond First Peoples to ensure reforms are robust;

·       In the context of confidential and secret policy development processes within the Executive, the Voice will be structurally weaker than competing special interests;

·       The Executive Government will have an incentive to seek to co-opt the Voice and its members, leading to policy outcomes that are not in the public interest, and this will be facilitated by secret engagement and discussions;

·       Public support for the Voice will be essential to its long term effectiveness, and this is most likely to flow from public representations and advocacy rather than secret engagement with the Executive;

·       Transparency and accountability are core democratic principles, and should be embedded within the Voice’s constitutionally enshrined remit;

·       Counter-intuitively, a requirement for public representations by the Voice will force the Executive Government to be more democratic than it would otherwise be, but will not disincentivise engagement by the Executive; and

·       Requiring the Voice to make representations in the public domain will not preclude other Indigenous peak bodies and advocacy groups from engaging confidentially with the Executive if this is seen as necessary or desirable.

Transparency is essentially a binary issue, that is, the Voice is either fully transparent, or its transparency will be vulnerable to progressive degradation.

The best way to ensure full transparency and thus maximise the Voice’s effectiveness as an advocate for First Peoples over the long term is to include a requirement within the proposed amendment to the Constitution for the representations of the Voice to be public.

 

I recommend interested readers read the full submission as it provides a detailed and referenced argument in favour of what many may take to be an unnecessary constraint upon the powers of the Voice. While my proposal appears to be such a constraint, it is in fact a much more significant constraint on the power of government over the long term to use secret dealings to shape and ultimately undermine the force of First Peoples’ advocacy.

 

The submission is available on the Joint Select Committee’s webpage (link here), and is listed as submission 65.

 

For those interested, listed below are links to previous posts on this blog and one academic publication that address aspects of the processes leading to the Voice proposal:

 

https://refragabledelusions.blogspot.com/2022/11/mitigating-embedded-contradictions.html

https://refragabledelusions.blogspot.com/2022/06/an-innovative-design-idea-for.html

https://refragabledelusions.blogspot.com/2021/02/an-indigenous-voice-two-make-or-break.html  

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/2569477019586958075/2926273130244404688

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/2569477019586958075/676203355330052323

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/2569477019586958075/6561642021255341344

See also this CAEPR DP, particularly at pages 19 to 22: https://caepr.cass.anu.edu.au/research/publications/codesign-indigenous-policy-domain-risks-and-opportunities

 

 

 

Joint management and the carbon economy

 

In nature’s infinite book of secrecy,

A little I can read.

Antony and Cleopatra, Act One, scene two.

 

The Northern Territory Department of Environment, Parks And Water Security has recently released two useful reports on future plans for the parks estate in the NT. The first is a thirty year Parks Masterplan (link here) along with a ten year Parks Activation Plan (link here) which lists proposed investment priorities and upgrades.

 

I was pleased to see the publication of these reports as they provide an accessible source of information on the Government’s priorities in relation to its parks estate. The NT parks estate is clearly a core element in the NT’s overarching strategy directed to increasing tourism across the Territory. This provides the underlying impetus to ensure investment levels in parks’ infrastructure are sustained and progressively expanded. It is complemented, and some may argue, overshadowed in the public imagination, by the Commonwealth managed national parks in the NT, notably the Kakadu and Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Parks (link here and link here). These two parks have faced challenges in terms of infrastructure investment over the past decade or so as the Commonwealth has a less direct incentive to ensure facilities are world class.

 

From an Indigenous policy perspective, a crucial element in the management of NT parks is the adoption of governance models based on joint management between government agencies and traditional owners. The joint management of the two Commonwealth parks arose from negotiations linked to the government decisions in the 1970s and 80s to grant underlying Aboriginal ownership to the land. In the case of Kakadu, these decisions were entwined in the decision making around uranium mining at Ranger. My impression, admittedly from afar, is that joint management in the Commonwealth managed parks is working reasonably well, albeit with a range of challenges and frustrations on both sides of the partnership (link here).

 

Joint management in many but not all of the NT managed parks emerged from legal issues related to native title in the NT arising from the High Court decision in Ward (link here) which raised the prospect that some 48 parks in the NT may have been invalidly declared, and thus threatened to undermine the legality of the tenure of NT parks. This led in turn led to negotiations between the then Government and Aboriginal interests, and ultimately to the establishment of an agreed framework involving resolution of land title issues and agreement to lease back parks to the NT Government for 99 years based on joint management. Neil Westbury and I wrote about this issue in detail in our 2007 book Beyond Humbug (link here). Almost twenty years on, it is unclear how significant joint management has been in expanding Indigenous agency over park management. Where are the evaluations of this major policy shift?

 

The second pleasing aspect of the NT strategic planning documents is the focus on Indigenous economic and commercial development opportunities related to the management of the parks estate. The documents refer to a range of targets and strategies which appear to be well structured and directed. Again, it is unclear to what extent the opportunities that were always identified have been grasped and made tangible.

 

A third element of the conservation estate in the NT are the Indigenous Protected Areas (IPAs), which according to the NIAA website (link here) are:

areas of land and sea Country managed by First Nations groups in accordance with Traditional Owners’ objectives. IPAs deliver biodiversity conservation outcomes for the benefit of all Australians, through voluntary agreements with the Australian Government.

 

IPAs are jointly managed by NIAA and  the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW). THE DCEEW website (link here) provides slightly more information regarding IPAs, including proposed investment levels:

The Australian Government is providing $231.5 million over 5 years from 1 July 2023 to continue and improve the IPA program. The funding will support First Nations peoples to continue to manage the 82 dedicated IPAs and the 28 existing consultation projects. The funding will also be used to establish 10 new IPAs and hold a national conference every two years. In addition, the funding will support and improve the monitoring and evaluation of the IPA program…

 

What is clear from the above outline (which is itself a simplified description) is that the footprint of the conservation estate in the NT is both geographically complex, but also organisationally and institutionally complex. While there are regular snapshots published by various agencies it is fair to say that these are partial rather than comprehensive, provide minimal data and financial information, generally glossy in nature and designed to promote government policy rather than provide for a deeper understanding of what is going on. There is no comprehensive benchmark from which to assess progress over time in relation to the conservation estate in the NT, and I strongly suspect that the same applies in other Australian jurisdictions.

 

In particular, there appears to be no way for either governments or interested citizens to assess the performance of the institutional structures across the conservation estate including for example the successes or otherwise of the current policies on joint management and economic development. It is virtually impossible to contextualise the current levels of investment in the conservation estate, and to make comparisons vis a vis other policy priorities. While the glossy publications have their place, and look good, it is also important that policymakers and engaged citizens are able to understand whether the policies put in in place are working and delivering the benefits that were intended. This is particularly the case where institutional structures are convoluted and complex (as they undoubtedly are at the Commonwealth level, and may well be in the NT).

 

The importance of establishing a coherent policy benchmark for the conservation estate in the NT (and in all other jurisdictions) is reinforced by the steady growth in Indigenous ranger groups over the past two decades, themselves funded by two agencies in the Commonwealth and by the NTG. Not only do ranger groups provide essential conservation and environmental services, but they are a potentially crucial employment opportunity for a cohort of the Australian community which faces extraordinarily high levels of unemployment. Ranger Groups operate on both the conservation estate and the Indigenous estate (which overlap, but are not isomorphic). Again, obvious policy questions include whether the footprint of these groups is appropriately targeted, are they adequately resourced, are there any obvious gaps in their coverage, and how do their operations relate to the particular needs and priorities of the conservation estate versus the very real needs for Aboriginal owners to manage their own lands. All of these issues have a bearing on the appropriate policy design and levels or required funding support for the effective operation of ranger groups across the conservation and Indigenous estates.

 

I have outlined the confusion that permeates the policy architecture related to the conservation estate for a reason. Climate change threatens the global order, and certainly presents extraordinary challenges for our nation’s political and policy structures. The best hope of surviving this slow ongoing crisis is to constrain global emissions to net zero by 2050, and ideally to move beyond that target. This process, which appears to be gaining political acceptance and momentum, is bound to gradually and inexorably reshape the nation’s political and policy architecture, albeit in ways that no-one today can safely predict.

 

In these circumstances Indigenous interests, and in particular Indigenous landowners, face twin risks. Namely, that high levels of disadvantage will operate to ensure that they bear a larger share of the impacts of climate change than mainstream interests; and second, that their longstanding exclusion from core policymaking processes, and indeed, from the larger ‘political settlement’ that exists in Australia, will operate to sustain their exclusion from the economic opportunities that will flow from the new climate economy (link here) as the net zero transition takes hold and accelerates.

 

As the nation prepares to accelerate the push towards net zero emissions by 2050, it is imperative that Indigenous interests, who have property interests in over 50 percent of the continental landmass, are in a position to contribute to the expansion of existing and emerging technologies that abate or sequester carbon and other greenhouse gasses, or which replace existing carbon emitting technologies with renewables. A first step in moving forward on such an agenda must be to both establish a coherent policy benchmark from which to measure progress, and more importantly to identify potential reform opportunities and innovations.

 

For all the reasons outlined above, it is beyond time that the Commonwealth Government, in conjunction with the states and territories and relevant peak Indigenous bodies, did two things:

first, to initiate a review process aimed at identifying the strengths and weaknesses in the current policy architecture governing the interaction between Indigenous interests and the conservation estate across the nation, and recommending the necessary reforms to ensure that interaction is working optimally; and

second, to establish a dedicated and high powered organisation within the Commonwealth to drive the creation of opportunities for greater engagement by Indigenous interests, and particularly Indigenous landowners, in the transition to net zero.

 

The institutional underpinnings of the transition to net zero will be the major priority for governments over the coming decades, and it is imperative that Indigenous interests are central to the structural innovation and economic and social growth opportunities that will emerge. These shifts in the very architecture of society will involve both risks and opportunities, and they will ultimately change the shape of our economy and our social and economic opportunities.

 

The economic, social and political changes arising from climate change and our efforts to constrain it over the next fifty years will be enormous. Indigenous interests must be involved. The concept of joint management on Indigenous lands and waters provides a template for this future. Joint management has yet to reach its full potential.

The structural underpinnings of the tragedy in Yuendumu

Some of you, with Pilate, wash your hands

Showing an outward pity.

Richard II, Act Four, scene 1.

 

The inquest into the death of Kumanjayi Walker in Yuendumu in November 2019 is ongoing (link here). The Wikipedia page titled Death of Kumanjayi Walker (link here) provides a high level list of the various legal and policy issues raised by the manner of the young man’s death. I previously discussed the case in a post dated May 2022 titled ‘The ongoing social and governance catastrophe in remote Australia’ (link here).

 

I have not been following the myriad issues raised by the Kumanjayi Walkers death closely, and don’t propose to seek to comment directly on the core issues under consideration in the current coronial inquiry. I am looking forward to reading the Coroner’s Report once finalised.

 

The purpose of this post is two-fold. The first purpose is to sharpen the focus on the links between on the one hand what transpired in Yuendumu in November 2019 and the concomitant political and legal ramifications and on the other hand the deeper contextual history of colonisation and the decisions and approaches adopted by governments more generally that shaped the social and economic environment which permeates Central Australia to this day.

 

The second (related) purpose is to provide readers with links to the insightful statements to the Coronial Inquiry of two academic experts with long involvement in remote communities. Those statements defy easy summary, but are worth close reading for their analysis of the realities daily life in Yuendumu and similar communities. These analyses flesh out the ways in which that quotidian experience is shaped and constrained by the evolved, and in many respects entrenched relationships between the organic cultural rules and norms governing Aboriginal life in the central desert, and the wider imposed mainstream rules, norms and laws that ostensibly govern Aboriginal lives, but in reality ebb and flow in short and longer term cycles. The interplay between these two ways of living and of being ‘governed’ are in constant tension, and as we have seen in this case, lead to unpredictable and arguably incoherent outcomes for all involved. Intercultural relations are ubiquitous, but they don’t always exist in parallel, or in some logical and rational relationship, but are entwined through the lives of individuals and families in ways which are impossible to disentangle.  Moreover, as was the case in the Kumanjayi Walker case, these intercultural tensions can and do play out with extraordinarily unsettling consequences.

 

The first statement was authored by Dr Melinda Hinkson and is available (link here) on the Inquiry website as a tabled document dated 8 March 2023. Dr Hinkson’s statement covers the following issues:

Governance structures in Yuendumu over time, specifically the 2007 Northern Territory Intervention; Impact of these structures on Warlpiri i.e. disempowerment; Lack of infrastructure in Yuendumu and a corresponding atrophy of skills; Contributors to youth offending in Yuendumu; Community control over youth services; Empowerment of Warlpiri Elders in social structures; [and the] Contrast between Warlpiri and Kardiya notions of justice [para 1].

 

The statement provides a revealing and insightful administrative and policy history of the interaction between mainstream / colonial Australia and the Warlpiri who settled in Yuendumu and surrounding communities and outstations. I previously posted a review of her book See How We Roll (link here). As I said in the conclusion of that review post, Hinkson’s eloquent articulation of the realities of life as a modern Warlpiri person, whether in Yuendumu or Adelaide,

challenges policymakers, and the nation generally, to look harder at the underlying constraints on Indigenous lives, and our own responses to Indigenous life choices, and to truly ‘see’ how ‘we’ roll.

 

The second statement published on the Inquiry website on 9 March 2023 is by a medical doctor and academic Simon Quilty (link here). The most valuable part of Quilty’s statement, at least from my perspective, was the detailed elaboration of the significance of housing quality (or lack of it) for health and other social outcomes in the lives of Warlpiri people, and by extension, the majority of discrete community members across remote Australia. The import of these observations arises in large part form the reality that fixing housing stress, whether it is homelessness, or overcrowding, is in large measure a function of adequate funding and competent administration: that is , it is a largely technical issue.

 

In recent times, Quilty has been part of a research team focussed on energy insecurity in remote communities and houses. Their research has documented the extraordinary numbers of power cessations in remote houses across the NT, and pointed to the potential implications of this precariousness in the context of rising temperatures and climate variability. He attaches a copy of an article detailing these issues to his statement. I published a post about this article and the wider policy implications in January last year (link here). In that post, I concluded with the following recommendations:

Over and above these substantive policy responsibilities, the Australian Government has a national responsibility to oversight the complex Indigenous policy domain. The fact that the current Government resists this framing does not weaken its logical and political force. Why else did the Australian electorate vote in 1967 to give the Australian Government legislative responsibility for Indigenous affairs under the constitution? Such a national perspective is important because while the NatureEnergy article relates only to the NT, it seems likely that similar systemic energy security issues will apply in other parts of remote Australia, albeit perhaps with differing characteristics depending upon the extent to which remote communities elsewhere utilise prepaid energy systems.

One obvious step would be to commission the CSIRO to undertake a more policy oriented status report on the current state of play nationally. Another would be to substantially increase the investment in remote housing, including in ancillary infrastructure such as solar power systems. A third would be to expedite the work on redesigning the remote income support systems.

 

The micro story of what transpired in Yuendumu is not unrelated to what has been occurring across the board in remote Australia (link here), and most recently in the headlines with the events in Alice Springs (link here). Indeed, I suggest that the micro Yuendumu events are yet another manifestation of the complex macro issues that are laying waste to the lives of innumerable individuals and the ongoing viability of thousands of remote community families.

 

Yes, at the micro level, individuals on both sides of the cultural divide, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, have and had agency. But they were and are operating within an overarching set of institutional structures which have been in place for decades and were either explicitly designed to constrain and control Aboriginal people’s lives, or reflect longstanding and entrenched structures of underfunding that were oblivious to, and independent of the level of need. If we wish to prevent further micro level tragedies, we as a nation must move beyond allocating blame or responsibility at the micro level and also address the macro level issues. Micro and macro are both part of a single social system, one that is responsible for both extensive social and cultural harm, and ongoing mainstream governance failure.

 

To its credit, the coronial inquiry appears to at least be considering both micro and macro level issues. Yet there is a risk that once the Coroner reports, the political process will focus its attention on the narrow facts and causes of the tragedy, and not the wider systemic issues. To be meaningful, policy reform (which does not need to wait for the Coroner’s Report) must focus on removing the structural impediments to Indigenous life-possibilities, as well as expanding the structural opportunities available to individuals and communities in remote communities. Anything less is merely useless hand wringing.

The ongoing remote housing debacle

 

They say this town is full of cozenage:
As nimble jugglers that deceive the eye,
Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind,
Soul-killing witches that deform the body,
Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,
And many such-like liberties of sin.

The Comedy of Errors, Act 1, Scene 2.

 

On 28 February, the front page of The Australian published a story and graphic photograph (link here behind paywall and Sky News link here) of a family from Utopia who had been living on a concrete slab fifteen minutes’ walk from the Alice Springs CBD for two years (‘Invisible, yet they live in plain sight’). The Australian also published an editorial (‘It’s time to change the picture’) arguing that what it termed ‘housing failure’ is yet another wake-up call from remote Australia.

 

The news stories quote South Australian Senator Kerryn Liddle raising the plight of the family, mentioning nine children, and asking why no-one has done anything over the past two years. The family had come to Alice Springs to access dialysis treatment for a family member. Graphic proof of the human cost housing crisis not just in Alice Springs, not just in the NT, but across remote Australia.

 

This blog has given the housing crisis in remote Australia significant attention over the past five years (link here and link here and link here and link here and link here and link here and link here and link here and link here) but the issue continues to bedevil the nation. In those posts I have documented how the Rudd Government allocated $5.5bn to the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Housing (NPARIH) in 2008, how the end of program review orchestrated by then Minister Scullion was deeply flawed, and characterised by an inability to come clean about the real agenda, how then Minister Scullion oversaw cuts of a couple of hundred million for Repairs and Maintenance (as it would not adversely impact statistics on new house builds), and eventually allowed NPARIH to lapse across all jurisdictions except the NT where the Commonwealth is the landlord for 5230 housing dwellings across 72 town camps and remote communities (PC 2022:429 link here).

 

I also documented reports by Infrastructure Australia that initially excluded housing as social infrastructure, then included it, and how it was then directed by the former Government to exclude it from their analysis (link here and link here and link here and link here). Those posts also demonstrated that NPARIH had a tangible and positive impact on reducing overcrowding, but that there remained an outstanding need (see below). In a more academic context (link here), I have documented how these changes were part of a deliberate and more comprehensive effort to reduce Commonwealth expenditures on Closing the Gap, and to shift funding and policy responsibility for outcomes to the states and territories. To repeat, my research documented how these strategies were intentional, and have in large measure been successful in shifting funding responsibility (and thus political responsibility) away from the Commonwealth, and to the states and territories.  

 

The effective removal of virtually all funding for remote housing, relying on the fig leaf that mainstream programs will somehow fill the void, will have already ensured declines in the quality and number of housing assets across remote Australia, and concomitant increases in overcrowding. These entirely predictable consequences (and their less predictable ramifications) will continue to play out for at least five years and probably a decade even were governments to initiate a major investment effort today. The likelihood of such a policy reversal occurring seems highly unlikely anytime soon.

 

So what is the current state of play?

 

In this post, I can only address the most salient developments and point to the relevant reports and processes that are influencing current policy developments.

 

In August 2022, the Productivity Commission published its Study Report on the mainstream National Housing and Homelessness Agreement (NHHA) (link here). Its headline finding was

The National Housing and Homelessness Agreement — intended to improve access to affordable, safe and sustainable housing — is ineffective. It does not foster collaboration between governments or hold governments to account. It is a funding contract, not a blueprint for reform…

The focus of the next Agreement should be on improving the affordability of the private rental market and the targeting of housing assistance. Improving the capacity of low-income renters to pay for housing and removing constraints on new housing supply are key to making housing more affordable… … State and Territory Governments should commit to firm targets for new housing supply, facilitated by planning reforms and better co-ordination of infrastructure…. The $16 billion governments spend each year on direct housing assistance could achieve more if it was better targeted to people in greatest need...

 

The Study Report includes a chapter which provides a comprehensive overview of the state of Indigenous housing policy nationally, sets out a persuasive case for reform and makes a series of largely sensible recommendations. To highlight just one data point amongst many, the report notes (page 33) that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, compared with other Australians are 16 times more likely to live in severely overcrowded dwellings. One of the crucial issues with adopting a mainstream approach in remote Australia is that the interplay of Aboriginal tenures and the housing system means that there is very little affordable and private housing provision. Social housing is the predominant mode of housing provision. A further point noted in the Study Report, but perhaps not given adequate emphasis is that housing (and essential services) are crucial social determinants of health, including mental health, and thus play into a much wider policy domain than the mere supply of accommodation (important as that is).

 

The next National Housing Agreement is currently being negotiated between the Commonwealth and the States and territories. Accompanying this are major changes to the mainstream policy architecture including a legislated $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) designed to assist in financing 30,000 new housing units nationally over five years, a new statutory Housing Supply and Affordability Council, and a new National Housing and Homelessness Plan. When first announced, the Greens criticised the 30, 000 new houses commitment as inadequate (link here). In her media release announcing passage of the HAFF legislation through the lower house, Minister Collins announced that $200m of the investment returns from the Fund would be allocated to repair and maintenance of housing in remote communities (link here). While welcome, it is not clear what the national quantum of necessary maintenance investment is in existing and projected remote community housing stock. It is thus impossible to determine whether this is in fact a significant investment or mere tokenism. In particular, were the Government to provide greater national context this would indicate whether this investment can or will be used to leverage increased investment from the states and territories.

 

The Indigenous Australians Minister has recently released the Commonwealth Closing the Gap Implementation Plan 2023 (link here). It lays out the Commonwealth strategy in relation to Outcome 9a and 9b which relate to reducing overcrowded housing and the provision of essential services in discrete communities. The Implementation Plan lists Minister Julie Collins (whose portfolio is situated within the Treasury portfolio) as responsible for target 9a and Ministers Catherine King (Infrastructure) and Assistant Minister Anthony Chisolm (Regional Development) as responsible for target 9b.

 

Target 9a is specified in the following terms: By 2031, increase the proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in appropriately sized (not overcrowded) housing to 88 percent. This is a national target that, in theory, can be fully met without necessarily addressing the deep housing needs across remote Australia. There is thus an imperative for explicit policy focus on allocating resources based on levels of need.

 

The ABS estimates that in 2031, there will be 1.1 million Indigenous Australians. If the target is met but not exceeded, that will leave 12 percent (or 132, 000 people) in overcrowded housing. The highest levels of Indigenous overcrowding are in remote Australia including the NT, the Kimberley and north Queensland.

 

The new target 9b is specified as follows: By 2031, all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander households: # within discrete Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities receive essential services that meet or exceed the relevant jurisdictional standard; # in or near to a town receive essential services that meet or exceed the same standard as applies generally within the town (including if the household might be classified for other purposes as a part of a discrete settlement such as a “town camp” or “town based reserve”.) There is considerable devil in the detail of this target, for example, just what are the ‘relevant jurisdictional standards’. I don’t have space to explore these issues here.

 

The Implementation Plan for targets 9a and 9b might best be described as establishing a holding pattern rather than a clear plan for achieving the target. The Plan highlights a small number of funding packages ($200 million from the HAFF; $100 million to the NT Government for homelands housing possibly from the ABA; and $150 million from the National Water Grid Fund for regional and remote water infrastructure projects). The major risk to meeting these two targets is that the sum total of resources from all sources will not be adequate. The Implementation Plan makes no effort to cross-reference or identify the levels of housing and essential services related investment in the remote state and territory jurisdictions, so there is no way that readers of the Plan can make their own assessment of risk related to targets 9a and 9b. Should any readers be inclined to go seeking this information in the state and territory Implementation Plans, they would find that they are for one year only, and comprise a bewildering array of process issues and minor funding commitments, but no accessible information assisting in understanding how the implementation process is progressing.

 

For example, the first (undated) NT Closing the Gap Implementation Plan finalised in August 2021 (link here) focusses only on the Priority Reforms, and provides no information on how the NT proposes to meet specific targets. It does mention (p.4) that 61.6% of NT Aboriginal people live in overcrowded housing. The 2021/2022 Closing the Gap Implementation Plan Annual Report (link here) provides more data on households (not individuals) (p.16) which indicates a reduction of 2.3% in remote community public household overcrowding between 2019 and 2022 — from 57% to 54.6%. This data is accompanied by a footnote warning of potential undercounting of occupancy figures. Again, there is no information on how the NT is seeking to reduce overcrowding.

 

The Commonwealth Implementation plan appears to have been developed independently of any hard headed assessment of the adequacy and projected funding from the states and territories, and perhaps more importantly, of the adequacy of the strategies adopted by the states and territories. This reflects and continues the former Government’s approach under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap of positioning the Commonwealth as (a lesser) one among equals, rather than a first among equals, or more appropriately, as the ringmaster oversighting the performance of the state and territory circus. A similar issue applies across the Commonwealth: the Implementation Plan gives primary responsibility to relevant Ministers (often multiple) yet nowhere does it state that the Minister for Indigenous Australians has an overarching remit and the authority to pull together, coordinate and in the ultimate resort to ensure compliance with the various cross agency responsibilities. Without such an explicit and formal remit, the coordination task across the Commonwealth will inevitably slide into a miasma of process.

 

Finally, the Commonwealth Implementation Plan mentions the National Housing and Homelessness Plan, but fails to commit to adopting the Productivity Commission Study Report recommendations (it will merely take them into account), in particular regarding needs based funding allocations. In my view, this is a major gap in the Implementation Plan.

 

So Where to from Here?

 

In 2018, in an article for Inside Story (‘Tactics versus Strategy in Indigenous Housing’) (link here), I identified a remote housing funding shortfall of $9 billion over the decade to 2028 if the then levels of overcrowding were to be effectively addressed. In the event, the Commonwealth walked away from the national remote housing program reducing its outlays to approximately $110 million pa focussed solely on the NT where the Commonwealth has direct landlord responsibilities for 5230 dwellings in town camps and remote communities.

 

Notwithstanding the demonstrable levels of need, the current Commonwealth Government shows no signs of reversing the previous Governments cuts. Not only will this ensure that current levels of deep disadvantage across remote Australia continue for at least a decade, it will constrain improvements in health and social well-being and likely exacerbate existing demographic shifts towards urban centres. While adequate and maintained housing is not the entire solution to the appalling conditions in many remote communities, and needs to be complemented by other infrastructure such as clean water, sewerage, power, it is a prerequisite for sustained improvements in health, employment, education, and for reductions in alcohol and drug abuse and family violence. Unfortunately, our political system is finely attuned to meeting the needs of the best organised interests and the broader electorate, within a zero-sum budgetary envelope. In these circumstances, it is worth considering what options there might be with a more constrained budgetary impact.

 

The following suggestions are high level and thus involve a degree of devil in the detail. Nevertheless, it is incumbent on advocates for improved housing, and indeed the current Government to think more laterally about such options if the option of increased investment is not feasible.

 

First, in my Inside Story article, I canvassed the idea of a Government owned corporation being established (which might joint venture with Indigenous corporations) with access to an effective Commonwealth guarantee and the capacity to borrow funds from private sector sources to build, own and rent out housing in remote communities. Such an initiative would tackle the shortage of housing, and of staff housing, in remote communities (which acts as a disincentive to attract and retain both locally engaged and external staff) and would open up new sources of private-sector capital for investment in remote locations.

 

Second, in a new environment where the majority of housing investment must be sourced from either mainstream Commonwealth programs, and / or state and territory programs, it is incumbent on the Commonwealth to adopt a much more focussed and robust approach to ensuring that these sources of investment are responding to the needs of remote communities. So for example, this would suggest that the Commonwealth Indigenous Affairs portfolio should step up and take a much more active role in encouraging states and territories to maximise their investments in remote housing, and take a much more robust  ‘coordination’ role vis a vis relevant Commonwealth agencies and programs such as the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement, and the operations of the Housing Australia Future Fund. Similarly with the operations of the Infrastructure portfolio. There is a case for looking much more closely at the operations of the North Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF), and whether there are any operational changes that might be made to increase investment in one of the major infrastructure assets across northern Australia, the totality of the remote housing and community infrastructure asset base.

 

Third, it is time the Commonwealth established a truly independent and forward looking review of the remote housing challenge the nation faces. The 2017 NPARIH Review (link here unfortunately without a link to the actual report) was fundamentally flawed (link here), and even so was then ignored. It was backward looking, whereas what is now required is a review that sets out the extent and parameters of the challenge, assesses the likely demographic changes and implications of various scenarios, identifies emerging risks arising from climate change and other societal trends, and examines in detail options for the most effective architecture of the remote housing sector (social housing, community housing, or both?) as well as innovative financing of remote housing. In proposing such a review, I am seeking to focus on the systemic and structural drivers of housing exclusion and disadvantage rather than the lived experience that flows from those systemic constraints. While there is an argument that such an independent review should be given a broader remit, the risk of a deeper crisis in the narrow housing sector emerging in the coming decade are such that I would suggest a narrow focus would be best at this point. That is not to downplay the broader challenges facing remote Australia, though I would argue that they are in most respects amenable to clear sighted policy development by policymakers.

 

Fourth, the poorly conceptualised and drafted Closing the Gap housing and essential services targets 9a and 9b need to be revised to ensure that government focus on closing the full gap, not part of the gap. The Implementation plans that have been adopted to date are next to useless and require a major overhaul. They need to be strategically focussed on the targets identified and list proposed actions. Not data, not miniscule funding grants, not good intentions, not more process. Housing and essential services are tangible and susceptible to clear measurement. Five yearly updates in the census will not cut it. Nor will national data sets that are not broken down at least into urban, regional and remote.

 

In conclusion, the policy choices made over the past five years in relation to remote housing are retrograde and will have very real consequences: for taxpayers, for the population of remote Australia, both Indigenous  and non-Indigenous, and most importantly for the residents of these overcrowded and under-maintained houses across remote Australia. Over fifty percent of those individuals are under 25 and the overcrowding will have lifelong consequences for the opportunities that are within their reach. These issues are just one part of the wider cataclysm (link here) impacting remote Australia. I am certain that within a very few decades, Australians across the political spectrum will pass an extremely negative judgment on these decisions, and the decisionmakers that shaped them.