Closing the Indigenous gap was never going to be easy, but the reception of the Productivity Commission report will unfortunately make it harder. Media and political responses have focused on the child abuse and extreme deviance increases and have generally reinforced the widespread views that nothing has worked.
These media responses are problematic because they reinforce the propensity of governments to look for quick fix authoritarian responses, based on assumptions that the faults are with the intransigence of the communities, who fail to respond to good intentions. Headlined proposals to mandate healthy food in the outback stores ignore both the questions of freight costs and the health problems of those communities that live close to good food supplies, and therefore deeper problems than bad food choices.
There has been extra money allocated but perceptions that “throwing money at the problem” fails, overlook how much of the spending has gone to outside administration, not to the communities themselves. For instance, $88M extra allocated to quarantining income has gone to bureaucratic costs, not to the recipients and much of the other Intervention costs have gone on new white bureaucrats and the housing they need in remote communities.
No media report raises the questions of what we/the Governments/the wider society might be doing wrong. There is a scad of evidence to show that it is not necessarily spending the money that works but how it is done. The last government both verbally trashed the views of many Indigenous communities and removed their semi-independent voice and also failed to recognise that short term, top down initiatives would not work, as was shown in this report.
The current government network at COAG still failed to recognise that such approaches fail time and time again despite the Productivity Commission suggesting this, as do many other studies on this point. The Report says clearly on page eight of the Summary document.
Things that work:
Not everything that matters can be captured in indicators, and some information is better presented in words, rather than numbers. In particular, community level change may not show up in state or national data. The main report includes many examples of “things that work” — activities and programs that are making a difference, often at the community level. This Overview summarises these “things that work” in the discussion of each COAG target, headline indicator or strategic area.
Analysis of the “things that work”, together with wide consultation with Indigenous people and governments, identified the following “success factors”:
- cooperative approaches between Indigenous people and government — often with the non-profit and private sectors as well community involvement in program design and decision-making
- a ‘bottom up’ rather than ‘top-down’ approach
- good governance — at organisation, community and government levels
- ongoing government support — including human, financial and physical resources.
This warning was not reported in the media. Nor unfortunately did the Commission’s report assess which policies and program over the last decade had been designed co-operatively and bottom up. These predictors of successful programs are many other reports. These show that education, employment, health, housing and family support services that are short term funded, not culturally appropriate, and linked to engaged local communities fail in both remote and urban settings.
The media emphasis on the ‘deviance’ statistics (abuse, crime etc) means we are likely to continue to get more inappropriately designed and delivered programs that will continue to blame the victims for their failures. The claims that this government delivers evidence based policies needs to be made true, but the evidence must be based on what works and not just on the admittedly horrific statistics.
The report states with some optimism “Across virtually all the indicators in this report, there are wide gaps in outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. However, the report shows that the challenge is not impossible — in a few areas, the gaps are narrowing.”
Overall, Indigenous people have shared in Australia’s economic prosperity of the past decade or so, with improvements in employment, incomes and measures of wealth such as home ownership. However, in almost all cases, outcomes for non-Indigenous people have also improved, meaning the gaps in outcomes persist.
The challenge for governments and Indigenous people will be to preserve these gains and close the gaps in a more difficult economic climate.
(For more evidence, I’m involved in a new website www.whatsworking.com.au which is documenting examples to counter the views that nothing works. We will be adding in the many examples in the Productivity Commission intersperses in its report because these and other examples show that there are answers but these relate as much to how things are done as what is to be done).
Eva Cox is a member of Women for Wik.
Well said Eva. Building on things that we know work rather than more reports is excellent advice. And there are many things that can be built on.
The “Little Children Are Sacred” report, which made many points which were shouted down by those who would interfere unknowingly in indigenous matters was, is, and will remain relevant reading. It is readily available on line.
Nothing which Eva has written conflicts with that report’s recommendations. It is so sad that political expediency and top-down management styles have wasted money, time and lives yet again.
As a nation, we must do better.
Yes, agree with Eva and Mark.
Add Peter Sutton’s idea that, to enjoy 21st century standards on OECD indicators, you need to be able to live in a 21st century advanced economic and cultural setting.
So we need to promote lifestyle change on a broad front in all our needy bits of society, of whatever aboriginality, and to persevere across generations.
The promising excursions into voluntary out-of-community education and living (viz, Noel Pearson) are one route to follw.
This is an excellent article. Any time the government spends our money or borrows in our name on a social problem, it ends up making both the government and the problem bigger.
Your bottom up approach and arguments for the money to be spent at the grass roots level is spot on.
Ironically, it is not only spending on indigenous problems where this abomination is gaining momentum and heading light speed toward serious national debt. The same could be shown in education, health and welfare. The government decides to spend more money (ours by the way not there’s) and then allocates the lion’s share of it to the bureaucracy.
This is the travesty of good intentions and thank you for exposing it. Now if only someone will do the same for every other government department, we the people may make some headway.
What Eva neglects to tell the Crikey readers, or may possibly not be aware of herself, is that
“what works” is not as clear cut and demonstrable as she would have us believe.
For example, sometimes, possibly often, “quick fix authoritarian responses” do work. The success of the imposition of Opal fuel on outlets in Aboriginal communities in drastically reducing petrol sniffing, is one such instance. Another is the imposition of alcohol trading restrictions in Alice Springs and a growing number of other locations, despite community opposition amongst both black and white citizens. These restrictions have led to major declines in both consumption and associated harms.
Internationally, governments which have had the guts to impose road safety and public hygiene standards on their populations have generally achieved both improvements to living standards and long term public acceptance.
Sometimes – quite possibly often – “intransigence of the communities” is a major factor in things not working in Indigenous communities, and not just because they may “fail to respond to good intentions”. Quite often there are major vested interests held by powerful or influential Indigenous leaders which prevent any useful project, whether undertaken by outside or inside operators, whether black or white, from being tried or achieving much.
However, where the government has been game to impose progressive change, as Mal Brough did with the stores licensing and welfare income management arrangements, these have led to dramatic improvements in the lives of the vast majority of remote community dwellers, despite considerable opposition.
Eva’s comments on the “Headlined proposals to mandate healthy food in the outback stores” are not well informed. The reforms do not ignore “the questions of freight costs and the health problems of those communities that live close to good food supplies”, but store improvements are an integral part of the process of change to better nutrition and lifestyle choices. Pricing policy and nutrition strategies are part of the remote stores initiative.
Nor are the proponents of these store reforms, including Macklin, so stupid as to imagine that there are not other “deeper problems than bad food choices” which also must be addressed. Health organisations and others are working on these. It is an integrated, multi-focussed effort, and every agency has its role to play.
When Cox attacks “how much of the spending has gone to outside administration, not to the communities themselves”, she fails to concede that the spending of this money on the Income Management bureaucracy has led to quite dramatic improvements in the health and general wellbeing (psychological as well as physical) not just of children , but also for most other remote community members. (By the way, not all these bureaucrats are “white”, and their “housing” consists merely of small bedrooms in demountable barracks) .
Things that work: Cox’s examples do not support her general thesis. The small list of 10 examples on her web link consists of a mixture of five programs dominated by Aboriginal people, and five dominated by outsider experts, some of which are more notable for their success at self-promotion than actual achievement or worth. Often the people leading these projects are very talented and committed, but the projects may not be sustainable once their energy and judgement is no longer available.
Eva needs to consider that we have just put enormous effort and resources over 40 years into “bottom up” processes and projects, and the overall outcomes are literally pathetic, except in a handful of isolated cases (mainly in health and land care) where a few dedicated Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals have turned themselves inside out to make things work.