William Tilmouth, Arrente man, Alice Springs: “Billions of dollars
have been wasted. And at the moment it’s just copious amounts of funds being
sucked up into nowhere and getting nowhere”. (ABC News 13 February 2024)
The Closing the Gap programme is well meant but deeply flawed leading to its
inevitable failure.
That would be bad enough but worse is that the review
process has been hi-jacked by a group of aboriginal activists who are trying to
use it as a platform on which to advance their plan for an aboriginal sovereign
state.
The notion of a “gap” between aborigines and not-aborigines
as to a range of quality of life measures has been part of Australian aboriginal
policy for about 20 years.
The most recent report on progress or lack of it in
achieving the goals set by the 2020 agreement was commissioned by the
Australian Government in 2022 and carried out by the Productivity Commission.
Two commissioners, Romilie Mokak (CEO of the Lowitja
institute) and Natalie Siegel-Brown (permanent commissioner on the Productivity
Commission on a 5 year contract) were
in charge of the conduct of the review and are signatories to the final report
documents released publicly in February 2024.
There are three documents: An 8 page “Approach to the
review” with pictograms, The study report Volume 1 with 109 pages and the Study
report Volume 2, Supporting paper, with 436 pages.
That makes about 288,000 words most of which amount to
little more than verbose bureaucratese verbiage which manages to obfuscate
rather than convey meaning.
The lorikeets which visit my house each day have no words
but are able to communicate more effectively than these documents can manage.
There are however a few paragraphs somewhat buried in the
logorrhoea which actually do convey what the authors of the report are trying
to achieve, as we shall see.
I read the 8 page pictogram presentation and the 109 page
Volume 1.
I have to confess skimming the 436 page supporting paper
which proved to be one of the most TLDR documents I have ever seen, mostly
consisting of repetition and expansion of the material in Volume 1.
I also read numerous reports in the press about the Review. I have been studying aboriginal policy in my
own time for the last ten years, referencing material available in the public
domain, of which there is a great deal.
The 2020 version of the Closing the Gap agreement sought to
improve aboriginal welfare with
reference to 17 socio-economic targets.
These relate to:
1. Life expectancy
2. Birth weight
3. Child development milestones
4. ATSI children in out-of-home care
5. Suicide
6. School attendance
7. Year 12 school qualification
8. Tertiary qualification
9. Youth Employment, education or training
10. Mature adult employment
11. Adult incarceration
12. Youth detention
13. Family violence
14. Decent housing
15. Distinctive cultural relationship with land and waters
16. ATSI languages spoken
17. Level of digital inclusion
There have been several efforts by the Productivity
Commission to collect data on progress against these indicators in the period
2021-2023.
As best I can tell from data published in the public domain,
results have been mixed.
A few indicators were assessed as being on track, for
instance adult employment, but in this case the expectation has been set so low
that the 55.7% level achieved rates as “on track”. In the strange world of aboriginal policy in
Australia 44% unemployment somehow counts as a success.
The really big problem however is the four indicators which
saw a deterioration in performance over the data collection period.
These are adult
imprisonment, children in out-of-home care, suicide and children’s early
development.
These are hard data indicators, unlike such things as
“cultural relationship with land and waters” which defies measurement or even
meaning.
But imprisonment, out of home care, poor infant development
and suicide are measurable and are very strong indicators of severe dysfunction
in the target community.
So I expected the review to consist largely of an
investigation into the causes and possible means of reversing these very
disturbing indicators of social breakdown.
But as to an analysis of incarceration, child development,
out of home care and suicide, I found nothing.
Not a word.
Unbelievably and bizarrely the review declined to offer any
analysis of or remedy for these four problem areas.
In fact the 17 (or in some versions, 19) Closing the Gap
targets are barely mentioned at all in the report documents.
So what the heck is going on ?
I think we can work our way towards understanding this by
examining what the documents do say and what they don’t say.
First what they do say:
In brief summary the authors
of the report call for implementation of what they refer to as “priority
reforms”. No evidence or narrative or any kind of argument is presented to
explain how implementation of these so-called reforms might reduce the number
of aborigines in prison or the number killing themselves.
These “priority reforms” are
* Strengthening and establishing formal partnerships and
shared decision-making.
* Building the ATSI community controlled sector.
* Transforming government organisations so they work better
for ATSI people.
* Improving and sharing access to data and information.
The authors fail to explain what these “priority reforms”
actually mean or how anybody might implement them or how anybody might decide
when they are done or how anybody might decide if anyone benefitted or what
kind of benefit that might be.
We might be inclined to dismiss these “reforms” as woolly
verbiage which they are, but they also
reveal what I think is one of the real agendas of the Report. This is to
promote Aboriginal Community Controlled
Organisations (ACCO) and to press for more funds for these organisations.
Presumably we are meant to believe that ACCOs are able to
provide better outcomes for aborigines than generic mainstream services. But no
evidence of any kind is produced in support of this notion. In fact if we
consider the need for the review, namely that indicators of aboriginal
well-being are trending backwards and we consider it likely that ACCOs are
operating in backwards trending regions,
then we must conclude that ACCOS could be doing more harm than good. At the very least this possibility should be
fully investigated.
The authors of the review fail to acknowledge any of this.
Moving right along, we find somewhat buried on page 31 of
Volume 1 the next main aim of the authors.
Unusually in a document largely padded out with
bureaucratese waffle, this particular aim is spelled out clearly.
“The Agreement requires a shift in power and control”
“For meaningful progress to be made towards Closing the Gap,
governments must share power,
recognising that the right of
ATSI peoples to have control
over decisions that affect their lives is central to self determination.”
Well, there it is. This entire exercise is a Trojan Horse
for aboriginal activists to continue their campaign to promote aboriginal
separationism, increased power and control over programs funded by your taxes
and “self determination”.
In the context of Australian aboriginal policy the idea of
self determination feeds into the desire by some aboriginal activists to create
a separate aboriginal nation with separate sovereignty, separate lands,
separate laws and separate services, all paid for, thank you very much, by your
taxes.
But wait, there’s more. If we dig down a bit more we
discover the authors want to establish a
bureau of indigenous data sovereignty.
What the heck is that, we might ask ??? The idea is discussed in the report, but the
language is verbosely opaque.
My view ? It’s yet
another component of the structure of an aboriginal “sovereign nation” which the authors seek to establish.
It certainly has nothing to do with aboriginal disadvantage.
In an article in the Sydney Morning Herald of 7 February
2024 as reported by Natassia Chrysanthos and Jack Latimore, commissioners Mokak
and Siegel-Brown called for “indigenous led audits of racism and unconscious
bias in government departments”.
How on planet earth these people imagine they might “audit
racism and unconscious bias” they do not say. Of course the idea is complete
nonsense. Nobody can audit something unconscious or even imagine they can
determine when it exists.
This absurd ambition tells us just how far removed from the
practical reality of disadvantaged people these commissioners really are.
Let us consider what we do not find in the report.
As already mentioned there is hardly anything at all about
the actual indicators which the Review was supposed to examine.
There is nothing at all of a practical nature which could be
implemented using some of the billions (yes they are billions not just
millions) of dollars wasted each year on the aboriginal grievance industry.
The things which any report fails to discuss are the things
which the authors don’t care about. In
this case, that is the health, welfare and quality of life of actual people
some of whom are marooned in the purgatory of violent, dysfunctional remote
settlements while aboriginal activists use their plight as a platform from
which to promote their dream of a separate sovereign aboriginal nation.
The “closing the gap” enterprise has been shown by the
Productivity Commission to have failed. At best there have been marginal
improvements in some indicators which could easily have occurred without any
special measures.
Of greater concern,
four of the most troubling indicators have gotten worse.
This alone tells us that the entire 20 year closing the gap
enterprise has failed.
Why ?
The answer to this question involves a sorry story of
policies which were meant to help a group of people but have in fact made their
situation worse. Bad aboriginal policy has a long and disgraceful history in
Australia. But in the modern era I
nominate the 1967 referendum as the catalyst for a tsunami of bad policies
implemented throughout the latter part of the 20th Century and into
the 21st Century. The great
majority of these were implemented by decent people with the best intentions. I
have discussed many issues arising from the 1967 referendum here.
Here I want to concentrate on the notion of the “gap” which
I will try to show is a misleading idea which has led public policy astray. It
involves a misuse of statistics to produce a distorted impression of reality
leading to failed endeavours.
We can identify many dichotomies in our society relevant to
the advantage/disadvantage paradigm.
For instance if we look at imprisonment, we can readily
discover that people in prison are more likely to be men, unable to read and
write, poor, homeless, lacking family supports, unemployed, substance abusing
or mentally ill.
We can also find statistics which show that people who
identify as aborigines have a higher rate of incarceration than people who
identify as not-aborigines. The question
is why.
The other fact is that most aborigines are not in prison.
The majority who are not in prison are likely to be educated, employed, have
family connections, live in a regular house and refrain from committing
criminal acts.
The reason some aborigines are in prison is not because they
are aborigines but because they are humans (mostly men) who engage in criminal
activity and lack the means to avoid incarceration.
The point is they are in prison as a result of circumstances
and behaviours which can involve any group of people however described.
Being in prison is not an aborigine problem. Attempting to
fix the problem by pretending it is an aborigine problem will fail and has
failed as shown clearly by the 2024 report.
For the reader who is still not on board with my argument I
offer a little story. Many years ago I witnessed a Chinaman in Chinatown
stagger off the footpath in front of a bus which ran over and killed him. Is
getting run over by a bus in Chinatown a Chinaman problem ? Of course not. It is a problem for anybody who becomes
intoxicated and steps off the footpath into a traffic stream without looking.
Coming back to the present day, here is another example. We
know that people who live in outback and remote areas have higher rates of
depression and suicide than those who live in urban settings. This problem
affects all ethnic groups.
In a statistical analysis aborigines appear to be more
affected by remote living but that is simply because more of them live in
remote areas with poor diet, unemployment, poor literacy, unsatisfactory
housing and poor self esteem.
The problem is not one of ethnic affiliation. It is not
because some people are aborigines. It is due to their circumstances not their
ethnic identity. Urban aborigines (the
majority) who are literate, educated, employed, engaged with their community
and feel they are making a valued contribution to society score with the
population mean on indicators of health, welfare and quality of life.
Ongoing attempts to deal with problems of remote area living
as particular to aborigines have failed as shown by the data.
All this means that the idea of a “gap” between aborigines
and not-aborigines on the advantage/disadvantage scale is a statistical
artefact. It is not a useful basis on which to develop policy.
The 2024 review by the productivity commission has arrived
at two useful conclusions.
The first useful conclusion is that the last 20 years of
posturing and announcing targets without any discernible means of reaching
those targets has been a complete failure.
To quote from the foreword to the Review report Volume 1
“….it has become clear that in order to see change,
business-as-usual must be a thing of the past. …Across the country we have
observed small tweaks or additional initiatives….as attempts to give effect to
the agreement. However real change does not mean multiplying or re-naming
business-as-usual actions”.
The second useful conclusion follows from the first, namely
that the entire approach to improving aboriginal quality of life must undergo
fundamental change.
“ …Change can be confronting and difficult. But without
fundamental change the agreement will fail and the gap will remain.”
I agree entirely with the review conclusions to this point.
Given the information available one can hardly disagree. To recap:
1. The Closing the Gap project has failed repeatedly over a
period of many years and must now be regarded as no longer viable, unless
2. We (meaning all concerned Australians) agree to make
fundamental changes to the strategies we employ in our efforts to help a group
of disadvantaged people.
But what should those fundamental changes be ?
The authors of the review present a set of recommendations
which consist of
a) four “priority reform outcomes” which are in fact
meaningless bureaucratic verbiage the only “outcome” of which would be
expansion of the ACCO empire with no evidence that this might improve anybody’s
life in any way. To put it bluntly these “priority reform outcomes” are
bullshit.
b) Creation of a “bureau of indigenous data sovereignty”,
with no attempt to explain how such a strange entity might achieve anything
useful for anybody.
c) The bizarre notion of “Indigenous led audits of
discrimination and unconscious bias in government departments”. This is so weird I think no further comment
is required.
But here is the thing. We already know how to improve the
health, welfare and quality of life of any group of people, anywhere. With
respect to Australian aborigines we need to start by recognising that all
humans are of the same species and all have the same basic requirements for a
good life.
We need to stop treating aborigines as if they are some kind
of separate species of being. We need to stop separating aborigines from the
mainstream of modern society by geography and policy.
The attempt by aborigine elites to create a separate
aboriginal sovereign nation is doing enormous harm to those very same
aborigines.
The basic requirements for a decent quality of life are:
* Good nutrition and care in the womb, with freedom from
alcohol and other toxins.
* Love, care and good nutrition in early childhood. Stable,
caring parents.
* Good parental attention to nutrition, care and disease
prevention in childhood.
* Good school education.
* Attainment of employment-ready qualifications.
* Decent, stable housing.
* Paid employment.
* Family and community cohesion.
All these things promote in the individual a sense of
meaningful existence within an appreciative society.
There is no need to re-invent the wheel. Sociologists and
health researchers have known all this stuff for over a hundred years. Check out the work of the French sociologist
Emile Durkheim and his concept of Anomie, which he developed in the latter part
of the 19th Century. His work
is still relevant today and is clearly applicable to people living in isolated
communities subject to disruptive changes to society and culture.
Nutrition, health, housing, employment, relationships and
cohesive communities are the basis on which good lives are built.
The worst dysfunction and poorest quality of life among
aborigines is found in remote settlements. I have visited three of these in
outback Western Australia and Northern Territory. Here I saw people living in
worse conditions than I have seen anywhere else in the world. I saw people with
nothing to engage them sitting or pacing in aimless fashion. I saw the shop
well stocked with fizzy cola and some white bread but not much else. I heard
that only whitefellas can run the shop because if aborigines try it they are
hi-jacked by the humbug. I saw children drive around in a new-looking
Landcruiser with a flat tyre then abandon the vehicle for want of anyone
willing or able to fix the tyre. I saw mangy dogs in large numbers all around
the camp. I saw rubbish all over the place because the people living there thought
picking up rubbish was beneath them.
These settlements are referred to by Senator Jacinta Price
(NT) as “hellholes” as a result of her extensive personal experience with these
places.
The history of humans on planet earth over the millennia is
that when groups of people find their circumstances desperate and the place
they now occupy no longer viable, they emigrate.
In fact almost everybody in Australia is here because they
came as an immigrant or their parents or grandparents or
great-grandparents did. Migration is an
integral part of Australian culture.
While the proponents of
“an indigenous led audit of discrimination and unconscious bias…” are
having endless stupid, unproductive meetings achieving nothing the same money
and time could be put towards practical and useful projects.
We could set up a voluntary internal migration programme to
help families move from remote settlement hellholes to a town or city of their
choice where there are opportunities for better child care, health services,
education, training and employment. This might involve a one-off grant of a
house plus a year’s employment support.
We could set up a fund to send school students from remote
areas to boarding schools for a decent education. We could fund a programme to
help young aborigines attend TAFE colleges to acquire trade qualifications.
But the bloated multi-billion dollar aboriginal grievance
industry absolutely needs to keep the 90,000 or so aborigines in remote
settlements right where they are in perpetual suffering. Because without those
poor people the aboriginal grievance industry would have no reason to exist.
I must say a few words about the Productivity Commission’s
choice of commissioners to head this review.
It seems to me that if the Commission is doing its job
properly it should select commissioners who are not associated with any
pre-conceived position on the matter of aboriginal policy and the Close the Gap
project in particular.
I take the view that the Productivity Commission misdirected
itself very badly in this case.
Romilie Mokak is CEO of the Lowitja Institute. You can go to
their website to see what they believe. Their policy priorities 2022-2025 are
all spelled out in detail. My point is that Mr Mokak is highly committed to a
pre-conceived set of priorities. He is not in any sense an unbiassed observer.
He is a passionate advocate for certain particular types of policy initiatives.
Natalie Siegel-Brown also has a background in aboriginal advocacy in
particular about ACCOs.
The Commissioners do declare their interest but they cannot
separate themselves from that interest.
My point is that the review was a waste of time and money
when the commissioners had a known predilection for a certain course of action.
I hope the federal government which commissioned the review
now does the only reasonable thing which is to bury the review and its stupid proposals
in the bottom of a deep drawer somewhere in the archives, never to be seen
again.
And starts doing things which we know from existing research
are likely to work.
Like….helping people to achieve health, housing, education,
employment and self respect and if that can best be done for some people with a
voluntary internal migration programme then get on with it.
The Federal Government’s first response to the report is contained
in a press release dated 13 February 2024 from the Department of Prime Minister
and Cabinet.
This does not endorse or even mention the Productivity
Commission’s recommendations.
Their “plan” is to throw $707million in the general
direction of outback and remote area settlements by means of a cash splash with
the pretentious title “Remote Jobs and Economic Development Programme”. This we
are assured will provide “real jobs, proper wages and decent conditions.”
But no plan is offered, no actual jobs are identified and no
employment strategy is presented.
Michelle Grattan interviewed assistant Minister for Indigenous
Australians Malarndirri McCarthy in a podcast published on The Conversation,
17 February 2024.
Ms Grattan asked the Minister a series of specific questions
and got vague generalities by way of response. As the 25 minute interview went
on it became apparent that the government lacks an actual plan, seemingly
content to hand out lots of money to local communities who can decide for
themselves what to do with it.
The Prime Minister calls this “self determination”
I call it making an announcement, the purpose of which is to
get bad news out of the headlines. This is the strategy which Prime Ministers
and Cabinet members have been using for many years in lieu of real action.
Unfortunately it will waste yet another truckload of taxpayer’s money with no
tangible benefit for anybody.
The Government's second response, on 11 March 2024, was to announce a four bilion dollar plan over ten years for the construction of new housing in remote communities to be funded by the Commonwealth and Northern Territory governments. I think this is another case of making an announcement, the likely purpose of which is to get bad news about aboriginal policy out of the headlines.
The problem with policy announcements like this is that we have been there before, many times. Assuming any houses are actually constructed they will be in locations severely lacking in opportunities for education, training and employment.
This is exactly the kind of "business as usual" response which the review commissioners complained about in their report. Building houses in remote settlements has failed before and will fail again if the aim is to improve the quality of life of the people affected.
I take the view that a more constructive approach would be to offer individuals and families (not aboriginal corporations) a housing package as part of a programme of re-settlement to a more urban location with more opportunities for education, training, employment and health. I dare say aboriginal activists will protest loudly about such an initiative but we should be aware that none of those activists chooses to live in a remote settlement.
Last words
Aboriginal activists frequently assert that life is bad for
some aborigines because governments and their agencies fail to listen to
aboriginal people. That claim is false. In fact governments and their agencies
have listened to aboriginal activists and done what they recommend, over and
over again. They have agreed to land rights, aboriginal title, separate
aboriginal lands and settlements, separate aboriginal health, welfare, housing,
legal and education programmes, aboriginal community controlled organisations, multitudes of aboriginal agencies and
entities, the list goes on and on.
Persistent repetition of the false claim that governments do
not listen to aborigines is disingenuous, deceitful and a leading cause of bad
policies.
It is high time governments started treating aborigines as
they do other Australians, acknowledging they have the same rights,
responsibilities, capabilities and potential. The entire enterprise of special
laws and policies for people simply because they identify as aborigines has
comprehensively failed.
