Opinion & Commentary
Remote disadvantage even worse than reported
Billions of taxpayer dollars are wasted on programs that mostly benefit bureaucrats
IN February, the Productivity Commission released Indigenous Expenditure Report 2010 showing that an additional $5.1 billion was spent in 2008-09 on specifically Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programs.
This translates to $100,000 a year for each man, woman and child in remote communities. Clearly, most of these funds do not reach remote indigenous families; they go to bureaucrats, administrators, consultants, contractors and other (mostly non-indigenous) beneficiaries.
On June 8 the Council of Australian Governments Reform Council, reviewing indigenous literacy and numeracy between 2008 and 2010, showed that progress was limited to years 3 and 7 in reading in Queensland and Western Australia, with very little or no change in other literacy and no improvement, or decline, in numeracy.
On August 8 a Department of Finance strategic review of indigenous expenditure concluded that $3.4bn of annual indigenous expenditure ``has yielded dismally poor returns to date''.
Allowing for differences in methodology, the Department of Finance estimates line up with the Productivity Commission expenditure report.
On August 26 Productivity Commission chairman Gary Banks, launching the biennial Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage 2011, stated that the ``latest data still reveal considerable disparities in outcomes between indigenous and other Australians''; a majority of quantitative indicators showed ``no improvement or actually deteriorated''. These reports, in total more than 1000 pages, agree that despite vast expenditure there is no progress in remote indigenous communities.
Taxpayers are surely entitled to know why their dollars are being wasted.
Indigenous policy came to a crossroads in 2007 when Mal Brough, indigenous affairs minister in the Howard government, initiated a program to bring mainstream standards to remote Northern Territory communities within five years. The present minister, Jenny Macklin, has extended some aspects of Brough's intervention. Queensland and Western Australia followed.
But in 2008, COAG retreated from bringing mainstream standards to remote communities in five years to ``halving the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians'' within 10 years.
Most of the 545,000 Australians who identify as being of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander origin work in major cities and regional towns. They range from unskilled and semi-skilled workers through trades to professions such as medicine and law. They take pride in their cultural heritage, but their socioeconomic characteristics are similar to those of other Australians. There is no gap between these Aborigines and other Australians, yet for some bureaucrats they are no longer Aborigines.
Working indigenous Australians number more than 330,000, more than 60 per cent of the indigenous population, yet the Productivity Commission claims that Aborigines experiencing little or no disadvantage are a relatively small group!
Another 140,000 urban indigenous Australians are welfare dependent. Their poor childcare and other social failings are not compared with those of the more than a million other welfare dependent Australians, but blamed on Aboriginality.
COAG recognises only the 75,000 Australians living in remote communities as real Aborigines. But here remote families' struggles for decent schools, housing and jobs in the absence of private business are ignored in favour of distorted statistics of social dysfunction. There are, indeed, great gaps between indigenous remote and mainstream living standards, but they are hidden by COAG gap averages that use urban working Aborigines to reduce the deprivation of remote communities. Here are some examples:
On Palm Island, life expectation is 50 years, whereas in mainstream Australia it is about 80 years, leaving a gap of 30 years. But the COAG average indigenous gap is only about 10 years.
Remote school reading failure rates average 90 per cent whereas in mainstream schools they are about 10 per cent, leaving a gap of 80 per cent. The COAG reform council claims an indigenous reading gap in Year 5 of about 30 per cent.
Australian home ownership is about 70 per cent; for working Aborigines (with a lagging occupational mix) it is 68 per cent; for remote communities it is zero because traditional landowners cannot obtain 99-year leases. The Productivity Commission calculates an average indigenous home ownership of 29 per cent, reducing the gap to 40 per cent.
If elementary statistics were included in numeracy tests, the staff responsible for these reports would fail. But it is COAG that is responsible for the failure of indigenous policies. Bureaucrats claim they only follow orders. It is up to voters to insist politicians mandate mainstream standards in remote communities.
Emeritus professor Helen Hughes is a Senior Fellow of The Centre for Independent Studies.
