Opinion & Commentary
Native titles in private housing
The 2006 Census suggests that some 295,000 Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders - perhaps 45,000 Indigenous families - live in remote ‘homelands’, on the fringes of towns and in capital city ghettos. They account for two thirds of the Indigenous population of 455,000 counted in the 2006 Census. More than half of these families live in ‘discrete Aboriginal settlements’ in houses owned and managed by Indigenous housing corporations. Others live in State owned public housing. Some still eke out an existence in camps. In marked contrast, the third of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders (some 160,000) who live in the ‘open society’ own or rent their homes privately like most other Australians.
The media have made clear the disgraceful state of Indigenous public housing and its responsibility for poor health, family and community dysfunction. Most Indigenous housing is so badly overcrowded that it is common for a three bedroom dwelling to house 10, 12 or more people. Some Indigenous houses still do not have electricity. Many do not have decent kitchens and bathrooms, flush toilets or hot water. Public Indigenous housing is often poorly sited, without shade trees and gardens. It is not properly designed for climatic conditions, sometimes being built of inappropriate materials such as breeze block. Most tenants have poor education and no jobs and are thus welfare dependent with the dysfunction that brings to families and communities. Overcrowding and family dysfunction exacerbates the poor maintenance that is characteristic of most public housing.
Indigenous public housing is over-priced. The cost of houses built for Indigenous housing corporations in the Northern Territory averages $400,000 to $450,000. This is much higher then the $300,000 average cost of houses built in remote mining settlements.
In the decade to 2006 more than $2billion was allocated to Indigenous housing by the Commonwealth alone. Mr Brough, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, was unable to find how this funding was spent. An Inquiry by PricewaterhouseCoopers could not trace where the money went. Despite this huge volume of funding, the number of public occupied houses in ‘discrete Aboriginal settlements’ fell from 21,748 in 2001 to 20,554 in 2006!
Commonwealth funding flows through Territory and State bureaucracies to 496 Indigenous housing organisations. With an average of 40 houses each, these lack the skills and economies of scale to properly maintain houses let alone undertake new construction efficiently. Housing funding has disappeared into board fees, salaries and Territory and State bureaucracies.
Scandalous Indigenous housing conditions are not ethnic in origin. They are typical of public housing world wide. This is why societies ranging from the United Kingdom to Singapore have moved away from public housing. Successful public housing is exceptional, generally being reserved for special groups such as disabled and old people.
Indigenous houses have to be privately owned if families are to take pride in maintaining their homes. The 99 year lease legislation in the Northern Territory lays the foundations for private housing just as 99 year leases do in Canberra. It must be extended to the States. Communities taking head leases from Land Councils could ensure, if they wished, that caveats on resale would retain ownership within a community. Government funding has to be shifted from public housing where it has so evidently failed. It could be used to facilitate private home ownership for low income families following experience in the United Kingdom, Singapore, Hong Kong and other countries.
Once a market for private ownership is established, the very competitive Australian home building industry is sure to respond. A lively ‘kit house’ industry is already supplying high quality houses that can be erected by home owners with limited skilled inputs. With a shift to using local unskilled labour, with appropriate training, to repair and construct houses, fixing the housing deficit would also provide training and employment and make it possible for present CDEP workers to move to real jobs. Such an approach would mean abandoning cosy Territory and State contracting practices that enable non-Indigenous workers to monopolize construction trades. Indigenous electricians, plumbers, carpenters and other skilled tradesmen would be trained for maintenance and construction industries.
The task of bringing say 15,000 of the present Indigenous dwellings to mainstream standards and building another 30,000 decent houses is not large for an industry that builds more than 100,000 new houses and maintains and extends thousands more annually. Every Aboriginal family could have a decent house within three to five years with commensurate improvements in health and reductions in family and social dysfunction if housing were privatised with support for low income home owners. No daughter-in-law should have to share a kitchen with a mother-in-law. Every Aboriginal child deserves a bedroom in which to do his or her homework. Private home ownership has to be a component of the reform that includes mainstream education and access to jobs if Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders are to have the same choices as other Australians.
Emeritus Professor Hughes is a senior fellow of the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney. This is an edited version of her address to the Royal Australian Institute of Architects conference on ‘Whither Way’ – Directions in Indigenous Housing, Alice Springs, 26th-27th October, 2007.
