Opinion & Commentary
Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage 2009
The Commonwealth government hoped for favourable coverage from the release of the Productivity Commission’s Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage. Instead, the Government was subjected to widespread criticism for its failure to make progress.
The media recognised that the significant decline in Indigenous life expectancy gap from 17 years to 11.5 years for men and to 9.7 years for women was due to changing statistical methodology. Gary Banks, Chairman of the Productivity Commission, stated: “It is still not possible to say whether the gaps with non-Indigenous people have actually narrowed.”
The media also recognised that an apparent increase in child abuse largely reflected improved reporting, but child abuse in remote Indigenous communities was clearly worse than in the rest of Australia. Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage also confirmed appalling educational outcomes, poor health, overcrowded, derelict public housing, and joblessness with almost total welfare dependence leading to alcoholism, consequent violence, and crime in remote Indigenous communities.
Noel Pearson, a leading social commentator on Indigenous affairs, reflected widespread public opinion commenting on the Council of Australian Governments communiqué that accompanied Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage that: “The Prime Minister and his colleagues have little clue about what to do to achieve their stated aim of ‘closing the gap’ on Aboriginal well being. The COAG partnership agreement gives me no confidence that we are on the right road to turning around the plight of indigenous Australians.”
Clearly, Australian governments have been marking time. The Northern Territory Intervention succeeded in improving nutrition and ameliorating alcoholism and violence by sequestering welfare incomes and increasing policing. But governments have not reformed underlying separatist, apartheid policies. Australian apartheid is devastating because it is voluntary. It has been sold as ‘empowering,’ but is impoverishing. Australian activists who supported dismantling apartheid in South Africa continue to perpetuate apartheid in Australia.
Funding is not a problem. While the Indigenous budget has more than doubled since 2001, Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage shows no progress. The 2009–10 Commonwealth budget allocates $4.6 billion to Indigenous programs in addition to normal government expenditure on education and welfare. Without policy reforms, the funding will continue to be absorbed by the federal, state/territory, and local bureaucracies and by the ‘Aboriginal industry.’
Housing expenditures are typical. The Commonwealth devoted more than $2 billion to public housing between 2002 and 2006 but finished with a smaller number of occupied houses. The Rudd government has allocated $700 million to Indigenous public housing, but not one new house has been built since 2007.
Four principal policies underpin deprivation in remote communities:
Separate, sub-standard schools with Aboriginal curriculums are responsible for the almost 100% illiteracy and non-numeracy in remote settlements. These schools must adopt mainstream standards to achieve mainstream outcomes. English must be taught from pre-school. This does not preclude genuine multilingual programs with children learning to read and write in more than one language.
The absence of private property rights stifles economic development. The 99-year lease legislation that would permit private business and private homeownership has to be implemented to enable communities to obtain head-leases so they can maintain their priorities while enabling economic development to take place. Ninety-nine year leases are essential for private housing to end housing bottlenecks.
Excessive welfare, well known as ‘sit down money,’ stops men and women in remote communities from accepting the many jobs available. As the West Australian government has recognised, at present thousands of jobs within easy commuting distance are not being filled.
The permit system hides Aboriginal disadvantage and hinders development.
Without these basic reforms, economic development will not take place and social conditions will not improve in the 26 population centres that have been identified as the focus for government intervention. The reforms must, of course, be supported by normal Australian standards of policing, medical, and other services and by infrastructural investment by local, state/territory, and federal authorities.
Policy reform has to be evidence based. Releasing Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage backfired because no matter how the numbers were massaged, they did not disguise the Third World conditions of remote settlements. The report averaged data across three disparate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
Of an estimated current population of 540,000 Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, some 340,000 live and work in the cities and towns of mainstream Australia. They own, are buying, or renting their homes from real estate agents. They send their children to mainstream public and private schools. They participate in leisure and civil society activities like other Australians. They include 25,000 university graduates, and another 10,000 are enrolled in universities. Though still skewed toward less skilled occupations, the socio-economic characteristics of these Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders are those of mainstream society. There is no ‘gap’ between this group and other Australians.
Another 130,000 Aborigines and Torres Strait islanders are welfare dependent but also live in cities and towns. They have access to mainstream education, health and other facilities. Their socio-economic characteristics should be compared to those of other welfare dependent Australians with whom they live side by side.
Only some 70,000 Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders live in remote Australia. Of these 60,000 live in the 26 large centres, including town camps. These centres of dysfunction have been created because the transfer of land to Native Title has been accompanied by the imposition of communal social structures that worked well for small tribal groups of 30 or so people in a hunter-gatherer society, but that have not proved viable anywhere in the world for large social groups. Only 10,000 live in ‘homelands’ or ‘outstations’ with fewer than 200 inhabitants. Some of these are well located on the coast or on tourist trails and could develop into normal Australian settlements. Others, like other Australian settlements, may not.
Averaging health, longevity, education, and criminal statistics across the three disparate groups of Indigenous communities insults those working and living in the mainstream and grossly understates deprivation in the remote settlements where the expectation of life, for example, is at least 20 years less than in mainstream Australia. The ‘gap’ between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians is a ‘spin’ that seeks to blame poor social outcomes on ethnicity rather than on the government policies that are responsible for illiteracy, joblessness, welfare dependence, ill health, and violence. The gap that needs to be closed is that between ‘spin’ and reality.
Emeritus Professor Hughes is a Senior Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies. Mark Hughes is an independent researcher.
