Crikey

One of the most contentious policies of the Howard Government’s blundering intrusions into Aboriginal affairs in the NT will be given a renewed push by Federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin this year.

As Patricia Karvelas reported in The Australian on 2 January, Macklin will: “…dangle the incentive of more money for housing and infrastructure for communities that privatise their land.”

Macklin told The Australian that home ownership and the long-term leasing of remote townships would lift Aboriginal communities out of poverty: “It’s critical because this will really enable Aboriginal people to have business development and economic development on their land, and they understand that.”

What does that mean on the ground here in central Australia? 

Here at Yuendumu, Macklin’s proposed deal has two options. Option 1 goes along the lines of give the Government some of your land and we’ll give your town some houses and some money and Option 2  is more like give the Government all of your land and we’ll give your town more houses and more money.

Crikey understands that similar deals are being offered in other townships across the NT.

There is an undoubted shortage of housing in remote Aboriginal townships in the NT and this is wholly the responsibility, and fault, of the past policies of NT and Federal governments.

Macklin should be congratulated, at least in part, for her efforts to address this wholly unsatisfactory situation.

But traditional owners of Aboriginal land in NT townships are now being put in the position where if they reserve those commercially lucrative parts of the community to themselves  — Macklin’s Option 1  — they can be cast as greedy operators putting their own personal and communal interests over those of the non-traditional owner residents of the townships, who need more houses.

Macklin’s Option 2 is even less attractive to the traditional owners  — get some money and houses now, but forego valuable commercial opportunities and lose control over important areas of your land.

Throw in the idea that Aboriginal people living in remote communities in the NT should buy the homes they live in, or that new housing should be funded by those home purchases, and the whole deal has the smell of politics played out for an audience a long way from the townships where this policy will be implemented.

On its face the idea that Aboriginal people should own their own homes is attractive  — why shouldn’t they, just like every other Australian can? But even a cursory examination of the economic circumstances of Aboriginal townships and the people that live in them indicates there are serious structural issues that militate against a wholesale policy of universal, or even partial, home ownership in these townships.

Macklin has an enormous workload, of which these proposals are but small parts. Crikey understands that much of the ideological tone for the leasing and home ownership proposals comes from FaHCSIA staff left over from former Minister Brough’s days and some of her own senior Ministerial advisors who have particular ideological barrows to push.

The challenge for Macklin is to prove that she has the wit and wisdom to resist the wholesale adoption of Brough’s flawed policies in this area and to instead devise policies that won’t impoverish traditional owners and will also provide real benefits, ie good houses where they are needed, to the residents of these townships.

The major NT Aboriginal land councils have some fundamental and well-founded objections to Macklin’s proposals as they now stand  — they won’t provide enough, or the right kind of, houses to residents, they are wholly impractical, they deny traditional owners real economic benefits from the commercial uses of their land that any other landowner in Australia can enjoy, and that they create new and inequitable schemes of property rights applying only to Aboriginal lands.

When Mal Brough originally cooked up this scheme, the Senate conducted an inquiry into the legislation. The submissions to that Committee by the Central and Northern Land Councils are worth reading and remain relevant to Macklin’s proposals.

But the most compelling arguments against her leasing and home ownership proposals come from Macklin’s own mouth.

On 12 June 2007, as the then Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Macklin rose in the parliament to speak in response to Mal Brough’s Bill that would introduce legislation allowing the (then 99 year) leasing of Aboriginal townships in the NT.

In 2007 Macklin made an eloquent case against the Brough proposals that in 2009 she calls her own:

The government is arguing that land rights have not delivered economic outcomes, and is therefore seeking to construct a Hobson’s choice for Indigenous people.

Choose between your rights to land and your rights to economic development. I do not believe that it is beyond the wit of traditional owners and the government to devise land tenure arrangements which streamline transaction costs without fundamentally undermining Indigenous ownership and control of their land.

What we do want is for traditional owners to be able to negotiate a deal that is fair, underlines their aspirations and anticipates their concerns for future generations. What we do not want is decisions being made in a rushed or politically charged environment.

We do not want land tenure reform being made a condition of funding for basic services.

There has been a lot of political rhetoric about the great Australian dream in the outback. But let us look at the economics. The department has described the program as targeting people who want to buy a house on Indigenous land in an environment where maybe the market is stagnant or there is no real appreciation in value possible.

The department has also conceded that a home on remote lands could cost anywhere between $475,000 and $500,000 to build and, by the time it is handed over to the buyer, could be worth only $50,000 to $100,000.

Forty-two per cent of Indigenous households have an income of less than $264 a week and, on average, they are getting poorer. Between 2002 and 2005, the average Indigenous household income actually decreased from 60 per cent to 50 per cent of the average non-Indigenous income. Statistically speaking, very remote Indigenous people are the poorest. In 2005, over half of Indigenous people — 51 per cent, in fact  — received most of their individual income from government pensions and allowances. And that does not include those people who participate in the Community Development Employment Projects program.

In many places where incomes and the value of land are very low, and the costs of construction are high, regular public housing is a much more realistic solution. Of course we agree with the value of homeownership in terms of the positive social and economic impacts that it can have on a family’s life. But let us be sensible about it.

We understand the need and the desire for economic development and empowerment in Australia’s remote regions, working with Indigenous people, not taking away hard-won land rights.