First Dog socks now in stock at the Crikey Emporium!
A cautionary tale…
Closing the gap: let’s talk about things that work
|
Closing the Indigenous gap was never going to be easy, but the reception of the Productivity Commission report will unfortunately make it harder. Media and political responses have focused on the child abuse and extreme deviance increases and have generally reinforced the widespread views that nothing has worked. These media responses are problematic because they reinforce the propensity of governments to look for quick fix authoritarian responses, based on assumptions that the faults are with the intransigence of the communities, who fail to respond to good intentions. Headlined proposals to mandate healthy food in the outback stores ignore both the questions of freight costs and the health problems of those communities that live close to good food supplies, and therefore deeper problems than bad food choices. There has been extra money allocated but perceptions that “throwing money at the problem” fails, overlook how much of the spending has gone to outside administration, not to the communities themselves. For instance, $88M extra allocated to quarantining income has gone to bureaucratic costs, not to the recipients and much of the other Intervention costs have gone on new white bureaucrats and the housing they need in remote communities. No media report raises the questions of what we/the Governments/the wider society might be doing wrong. There is a scad of evidence to show that it is not necessarily spending the money that works but how it is done. The last government both verbally trashed the views of many Indigenous communities and removed their semi-independent voice and also failed to recognise that short term, top down initiatives would not work, as was shown in this report. The current government network at COAG still failed to recognise that such approaches fail time and time again despite the Productivity Commission suggesting this, as do many other studies on this point. The Report says clearly on page eight of the Summary document. Things that work: Not everything that matters can be captured in indicators, and some information is better presented in words, rather than numbers. In particular, community level change may not show up in state or national data. The main report includes many examples of “things that work” — activities and programs that are making a difference, often at the community level. This Overview summarises these “things that work” in the discussion of each COAG target, headline indicator or strategic area. Analysis of the “things that work”, together with wide consultation with Indigenous people and governments, identified the following “success factors”:
This warning was not reported in the media. Nor unfortunately did the Commission’s report assess which policies and program over the last decade had been designed co-operatively and bottom up. These predictors of successful programs are many other reports. These show that education, employment, health, housing and family support services that are short term funded, not culturally appropriate, and linked to engaged local communities fail in both remote and urban settings. The media emphasis on the ‘deviance’ statistics (abuse, crime etc) means we are likely to continue to get more inappropriately designed and delivered programs that will continue to blame the victims for their failures. The claims that this government delivers evidence based policies needs to be made true, but the evidence must be based on what works and not just on the admittedly horrific statistics. The report states with some optimism “Across virtually all the indicators in this report, there are wide gaps in outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. However, the report shows that the challenge is not impossible — in a few areas, the gaps are narrowing.” Overall, Indigenous people have shared in Australia’s economic prosperity of the past decade or so, with improvements in employment, incomes and measures of wealth such as home ownership. However, in almost all cases, outcomes for non-Indigenous people have also improved, meaning the gaps in outcomes persist. The challenge for governments and Indigenous people will be to preserve these gains and close the gaps in a more difficult economic climate. (For more evidence, I’m involved in a new website www.whatsworking.com.au which is documenting examples to counter the views that nothing works. We will be adding in the many examples in the Productivity Commission intersperses in its report because these and other examples show that there are answers but these relate as much to how things are done as what is to be done). Eva Cox is a member of Women for Wik. |
|
|
15 Comments
Well said Eva. Building on things that we know work rather than more reports is excellent advice. And there are many things that can be built on.
The “Little Children Are Sacred” report, which made many points which were shouted down by those who would interfere unknowingly in indigenous matters was, is, and will remain relevant reading. It is readily available on line.
Nothing which Eva has written conflicts with that report’s recommendations. It is so sad that political expediency and top-down management styles have wasted money, time and lives yet again.
As a nation, we must do better.
Yes, agree with Eva and Mark.
Add Peter Sutton’s idea that, to enjoy 21st century standards on OECD indicators, you need to be able to live in a 21st century advanced economic and cultural setting.
So we need to promote lifestyle change on a broad front in all our needy bits of society, of whatever aboriginality, and to persevere across generations.
The promising excursions into voluntary out-of-community education and living (viz, Noel Pearson) are one route to follw.
This is an excellent article. Any time the government spends our money or borrows in our name on a social problem, it ends up making both the government and the problem bigger.
Your bottom up approach and arguments for the money to be spent at the grass roots level is spot on.
Ironically, it is not only spending on indigenous problems where this abomination is gaining momentum and heading light speed toward serious national debt. The same could be shown in education, health and welfare. The government decides to spend more money (ours by the way not there’s) and then allocates the lion’s share of it to the bureaucracy.
This is the travesty of good intentions and thank you for exposing it. Now if only someone will do the same for every other government department, we the people may make some headway.
What Eva neglects to tell the Crikey readers, or may possibly not be aware of herself, is that
“what works” is not as clear cut and demonstrable as she would have us believe.
For example, sometimes, possibly often, “quick fix authoritarian responses” do work. The success of the imposition of Opal fuel on outlets in Aboriginal communities in drastically reducing petrol sniffing, is one such instance. Another is the imposition of alcohol trading restrictions in Alice Springs and a growing number of other locations, despite community opposition amongst both black and white citizens. These restrictions have led to major declines in both consumption and associated harms.
Internationally, governments which have had the guts to impose road safety and public hygiene standards on their populations have generally achieved both improvements to living standards and long term public acceptance.
Sometimes - quite possibly often - “intransigence of the communities” is a major factor in things not working in Indigenous communities, and not just because they may “fail to respond to good intentions”. Quite often there are major vested interests held by powerful or influential Indigenous leaders which prevent any useful project, whether undertaken by outside or inside operators, whether black or white, from being tried or achieving much.
However, where the government has been game to impose progressive change, as Mal Brough did with the stores licensing and welfare income management arrangements, these have led to dramatic improvements in the lives of the vast majority of remote community dwellers, despite considerable opposition.
Eva’s comments on the “Headlined proposals to mandate healthy food in the outback stores” are not well informed. The reforms do not ignore “the questions of freight costs and the health problems of those communities that live close to good food supplies”, but store improvements are an integral part of the process of change to better nutrition and lifestyle choices. Pricing policy and nutrition strategies are part of the remote stores initiative.
Nor are the proponents of these store reforms, including Macklin, so stupid as to imagine that there are not other “deeper problems than bad food choices” which also must be addressed. Health organisations and others are working on these. It is an integrated, multi-focussed effort, and every agency has its role to play.
When Cox attacks “how much of the spending has gone to outside administration, not to the communities themselves”, she fails to concede that the spending of this money on the Income Management bureaucracy has led to quite dramatic improvements in the health and general wellbeing (psychological as well as physical) not just of children , but also for most other remote community members. (By the way, not all these bureaucrats are “white”, and their “housing” consists merely of small bedrooms in demountable barracks) .
Things that work: Cox’s examples do not support her general thesis. The small list of 10 examples on her web link consists of a mixture of five programs dominated by Aboriginal people, and five dominated by outsider experts, some of which are more notable for their success at self-promotion than actual achievement or worth. Often the people leading these projects are very talented and committed, but the projects may not be sustainable once their energy and judgement is no longer available.
Eva needs to consider that we have just put enormous effort and resources over 40 years into “bottom up” processes and projects, and the overall outcomes are literally pathetic, except in a handful of isolated cases (mainly in health and land care) where a few dedicated Indigenous and non-Indigenous individuals have turned themselves inside out to make things work.
Bob a few points.
As I understand it 1tThe productivity commission report showed that the NTER is NOT working. So how you get you “dramatic improvements in the lives of the vast majority of remote community dwellers” I am unsure.
I was also under the impression that Indigenous communities are the ones who have been asking for Opal and it has generally been the non-Indigenous owned Road Houses that are refusing to use it exclusively. What Indigenous communities was Opal imposed on?
Yuwalk
The majority of information in the PC Report is based on data from the 2006 Census, analysis of which has emerged in the last two years since the previous Productivity Commission Report. As the Report’s Overview section says: “Because of delays in data collection and timelags between policy implementation and social outcomes, information in this report may not reflect recent government actions (such as aspects of the Northern Territory EmergencyResponse) or recent economic conditions (such as the global economic slowdown). Future editions of this report will include information on current events.” See http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0013/90130/overview-booklet.pdf
There is a smattering of more recent information in the PC Report, mainly from the national education tests & data being collected about imprisonment rates and child welfare.
The Central Australian Youth Link-Up Service and NPY Women’s Council have worked long and hard to persuade remote communities, roadhouses and governments to agree to accept the change to Opal. There was much resistance from vested interests along the way, over the past four years. For example, Gunbalanya has only recently been persuaded to agree to take Opal.
The dramatic improvements in many NTER communities are becoming evident primarily via the Healthy School Aged Kids surveys carried out in recent months, & via other emerging health and justice trends. Local police and clinic managers are the main sources of this information. It will emerge in official analyses of the 2008/09 year statistics, as they are published in the coming 12 months.
Bob Durnan writes: “…the spending of this money on the Income Management bureaucracy has led to quite dramatic improvements in the health and general wellbeing (psychological as well as physical) not just of children , but also for most other remote community members….”
If this is true (and I’m yet to see the evidence, rather than the stream of Media Releases emanating from Jenny Macklin’s office and from her fellow travellers) then another matter needs to be raised, namely the unfairness of the “One size fits all Approach” of the NTER.
In Yuendumu compulsory IM has caused splits in our society, is opposed by the majority of residents and forces Centrelink recipients to purchase at the dearest shop (set up by the Intervention when the other two local stores were opposed to IM). Prior to the Intervention Yuendumu was not the dysfunctional den of iniquity that Mal Brough stereotyped all of remote Aboriginal Australia to be. We had already stamped out petrol sniffing long before we voluntary switched to Opal (to assist with the fight against petrol sniffing elsewhere). The Intervention in it’s first two years has achieved nothing more in Yuendumu than to further disempower and demoralise its Warlpiri population. As Pat Turner put it so succinctly at the start of the NTER: “This Intervention is the final nail in the coffin of Aboriginal self-determination”.
I should declare that I am the Manager of a locally owned shop that has been supplying “fresh food and vegetables at reasonable prices” for three decades. And incidentally the other locally owned store had long been running a system of voluntary income management, which was effectively destroyed by the top-down compulsory NTER imposed IM system.
I could go on with many more examples of “thinks that work” or sadly in most cases “that have worked in the past” and even more sadly “that don’t work and never will”, but I’m a bit tired of fighting the windmills of media spin. Lately I have been leaving the final word of my missives to the late Kim Beazley Sr.:
“In Australia, our ways have mostly produced disaster for the Aboriginal people. I suspect that only when their right to be distinctive is accepted, will policy become creative”
Bob
Gunbalanya is one community that has now agreed to take opal. What about all these communities opal was supposed to have been imposed on for great success? Seems to me it has mostly been advocated for by Indigenous Australians and it has been non Indigenous owned road houses that have been the biggest block. Both the organisations you site as examples advocating for Opal appear to me to be Indigenous run.
A quick google search reveals that people at Gunbalanya have wanted petrol banned in the community for many years.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200306/s886664.htm
I am not familiar with the politics of Gunbalanya so I cannot say why it has not been implemented, but I honestly doubt it is only to do with resistance from the locals. We have only just got Opal here in Gove and the only people complaining were a few whitefellers moaning about their boats breaking down and people dying if they accidentally use opal instead of the higher octane fuel.
I was also not aware that the HSAK screening was showing such a big improvement in health. I would love to see a link. For example according to the local paper in Gove, Yirrkala was only just screened. I doubt this years results are ready to be looked at for yearly comparisons just yet.
I take your point that the Productivity Commission Report needs newer information, but shouldn’t the NTER as a matter of competency be able to measure its results in some quantitative way?
The fact is that ever since the rightful owners arrived on the 26 of January 1788 the descendants of the unlawful immigrants that arrived 40,000 years earlier have presented a problem. Ever since then we have been trying different tactics to solve this problem, but nothing has worked and in 200 years time people will still be wringing hands and crying over our inability to solve the problem.
One reason is that we have two separate but antagonistic goals. On the one hand we wish to make the aborigines disappear but on other hand we have to pretend that our desire is to improve their conditions of life to something approaching the average for white people. Anything that actually works towards the second goal undermines work towards achieving the first more important one.
The fact is that damage Australians have done to the Un-Austalian aborigines in the past 221 years is absolutely enormous and the money cost of doing anything capable of undoing the damage would be more than Australia could afford. But even if we had the money we cannot violate the strict taboo against spending money on aborigines in ways that benefit them which constitutes the crime of “throwing money at the problem”. If we must spend on aborigines let us spend it on more laws that allow us to lock up more aborigines for longer sentences, more police, more Mazda prison vans of the type where WA elder Mr Ward was roasted to death. Let us equip all outback police with tasers so that in future no policeman is required to soil his fist or boots in beating an Aborigine to death.
Although the Aborigines are Australia’s defeated enemies the critical factors that determine their lack of well being are that they remain defeated and they remain our enemies.
Yuwalk
My understanding is that Gunbalanya, or at least some elements there, as in quite a number of other places, had to be shamed and pressured to take opal. The campaign for Opal has largely been led by the same small group of clear-sighted, brave & committed individuals, black & white (strongly supported by the unlikely alliance of Tony Abbott and Bob Brown), who have campaigned to get the governments to impose greater alcohol restrictions in the non-Aboriginal towns, take action against violence, re-examine certain assumptions about support for all aspects of ‘culture’, and supported much of the Intervention. It is true that non-Indigenous owned road houses are now the biggest block to further roll-out of Opal. I won’t get into the murky politics of who really runs which organisations here.
However, as with the opponents of change, it is often an alliance of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal players who are key movers in these things.
Re HSAK: some results from major communities throughout the NT have been discussed in networks over the last couple of months, and seem to be heading in a much improved direction. And, at least in CA, there are very significant improvements in school attendance figures in some communities.
Bob D
Bob Durnan says “Eva needs to consider that we have just put enormous effort and resources over 40 years into “bottom up” processes and projects,…………..”.
The word “enormous” is an expression of opinion, not fact. By what criterion does Bob Durnan judge our efforts to help the unwanted descendants of unlawful migrant who arrived 40,000 years ago to be enormous. Is it enormous compared to the efforts (ie. money) that we spend on the welfare of legitimate citizens (i.e mainstream Australians) including the rich and the middle class? Is it enormous when compared to the amount that would be needed to actually make progress against the overwhelming factors impeding improvement in the conditions of these unwanted survivors of incomplete ethnic cleansing?
One way to ensure that money is wasted is to allocate for a project considerably less than required to complete it. Consider the Malu Sara disaster that the ABC’s Four Corners program covered on 29 June 2009 http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2009/s2609548.htm.
In this the replacement boats for the Department of Immigrations Torres Straits fleet were underfunded.
The vast majority of Australians do agree with Bob Durnan that enormous amounts have been spent on the Aborigines but they are judging enormity by comparing with the amount that they think the Blacks deserve and since they think that the unfortunately brown-skinned untermenchen deserve nothing more than many whacking kicks in their behinds, any amount of money spent to benefit Aborigines appears to be enormous.
The fact is that the Aborigines are Australia’s defeated enemies and we are still in dispute with them over our nation’s legitimacy. If present day aborigines are human in the sense of deserving rights that politically correct chattering class types refer to as human rights then their ancestors must also have been and thus the actions necessary to forcibly transfer the land from Blacks to deserving Whites do not appear to conform with the laws that we pretend to obey and the moral codes to which we pretend to adhere. We need therefore that present day Aborigines be morally contemptible. Every chronically drunk aborigine convicted for pronging a five year old conforms to the stereotype to which we require that Aborigines conform every sober one with a University degree is an offense against it. We want Aboriginal society to remain as it is so we can take the necessary ethnic cleansing of the Aborigines ancestors as rightful punishment for the crimes of their descendants.
Bob
So essentially what you are saying is that in some communities some people did not want Opal and that by and large the biggest advocates for opal have been Indigenous people. I struggle to fathom to see how opal has been forced on any communities besides what you might call a few statistical outliers. It sounds more like something that Indigenous people have been wanting for years and who are only just getting despite opposition from mostly non-Indigenous people worried about their boats and profits at roadhouses.
I don’t doubt that there are communities that have needed a kick up the bum and some dodgy characters in all regions who should be exposed, I have seen plenty of that myself. But, I just don’t see the NTER working like you do. If you think the NTER is working because of what you see on the ground then just say that. Why you are bringing up Opal, which isn’t even part of the NTER and mentioning unverifiable and incomplete HSAK results, also not part of the NTER says to me that the information isn’t being collected or if it is it just isn’t showing anything that positive.
I also find it interesting that you chose Opal as an example of something that has worked. Opal is something that has been advocated for by people on communities and if it has been forced on anyone it is only a minority with perhaps only a few powerful people with vested interests not wanting it. You could probably argue that Opal is at a polar opposite to the NTER. In fact Eva Cox could probably add Opal to the list of things that have worked.
My point was that Eva is too quick to dismiss the occasional necessity & usefulness of what she characterises as “authoritarian responses”. Often such responses are absolutely necessary. If a person is pumping him or her self full of grog & dope, and starving their child of food & affection, they should not be treated with kid gloves.
Consultation with and consent by the more powerful are not always appropriate ways to seek and achieve justice and benefit for the vulnerable. The more powerful & privileged should not always be able to stymie the “common good”, even if their power is the inherited privilege of land rights over a town area.
I agree Bob, but the question that remains unanswered is if the NTER passes the “common good” test.