No Sugar

Hide not thy poison with such sugar'd words;
Lay not thy hands on me; forbear, I say;
Their touch affrights me as a serpent's sting.

King Henry VI, Part Two, Act Three, Scene 2.

I recently spent some time in Western Australia, and came across a copy of Jack Davis’ short 1985 play No Sugar in an op shop (link here).

Davis (link here) was born in 1917, and led a varied life as a stockman, writer, playwright, activist, and spokesman for Aboriginal people. As a young fella, Davis spent a couple of years at the Moore River Settlement near Mogumber just north of Perth, an experience which clearly informs his political and literary activism. By the end of his life in 2000, his plays had achieved international acclaim, and he had been recognised with an OBE, and Order of Australia, and various state and federal Board memberships.

No Sugar, set in the region surrounding Perth in Western Australia during the great depression in the early 1930s, tells the story of the fictional Millimurra family and their interactions with the ‘protective’ state government of the day.

While I knew of Davis by reputation, I never met him and had never seen his plays nor read any of his writing, so reading No Sugar was an opportunity to begin to close a gap in my own appreciation of the depth of the Indigenous contribution to Australia’s cultural life.

Davis’ achievement with No Sugar extends beyond crafting a work of considerable artistic and literary merit, which brings to vivid life the challenges of the depression for many Australians, but in doing so rips the band aid off the raw wound which lies at the heart of the history of race relations in Australia. His genius lies in bringing to life through the narrative of a single family the brutal ongoing reality of the interface between the settler state and first peoples over 100 years after the initial colonisation of their lands. Davis also throws light on the deeply human responses of Aboriginal people, the ways in which the state laws operate to drive different responses to injustice, both among Aboriginal people and wetjalas, the Noongar term for white fella or the English language.

Indeed, one of the pleasures of No Sugar is the inclusion of a significant amount of Noongar language and colloquial expression in including Aboriginal humour in the dialogue, and the Currency Press edition which I found includes a very helpful glossary of Aboriginal terms at the end.

The reason for including an account of No Sugar in this blog is that it struck me that Davis had a lot to say about the ways in which policy and public administration was used to reinforce the politics of exclusion. His accounts of the ways in which control was exercised by the Superintendent of the Moore River settlement, the interactions between the legendary Chief Protector of Aborigines, A O Neville and the local town police, the legerdemain used to persuade and cajole the Millimurra family to leave their settled camp in Northam and the unsettling exposition of the bureaucratic imagination in full flight to justify the unjustifiable is a tour de force in policy analysis, albeit via the play’s semi-fictional narrative.

I say semi-fictional, because the removal of the Millimurra family in No Sugar mirrors the actual forced removal of 90 Aboriginal people from Northam to Moore River Settlement in late 1932. The then Premier’s own electorate was Northam, his Government faced an election in April the following ear, and his popularity was on the wane. Local community antagonism to Aboriginal people was rife. See the insightful account of this episode (and much more) in Anna Haebich’s excellent account of Aborigines in southwest Western Australia, For Their Own Good, published in 1988 by UWA Press.

The point of No Sugar is not merely to recount or explicate the effects of a shameful and discriminatory period in our past. It celebrates the resilience of Aboriginal people and their cultures and languages notwithstanding sustained attempts to obliterate their presence metaphorically and actually. It raises questions about the propensity of our liberal democratic system to hypocritically ignore our widely accepted commitments to the right to life, to freedom of speech, to freedom of movement, to liberty and security, to due process under law, to freedom of thought, belief and expression, to freedom of assembly and association, to the right to marry and begin a family, and to the right to be free of discrimination.

A further important point of No Sugar is to raise questions about our current approaches to policy development and implementation in Indigenous affairs. While the levels of deep exclusion of Indigenous people which were practised in 1930s Western Australia are no longer evident in Australian politics and policymaking, one would have to be blind to believe that all is well, that exclusion is no longer practised or prevalent, and that the sentiments espoused in 1944 by Chief Protector Neville are not still alive and well in some parts of our state and federal policymaking domains. Neville stated then:

The native must be helped in spite of himself! Even if a measure of discipline is necessary it must be applied, but it can be applied in such a way as to appear to be gentle persuasion…the end in view will justify the means employed (quoted by Haebich 1988:156)

Anyone who plays a part in developing or implementing Indigenous policy in Australia should take the time to read No Sugar.

Davis’ play takes its name from the ironic parody of a hymn ‘There is a Happy Land’ sung by the cast members portraying inmates at Moore River:

There is a happy land,

Far, far away

No sugar in our tea,

Bread and butter we never see,

That’s why we’re gradually

Fading away

But as Bernadette Brennan points out in her essay on No Sugar (link here), the title also references Aboriginal rejection and renunciation of the bureaucratic strategy implicit in Neville’s advice to Jimmy Munday in Act One of the play: ‘sugar catches more flies than vinegar’. As Brennan states: ‘Aboriginal people will not play sweetly, they will not be meekly charming and play by the rules of the imposed game’.

Policymakers have much to learn from Davis’ No Sugar, and from the insights it offers into the nature of unthinking bureaucratic process, the ways such processes can support exclusionary policies and the ways unthinking policy can undermine human lives and dignity.

The structural underpinnings of remote disadvantage: some reflections on federal financial arrangements and Indigenous disadvantage

My two previous posts dealt with the vexed issue of future funding for social housing in remote Indigenous communities. One of the issues discussed was the suggestion by the Review commissioned by the Government that the states and the Northern Territory should share any future funding allocations 50:50 with the Commonwealth. This view was backed up by the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council, and strongly pushed by the Minister.

For my part, while I have no problem with efforts to encourage the states to do more, I am deeply suspicious that the line of argument is being used as a distraction to divert attention from a likely reduction in Commonwealth funding. We will presumably know what the Commonwealth intends and thus obtain a readout on my concerns in the next few months. I sincerely hope that I am wrong.

For Indigenous people on the ground, looking up to three levels of government above them, it is a daunting task to seek to hold governments accountable for the effective delivery of services. Taking just the single issue of social housing provision and management, there is a complex interaction of functional responsibilities between the three levels of government. This often leads to calls for a clearer and more definite allocation of responsibilities: eg ‘the states should be responsible’; or ‘the states should match the Commonwealth funding’ (both of which the Minister has advocated in recent months).

Yet the complex reality is that the allocation of responsibility is inexorably intertwined with the financial arrangements which underpin the federation, and that without consideration of reform to those arrangements, suggestions for changes to the allocation of functional responsibilities will fail or go nowhere.  One of the issues with the Remote Housing Review commissioned by the Minister (seemingly without explicit terms of reference) is that it failed to consider and analyse the impact of the current GST distribution arrangements on various options for future management of the remote housing program.

So it was pleasing to see that the Productivity Commission, in its most recent draft report on Horizontal Fiscal Equalisation (link here), made explicit (albeit very brief) reference to the interaction between federal financial relations, functional responsibilities of different levels of government, and Indigenous disadvantage.

The Productivity Commission, in Chapter 9 of its Draft Report on the scope for future reform made the following suggestion:

In the Productivity Commission’s view, reforming HFE in isolation will only go a small part of the way to improving outcomes within federal financial relations. There is a need to revisit the broader operating environment in which HFE takes place, and to renew efforts to reform federal financial relations in the broad.

Governments should develop a process, led by the Council on Federal Financial Relations, to work towards this as a longer–term goal. This process should assess how Commonwealth payments to the States — both general revenue assistance and payments for specific purposes — interact with each other.

The process should also consider a well‑delineated division of responsibilities between the States and the Commonwealth, and accompanying accountability and performance arrangements. In particular, responsibilities and accountabilities for Indigenous policy — a policy area where there continues to be little improvement despite significant expenditure — should be given priority (page 209; emphasis added).

My reaction to this recommendation was broadly positive, but in my view it failed to appreciate the need to distinguish more carefully between the policy requirements for addressing disadvantage in remote and non-remote contexts. Whether the Council on Federal Financial Relations (which comprises the Commonwealth Treasurer and his/her state and territory counterparts) is well placed to drive reform of responsibilities for Indigenous disadvantage on its own is also a moot point, but beyond the scope of this post to consider.

My brief submission to the Commission is set out below.

This submission deals with the narrow issue of raised in Draft Recommendation 9.3 of the Commission’s Draft Report advocating a reform process for Federal Financial relations which inter alia allocates clearer responsibilities between the states and territories and the Federal Government, and in particular, suggests that policies to address Indigenous disadvantage should be a priority in this regard.

I have no fundamental problem with the intention of this recommendation, but note that for the reasons outlined below, the assumption or use of the concept of an overarching category of ‘Indigenous person’ which does not reflect the specific nature, causes, and current manifestations of the disadvantage afflicting Indigenous citizens may lead to counter-intuitive and unintended outcomes.

The fact that the Commission singled out the issue of Indigenous disadvantage reflects a correct reading that this is an issue which goes to the core of our national character, and has a salience beyond the technical details of HFE. Nevertheless, for the reasons outlined below, the recommendation is in my view not as comprehensive or well targeted as it might be.

My submission focusses on two points which relate to the ways that the HFE process impacts on Indigenous citizens.

First, it is increasingly apparent that the nature of the disadvantage suffered by remote and non-remote Indigenous citizens is different, and accordingly, policies generally and in particular the reform processes advocated by the Commission in relation to HFE and federal financial relations need to take account of those differences. For example, the most recent Census data which is only now becoming available suggests that the levels inequality between the most remote Indigenous citizens and non-remote Indigenous citizens is wider that the spread of inequality within the non-Indigenous population. See for example Dr Francis Markham’s recent seminar at the ANU Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy: ‘The Geographic divergence of Indigenous incomes: Census evidence 2006-2016’. I understand these results will be published in the near future.

Accordingly, it is increasingly untenable for the HFE process undertaken by the Grants Commission in assessing disability factors to make no distinction between the very different needs of remote and non-remote Indigenous citizens. Moreover, there are increasing indications that the levels of Indigenous identification in non-remote regions may have been increasing, with the potential result that the Indigenous population of south-eastern Australia is increasing not through population growth, but through a broadening of the population base. This has the potential to distort the relativities within the HFE process, to the disadvantage of jurisdictions with remote populations, and thus potentially reinforces the deep-seated structural disadvantage which afflict those populations.

The second issue I raise also impacts most severely on remote Indigenous populations, and arises from the fact that state and territory governments are under no obligation to allocate GST revenues in accordance with the comparative needs identified by the Commission as the basis for calculating their respective allocations. Moreover, the comparatively weak electoral and political influence of remote Indigenous populations means that it is unlikely that they receive a share of recurrent funding which accurately reflects levels of need. Moreover, remote populations face a particular structural disadvantage in relation to capital investment by governments insofar as not only do they not obtain a fair share of current capital investment by the states and territories (and perhaps even the Commonwealth), but they reside in regions which were settled much later in the nation’s history than regional and metropolitan regions, and thus have a historic capital investment deficit.^[1]

The HFE process (as I understand its operation) does not seek to address the structural disadvantage related to capital investments by government, let alone historical capital investment deficits. The combination of these two factors leads to a level of structural neglect in terms of jurisdictions’ funding and investment towards remote populations. Clarifying responsibilities between the Commonwealth and the states and territories will not necessarily address these structural impediments.

One approach which was suggested in a book^[2] I co-authored with Neil Westbury in 2007 would be to create a notional ‘remote Australia’ jurisdiction for HFE purposes and require individual jurisdictions to, at a minimum, allocate the GST revenues received in relation to disability factors pertaining to the notional remote jurisdiction within that notional area in their state or territory.

There may be other ways to address the structural impediment. My submission however is that the structural impediment which leads states and territories to under-invest (in terms of assessed needs) in remote parts of their jurisdictions should be addressed.

I note in this context that historically (following the 1967 referendum) a key driver for the Commonwealth to begin funding Indigenous populations in the states was their deep reluctance to allocate anything more than minimal funding to their Indigenous populations. That is, the shared and confused responsibilities which the Commission has identified as a problem in Draft Recommendation 9.3 are in fact the result of the Commonwealth historically seeking to address an extreme structural impediment. That impediment continues to exist, and while there is a rationale for clarifying responsibilities, if the underlying structural impediment is not addressed, then Indigenous disadvantage in remote regions in particular will continue.

For the reasons outlined above, I suggest that the Commission needs to fundamentally re-think Recommendation 9.3 insofar as it relates to Indigenous disadvantage, and complement it with a recommendation which more effectively addresses the nature of the disadvantage afflicting remote Indigenous citizens.

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[1] Of course, the implication of this point is that Indigenous populations in more settled parts of the nation have suffered the consequences of colonisation for longer, and this may shape different types or degrees of disadvantage which affects them more seriously such as intergenerational trauma arising from dispossession.

[2] Dillon and Westbury (2007) Beyond Humbug: transforming government engagement with Indigenous Australia, Seaview Press, Adelaide.

The next phase of funding for remote Indigenous housing

You take my house when you do take the prop

That doth sustain my house. You take my life

When you do take the means whereby I live.

Merchant of Venice Act 4, scene 1

It is widely accepted common ground that housing is an important element in addressing deep-seated disadvantage.  See for example the AHURI research report released with the recent Remote Housing Review (link here). Australia’ remote Indigenous communities are the locus of perhaps the most concentrated deep-seated disadvantage in the nation.

Since the Second World War, the Commonwealth has played a crucial role in funding social housing nationally, initially through the Commonwealth State Housing Agreement (CSHA) as well as through the development of the Commonwealth Rent Assistance Program. Following the 1967 referendum, the Commonwealth gradually ramped up its own direct investment in Indigenous housing programs both in the CSHA, and in a number of Indigenous specific programs. Up until 2007, the CSHA included an element directed towards Indigenous social housing which was delivered by the states and territories, while the Commonwealth delivered an Indigenous specific housing and infrastructure program with a nation-wide footprint called CHIP (Community Housing and Infrastructure Program).

These Indigenous specific programs funded by the Commonwealth were in specific recognition of the political reality that the states had not been prepared to provide services to their Indigenous citizens, often adopting discriminatory policies of exclusion. While the overt racism of the states’ policies has largely disappeared, the institutional and structural invisibility of Indigenous interests continues to the present day. The discussion below of ‘acceptable’ levels of overcrowding is just one example. The case for ongoing Commonwealth engagement in remote housing policy remains incontrovertible.

A review of CHIP commissioned by Minister Mal Brough in 2007, Living in the Sunburnt Country, found that the program was not focussed on need and recommended greater focus on remote housing since regional and urban Indigenous citizens had access to mainstream social housing options which were not available in remote regions. For example, the virtual total absence of private rental housing options in remote communities meant that Indigenous residents had a structural incapacity to access Commonwealth Rent Assistance, the largest social housing program in the nation.

In its last year in office, the Howard Government made a number of moves to upgrade the funding for housing in remote regions, through a program known as ARIA and later renamed the Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program (SIHIP).

Following the election of the Rudd Labor Government, in early 2008, the Commonwealth and the States agreed to establish a National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing, known as NPARIH. This was part of a broader reform of Commonwealth – State financial relations. The agreement in effect combined the former CSHA component with the Commonwealth CHIP program and provided for Commonwealth funding of $5.5bn over ten years, a massive increase in previous funding levels for remote housing, with housing construction and tenancy management to be undertaken by the states and the NT. It set specific targets for each jurisdiction related to new builds, refurbishments, and Indigenous employment. Even so, it was recognised that it would not address the totality of outstanding housing needs in remote Australia.

The ten year agreement survived the change of Government in 2013 albeit with a change of name – it is now known as the National Partnership on Remote Housing, or sometimes as the Remote Housing Strategy.

The National Partnership expires in June 2018, and thus raises the question, what will replace what has been the major national investment program in remote Australia (apart from welfare and employment programs) over the last ten years? While I dealt with this topic in a previous post (link here), this post is an update following the publication of the Remote Housing Review.

To pave the way for the Government decisions which will determine the answer to that question, in November 2016, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Senator Scullion, announced a review into remote Indigenous housing. In his media release announcing the review, the Minister stated that ‘Overcrowding, homelessness and poor housing conditions in remote Australia remain unacceptably high’. According to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PMC) website, the Review had two tasks: an analysis of what was implemented in the past and an assessment of what should be effected in the future.

Notwithstanding that the Review suffers from a range of serious analytical flaws which I outlined in my previous post (link here), the review’s findings essentially confirm the Minister’s assessment of the unacceptable state of remote housing.

On 10-11 May 2017, the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council was briefed on the review. In their communique dated 19 May, the Council made a number of comments on Indigenous housing and the then unreleased review of remote housing.  They noted, inter alia:

Council acknowledged the findings of the Remote Housing Review and expressed concern that despite significant reductions in overcrowding investment is required to meet unmet need and maintenance of housing stock. Council emphasised adequate housing is critical to ensure positive outcomes are maintained in health, education, employment and community safety...

A link to the Advisory Council’s communique is here. 

Since May there have been a number of development which relate to the next phase of funding. In August, the Minister made a number of comments in an ABC Q&A program at Garma (link here), where in response to a question about overcrowding and the impact on peoples’ lives, he foreshadowed a number of likely policy directions:

We’re deadly serious about this. We’ve invested $5.4 billion over the last decade, and I think everybody would agree we could have done a lot better. We have reduced overcrowding from 52% to 37% – it’s still in the margins, and that took a fair while to do. So, the next rollout, which we are now negotiating with the states and territories about the National Partnership on Remote Indigenous Housing, we’ll be negotiating on the basis of what the communities have asked us to negotiate on.

So, Indigenous employment is non-negotiable. Indigenous procurement is non-negotiable. And we’ll be asking the states to match those funds. Because we need a pulse. Sometimes we can just trickle along and we’ll be just catching up, just getting ahead, but we actually need a significant injection of funds. So, that’ll be the basis of our negotiation with the states. But those houses cannot be built by whitefellas getting off planes with nail bags. Those times have to go.

Prior to the most recent Estimates Hearings relating to the Indigenous Affairs portfolio, the Minister released the Remote Housing Review Report on 26 October 2017 (link here). In the lead up to that release, a government source provided The Australian’s Darwin correspondent Amos Aikman with not just the report, but the earlier May version which had been provided to the states and territories for their comment and input. That source was presumably the Minister or his Office; who else had access to both the earlier draft and the about to be released final version? While it is normal for Ministers to provide the media with advance copies of reports they are releasing, the provision in this case of both versions was clearly aimed at highlighting and undercutting the changes the review panel had made after consultation with the states, and ‘bells the cat’ on the lengths to which the Government has gone to frame the public discussion in the lead up to its decision on future funding for remote housing.

The ‘drop’ to The Australian would likely have involved at least some level of briefing as Aikman’s 26 October story (Blot on $5.4bn indigenous housing) reported on the key changes between the two versions. This related to the extent to which jurisdictions allocated NPARIH funds for non-construction activities such as land servicing, infrastructure provision, and program administration.

The final data is presented in Table 4.2 of the report. While WA spent 33.6 percent of its allocated funding from 2008-2016 on ancillary costs (the source of the 34% figure), other jurisdictions spent less. The average across the four jurisdictions remaining in the scheme was 20.8 percent. While the inevitable inference of the media story was that ancillary costs were somehow illegitimate, the report does not say this is the case, and indeed explicitly states (section 7.1.3) that there was no suggestion these costs were illegitimate, merely that the Commonwealth did not have a line of sight to them. The reality is that houses without access to power, water, sewerage, and access roads are not ‘fit for purpose’. Much of the debate around remote housing over the last decade has overlooked this crucial fact, and instead been simplistically focussed on three key metrics: numbers of new houses, refurbishments, and levels of Indigenous employment. Important as these are, the remote housing system is more than the sum of these three metrics.

Aikman’s lead paragraph also managed to pick up on a subsidiary observation by the Review Panel (‘the scheme is opaque, “complicated by multiple objectives, poor governance and constantly changing policy settings’ and has not fostered home ownership or business growth”) rather than the Review’s headline finding, namely that:

By 2018, the Strategy will have delivered over 11500 more liveable homes in remote Australia (around 4000 new houses and 7500 refurbishments).

This increase in supply is estimated to have led to a significant decrease in the proportion of overcrowded households in remote and very remote areas, falling from 52.1 percent in 2008 to 41.3 percent in 2014-15. The Panel projects this will fall further to 37.4 percent by 2018. (Executive Summary page 1).

In particular, Aikman noted that ‘At an average price of $600,000 per house, estimated from the existing program, the next ten year agreement is likely to cost around $3bn. The report recommended that federal and state governments split the cost equally, but the NT has already demanded more’.  Given the likelihood that The Australian received a detailed briefing on the report (the $600,000 figure appears to be an extrapolation of data provided in Tables 4.2 and 4.4 of the Review, and unlikely to be a figure the journalist would come up with unilaterally), there seems to be a possibility that the $3bn figure may reflect one of the options in the Minister’s bid to Cabinet for a national allocation. Of course, such a notional calculation is fundamentally flawed, as it ignores the potential need for refurbishments as well as new houses, and also the increasing need for Property and Tenancy Management costs (which include ongoing small repairs and maintenance costs)

In a follow up story on 27 October 2017 (Housing loses out as cash diverted), Aikman’s lead paragraph reported that:

States and territories are spending up to 34 percent of federal funds provided for remote indigenous housing on “ancillary costs”, but those governments also blame Canberra for poor living conditions in the bush, arguing it has not committed to ongoing payments.

The story went on to report that the 34 percent figure highlighted in both media stories related just to one jurisdiction. Nevertheless, the headlines and lead paragraphs in the two articles laid out a narrative which painted the states and the NT as mendicants not pulling their weight.

At the most recent Estimates Committee hearings (link here), there was a rather bizarre discussion around the next phase of Commonwealth involvement in funding remote housing. The Minister and his officials made no absolute commitments, but appeared to lay down a few benchmarks which will shape future Commonwealth policy.

First, the Minister and his officials argued (against accepted wisdom and the history of Commonwealth involvement since at least 1968) that funding for remote housing was primarily a responsibility of the states and territory, and that the Commonwealth’s role was in effect optional or discretionary. As Minister Scullion stated:

Yes we have seen this review and we’ve let the states know about the review. They are aware that this is a national partnership agreement under which we haven’t reached the goals we were supposed to reach, because then it was to go back to the states’ responsibility. This is overcrowding in remote areas. So negotiation still has to happen about in which states this is mostly occurring in. And it’s a matter for the Commonwealth to negotiate with the states about what percentage of the responsibility remains with the Commonwealth. It was the intention that by this stage, the Commonwealth would have no further role and the role would go back, rightly, to the states and territories in this regard. (Estimates transcript 27 October 2017:51).

This statement is factually wrong on a number of levels. There was never an ‘intention’ that NPARIH would be the end of the Commonwealth’s involvement; indeed, it was recognised at the time NPARIH was first negotiated that the targets embedded within it would meet only around half of the outstanding national need. Second, NPARIH largely met its goals, and allowing for substitution of investment between new builds and refurbishments, in fact exceeded its goals. (Refer section 4.3 of the Review report).

One way to interpret Minister Scullion’s statement is that the Minister has yet to obtain a Cabinet decision on the quantum of funding available for the renewal, but recognises that Cabinet is unlikely to allocate a further $5.5bn over ten years. Alternatively, the Minister may have been told that he won’t get a further $5.5bn, and thus he has engineered a review and a set of arguments designed to throw dust in the air to avoid criticism for his lack of capacity to deliver an ongoing program at former levels for Indigenous constituents.

Second, the Minister appeared to rule out the use of a National Partnership going forward, indicating instead that the Government was considering a series of bilateral agreements with each of the four remote jurisdictions (WA, SA, NT and Qld) rather than an overarching National Partnership. The Minister has not laid out a persuasive argument for making this shift, but what is clear is that it will allow him to set up an effective bidding war between the jurisdictions (who now happen to have Labor Governments) based on their preparedness to match Commonwealth funding. A series of bilateral agreements also opens up the possibility of a shift away from a ten year program to shorter bilateral agreements. A further risk in moving away from the National Partnership model is that it increases the scope and likelihood of reductions in investment levels through the ongoing annual budget process since COAG endorsed National Partnerships appear to have a greater (but not total) degree of quarantining from budget revisions during the life of the agreements.

Third, the Minister was quite vague on the timing for an announcement of new funding arrangements. In responses to questions in Estimates previously, the Minister had advised that a decision would be announced as part of the Mid-Year Economic and Financial Outlook (MYEFO) statement, normally brought down around December or January. However in the latest Estimates hearing, he shifted his ground, indicating that discussions with the states and territory were at a very preliminary stage, and that ‘it’s unlikely any announcement will be made prior to MYEFO, but there will certainly be an announcement prior to or during the budget process’. This suggests that the MYEFO budget process will likely be used to decide on the national funding allocation quantum, but that there will then be a subsequent negotiation or ‘bidding process’ undertaken with the four jurisdictions.

Ironically, one of the important and sensible recommendations of the Review Panel was that ‘a minimum five year rolling plan for the program should be established’ (rec.7, page 4). Yet the Commonwealth has allowed a situation to develop where the states and the NT will essentially enter the 2018-19 financial year with minimal lead time to develop a capital works program, thus virtually guaranteeing at least a one year hiatus in capital works and potentially PTM momentum. The review was critical of the National Partnership’s two year capital works cycles, yet the Commonwealth has done nothing to ensure a smooth transition between the current Remote Housing Strategy and the next phase.

So what then should the next iteration of the program look like? As with any policy issue, the answer must take into account a number of issues. In this case the core first order issues are the levels of need across remote Australia, measured by overcrowding; and the necessary investment required to maintain the asset base and maximise asset (ie house) lifespans. These first order issues go the quantum required to address the outstanding housing deficit in remote Australia.

Other issues, such as maximising local indigenous employment and/or Indigenous employment generally; deciding how to best deliver necessary repairs and maintenance; choosing and resourcing the most effective tenancy support models; design/cost trade-offs; new builds versus refurbishment trade-offs; and construction cost versus whole of asset lifespan cost trade-offs; are all important, but second order issues. The second order decisions will be crucial determinants of the effectiveness and efficiency of the resources allocated. Merely listing them provides a sense of the complex decision-making processes embedded within this program, and the overall complexity of the remote housing system. This is further complicated by the fact that two levels of government are involved, and that choices in relation to any one of the second order issues will inevitably impact on the options and choices available on the other second order issues.

Turning to the first order issues, the Review is only of limited assistance. The Panel’s assessment of the outstanding ten year need of 5500 houses is extremely problematic. The Panel itself admits that the estimate relates only to households requiring three bedrooms or more, or to citizens who are homeless. As they note in the text under Figure 3.3, this suggests ‘the overcrowding challenge is likely to be greater’.

Secondly, they note that the estimates are based on modelling of 2011 Census data and as they state in footnote 29: ‘remote housing need requires remodelling when the 2016 Census data is available’.

Third, the Panel fails to include any estimate for houses which reach the end of their effective lifespan. Data on the effective lifespan of the current asset base nationally is virtually non-existent and disappointingly, the recent Remote Housing Review provides no insights into the issue. But if average asset lifespans were 30 years, and the national remote Indigenous community housing asset base was 15,000 houses[1], then we could expect around 500 houses to reach effective ‘end of life’ each year, or 5000 over the next decade.

Fourth, the Panel’s modelling is based on reducing overcrowding from 37 percent to ‘around 25-30 percent by 2028. This level of overcrowding is still 10 percentage points higher than the rate in urban and regional Australia.’ The Panel makes no assessment of the level of outstanding need based on parity in overcrowding levels with metropolitan Australia[2], and indeed, asserts in the Executive Summary of the report that the targets specified above involve reductions in ‘levels of overcrowding to acceptable levels’ without any discussion of what makes them ‘acceptable’ (emphasis added).

Fifth, the Panel ignores entirely the figures on current demand and projected need provided to it by three jurisdictions, which total 7520 houses without including projected need in South Australia and Western Australia (see Box 3.2).

Based on the factors identified above, a more realistic assessment of outstanding need for housing across remote Australia over the coming decade to 2028 would be at least 10,000 new houses and arguably 15000 new houses.[3] Using the figure of $600,000 per house, the cost of delivering 10,000 houses would be $6bn. This would need to be complemented by a program of refurbishments aimed at extending asset lifespans wherever possible, and assuming effective PTM policies are in place, this might involve somewhere in the region of 2 to 5 thousand refurbishments over the next decade. Add say 3000 refurbs at $100k each would cost $300m or $0.3bn.

Finally, the Review Panel correctly emphasised the need for a complementary recurrent program to be funded designed to deliver PTM to the entire asset base. The review’s most insightful conclusion, based on detailed research by NOUS Consulting (link here), was that annual rental revenues covered only between 10 and 20 percent of the actual cost of maintaining the asset base. Much of this extra cost is a function of remoteness. See section 8.1.1 of the Review report also. This suggests that some $2.8bn in additional funds will be required to maintain the existing asset base over the next decade.[4]

These admittedly rough ‘ball park’ calculations suggest that meeting the outstanding housing need in remote Australia over the decade to 2028 would cost around $9bn; $6bn for ten thousand additional houses; $0.3bn for refurbishments; and $2.8bn for PTM. While this quantum is daunting in itself, the challenge is magnified by the fact that it does not include the concomitant ancillary costs of land servicing, essential services infrastructure, and access roads.

The prospects that the Commonwealth will allocate anywhere near $9bn to fund remote housing provision over the next decade appears negligible. The level of political and electoral pressure on the Commonwealth is minimal. The daily challenges of Indigenous interests in remote Australia are largely invisible in national political discourse, which has focussed in recent years on constitutional recognition. Moreover, Indigenous interests are spread thin and exercise very limited political influence. Increasingly, the Indigenous community vote spans the political spectrum, which often mean that Indigenous voices cancel each other out. Advocacy is almost non-existent. Nationally, the National Congress of First Peoples does not currently list housing on its list of priority policy issues (link here). In the NT, the Aboriginal Peak Organisations Northern Territory (APONT) has been building its advocacy capability since 2010, and in 2015 facilitated the establishment of Aboriginal Housing NT, a body dedicated to advocating on housing issues for Aboriginal citizens in the NT (link here). AHNT made a submission to the Remote Housing Review (link here) but has not to date built a public profile.

The consequences of underinvesting in remote housing over the coming decade will be devastating on a number of levels. For taxpayers, the value of the investments of the past decade under NPARIH, along with whatever reduced amount is allocated, will in effect be substantially and prematurely depreciated as housing asset lifespans are shortened. The economic impost on taxpayers of meeting the costs of poor health, education and social outcomes will expand. The local economic multipliers which spin off capital works investments will not arise, thus further undermining the prospects for economic development in remote communities. And most importantly, the life opportunities of tens of thousands remote citizens will be irretrievably constrained. The evidence emerging form the latest census is that income levels are worsening in remote Australia, and a pull back in remote housing investment will only exacerbate this trend further (link here).

In short the economic, social and human cost of not investing in addressing the deep-seated disadvantage which derives from poor and overcrowded housing will be substantial, with the most intense impacts falling unnecessarily on remote Indigenous citizens.

Apart from renewing the National Partnership with a significant level of funding, what policy options exist for the Commonwealth (and the states)?

I would propose four possible policy initiatives, though I am sure there are others.

First, the lack of progress in opening up opportunities for private sector investment in remote community housing is a glaring policy failure by the Commonwealth. Lack of progress in advancing land reforms, which to be effective must not lessen the rights of Indigenous traditional owners or native title holders, has been one major impediment. Another has been a lack of innovative policy vision within governments. A third has been the impact of transaction costs and other hidden disincentives which hold back investment even in communities or locations which have made progress in establishing more flexible institutional frameworks (eg the township leases in a number of NT communities). And fourth is a lack of access to capital. The focus by governments on moving straight to higher levels of home ownership is in my view misdirected. Governments would do better to concentrate on building up a rental housing market in remote Australia. It is currently virtually non-existent.

One way to kick start such a shift would be to establish a government owned corporation with commercial powers to borrow in the private sector (and which might joint venture with Indigenous corporations) to build, own and rent out housing within remote communities. Such an initiative would address a number of pressing issues: the shortage of housing assets; the lack of staff housing in remote communities (which acts as a disincentive to attract and retain both locally engaged and external staff); open up new sources of private sector capital for investment in remote locations; and would begin to expand access to the Commonwealth Rent Assistance program to remote Indigenous residents who to date have been structurally denied access.

Second, policymakers could focus on supporting the introduction and expansion of three or four community housing providers across remote Australia to complement the operations of state housing authorities in remote regions. Notwithstanding the fact that the NPARIH reforms introduced institution arrangements which for the first time established formal accountabilities for the owners of social housing, the experience to date has been disappointing with state housing authorities yet to deliver on their responsibilities. The introduction of competing providers may be necessary to demonstrate that poor housing is not an inevitable and endemic feature of remote regions.

Third, given the propensity of the states and the NT to underfund PTM in remote regions, the Commonwealth should move beyond rhetoric and take a much more direct role in either delivering PTM services itself (perhaps by injecting Commonwealth officials into the relevant parts of state and territory housing authorities) or in establishing a new statutory office to monitor, oversight and regulate the provision of PTM services in remote communities. Such a policy initiative might need only exist for ten or fifteen years until new expectations were set and embedded into bureaucratic practice, but would ensure that the substantial capital investments to date, and hopefully the value of the considerable investments into the future by the Commonwealth will be protected from dissipation and accelerated wear and tear arising from poor PTM which shortens asset lifespans.

Fourth, one innovative element of NPARIH which actually worked to improve state and territory performance, and which was discontinued after the change of Government, was the capacity for funding allocations to be varied both up and down in response to state performance in delivering against key metrics. While the Review Panel (section 4.7) argues that the competitive bids process (as this financial incentive system was known) led to ‘undesirable and unintended consequences’, it is salutary to reflect on the fact that the best performing state in terms of value for money, South Australia, was penalised by the Commonwealth for poor performance in the early years of the program. The bottom line si that states and territories will respond to financial incentives, and given the importance of PTM for protecting the Commonwealth’s investment to date, there would be value in giving serious consideration to re-instituting the system with a focus on PTM delivery.

To sum up, the prospects for the renewal of the current levels of Commonwealth investment in remote Indigenous housing do not appear positive. The Minister and his Department appear to be basing their policy development work on a Review Report which is fundamentally flawed, and in particular, which substantially under-estimates the outstanding housing need across remote Australia.

The costs of not addressing this need effectively will be significant and will fall on taxpayers in the future, and importantly, substantially constrain the material life opportunities of thousands of remote citizens over the course of their (shortened) lives. The asymmetry between the short term political benefits of reduced investment and the associated long term social, economic and health costs is driving a decision-making dynamic which is not in the public interest, and certainly not in the nation’s long term interest.

How this issue is resolved will be a test; a test of the institutional capacity of the Australian Public Service to drive good policy, a test of the calibre of our political leaders, and ultimately a test of our national character, and whether we are the land of the fair go.

Disclosure: In the interests of full transparency, I should indicate that I worked as an adviser to Minister Jenny Macklin from 2008 to 2011, and as a senior public servant with responsibility for NPARIH from 2011 to 2013.

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[1] The Sunburnt Country Review in 2007 states there were 21,000 houses managed by Indigenous Community Housing Organisations across Australia, but doesn’t split this between remote and regional areas. NPARIH has built 4000 houses nationally in remote regions, and refurbished 7500, so there are at least 11500 remote houses. The figure of 15000 is my estimate. Achieving effective asset lifespans of 30 years assumes effective PTM policies. In many locations, the effective asset lifespans are likely to be shorter.

[2] I am not in a position to make a detailed analysis of how many additional houses would be required to reduce overcrowding by an additional ten percent. However, NPARIH’s extra 4000 houses reduced overcrowding by 15 percent, and the Review estimates that a further 5500 houses would reduce overcrowding by a further ten percent. It seems likely that at least 5000 houses would be required to reduce overcrowding by a further ten percent.

[3] This figure is calculated based on the Review’s base figure of 5500 new houses to meet existing needs plus population growth, the estimate of 5000 new houses to replace assets which reach the end of lifespan, and the approximately 5000 additional houses required to reduce overcrowding to metropolitan levels.

[4] Table 5.5 of the Review report suggests that average weekly rents are around $90. If we adopt the conservative assumption that rents cover 20 percent of maintenance costs, then average annual maintenance costs will be $23,400 per annum, of which only $4680 is rent. If there are 15,000 houses nationally, then the additional funds required exceed $280m per annum, or $2.8bn over the next decade.

The fundamentally flawed Remote Housing Review

The current National Partnership on Remote Housing (previously the National Partnership on Remote Indigenous Housing or NPARIH) was established in 2008 by COAG. NPARIH was allocated funding of $5.5bn over ten years from the Commonwealth while housing delivery was administered by the states and the Northern Territory.  The National Partnership expires in June 2018. The responsible Minister, Senator Scullion, has made a number of statements over the past few months concerning the Government’s likely approach to future funding for remote housing, but has yet to announce the shape of any new program nor the quantum the Government will allocate to address the continuing shortfalls in housing in remote communities.

To pave the way for the necessary Commonwealth Government decisions on these issues, on 18 November 2016, the Minister for Indigenous Affairs Senator Scullion announced ‘an independent review into remote Indigenous housing to explore practical and innovative solutions to address the inadequate conditions and supply in remote Indigenous housing’ (link here).

According to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PMC) website, the Review had two tasks: an analysis of what was implemented in the past and an assessment of what should be effected in the future’.

In his media release announcing the review, the Minister stated that ‘Overcrowding, homelessness and poor housing conditions in remote Australia remain unacceptably high’.

On 26 October 2017, the Minister released the Review Report (link here).

This post assesses the high level adequacy of the Review Report given that it will comprise an important input into the Governments policy formulation process in relation to future support for remote Indigenous housing. A subsequent post will analyse the Government’s statements so far, explore the likely shape of the next phase of remote Indigenous housing investment, and assess the implications for both taxpayers and remote Indigenous citizens.

On first reading, the Review report appears to have fulfilled the two aims listed on the PMC website. It includes a swathe of data, examines some innovative options, and reaches a number of important and sound conclusions, in particular in relation to the importance of an ongoing recurrent program to maintain the quality of the existing remote social housing asset base, and identifies the structural constraints in relation to revenue raising capacity which constrain remote the social housing system in comparison to the national social housing system overall.

Nevertheless, on closer analysis, I have reached the conclusion that the Review is fundamentally flawed in a number of its headline findings and recommendations. The Review neither gives an accurate account of what has transpired over the past decade in remote social housing sector, nor offers a cogent roadmap for the future.

I have identified eight high level issues which undermine the legitimacy and utility of the Review Report as an objective input into future policy formation.

First, the Minister appears to have exercised a high degree of influence over the Review process, its findings, and its recommendations. He does not appear to have issued formal detailed terms of reference, or if he did, they have not been published. The ‘independent’ Panel comprised three Indigenous members one of whom has organisational affiliations with substantial current funding from the Indigenous Advancement Strategy funding (which the Minister controls), and who was also a member of the Prime Minister’s Indigenous Advisory Council which the Panel consulted during the course of the review. The fourth member was a senior consultant with a consulting firm which specialises in providing services to Government. The specific affiliations of the Panel members were not listed in the Minister’s announcement of the review, nor in the review report (but see this news report from the Department issued after the report was finalised – link here).

The Department revealed in the most recent Estimates hearings that the Minister met with the review Panel on a number of occasions, but this was nowhere mentioned or commented upon in the Review Report. The Minister’s Department provided the Secretariat to the Review Panel. My point is not to cast any aspersions whatsoever on the Panel, but to highlight the fact that the Minister retained a high degree of informal influence over the shape of the review process and potentially its conclusions.  A number of the points raised below have links back to this issue of poor transparency and assurance regarding the independence of the review process from ministerial influence.

Second, the Review fails to lay out a description of the shape and key characteristics of the remote housing sector. There is no data on the size of the social housing system in each jurisdiction, the proportion of remote houses in each jurisdiction, the numbers of remote houses funded managed by each jurisdiction, the numbers of locations, the characteristics of the populations in each jurisdiction living in social housing and remote social housing, and so on. The Review commissioned a research synthesis from AHURI (published simultaneously with the Review report), but this was not directed to describing the characteristics of the remote sector.

This gap means that it is virtually impossible for a reader to assess the significance of the policy challenges facing each jurisdiction and the Commonwealth overall. For example, what proportion of the total remote social housing asset base was upgraded by the 7500 refurbishments delivered by NPARIH. We are not told. Similarly, it is difficult to assess the significance of the Review’s assessment that there is an outstanding need of 5500 additional houses as we are nowhere told how many houses are currently part of the remote social housing system.

Third, nowhere does the review report provide a comprehensive description of the breakup of the funds allocated to NPARIH and the NPRH. Thus the review fails to include comprehensive data on the year by year allocations to each jurisdiction, broken down by category. Nor does the review provide year by year data on the performance of each jurisdiction and nationally against the three key metrics (new houses, refurbishments, and Indigenous employment) over the eight years to date of the NPA and projections going forward.

An obvious consequence of the lack of a comprehensive snapshot of key program metrics is that important issues are left opaque. For example, the Review mentions that three states, Victoria, Tasmania and NSW exited the program via a ‘buy-out’ process, yet nowhere does the review provide details of the costs involved. Nor did the Minister ever announce this publicly. We are left to wonder about the cost of persuading those states to exit the program.

Or to take another issue which has become contentious, table 4.2 details the costs for new builds and refurbishments for the four continuing jurisdictions to 2016, and provides two columns outlining state construction costs and Commonwealth capital works funding, with the difference shown as the percentage of funds allocated to ‘ancillary costs’ (ie non-housing costs) by the states. The table does not provide a national total. Yet when calculated, the funding amounts total only $2.5bn in Commonwealth funding out of the total initial allocation for NPARIH of $5.5bn. The obvious and unanswered question is: what was the balance of $3bn spent or allocated on? (bearing in mind that in 2016 there was still two years to run). The review provides a reader with no basis to ascertain the answer.

Fourth, property and tenancy management (PTM) is given a lot of attention in the report, again with virtually no data presented to back up the points made. The suggestion in section 5.1.1 that PTM was ‘sidelined’ in the early delivery of the program is mere assertion and in my view is just wrong. It ignores the fact that before the program existed, there was virtually no funding and no focus on PTM by ICHOs. The shift of responsibility to state housing authorities under the program, and the requirement for 40 year leases to underpin all investment, meant that the states were for the first time responsible for tenancy management as part of their landlord responsibilities. This was a key objective of the program, and so to argue that it was ‘sidelined’ is tendentious. The NPARIH Review of Progress (2008-2013) released in 2013 (link here) reached a different conclusion, noting that:

There has been considerable progress with property and tenancy management implementation overall, but key elements such as reformed rent setting and tenant support services have not kept pace with capital works delivery in all jurisdictions. (p.11).

Moreover, there is absolutely no mention of the current Government’s decision in 2015 to cut $95m from the forward estimates for PTM (refer to para 2.15 and footnotes 28 and 29 in the recent ANAO report on the Community Development Program for the rationale for this cut; see also this blog post for a little more info on this and related issues), nor any analysis of the performance of the new Community Development Program in delivering housing repair and/or tenancy management services which was the rationale given by the Minister in Estimates in 2015 when he was queried on the cuts. Let me repeat this as it is a crucial point: the Review argues that the initial progress on PTM ‘was slow’ and that the ‘focus on PTM was sidelined’, but fails to mention that the current Government cut $95m from PTM. This hardly amounts to objective and independent analysis.

The report mentions (in section 5.1.2) that in 2016 the Commonwealth introduced outcome payments to the states for improved PTM services. Apart from the fact that this change has never been publicly announced, there is no analysis in the review of the amounts allocated and the reasons the new payments were deemed necessary. The data in table 5.1 shows Commonwealth PTM investments / allocations by jurisdiction over the period 2008-2018 (ie the life of the NPA). However these amounts also include unspecified funds allocated to three states to buy out their involvement in the program (thus obscuring the admittedly minor amounts allocated to these jurisdictions for PTM); the data is not broken down by year (it should be) and it doesn’t include original allocations as well as revised allocations. Again this is an example of poor / non-existent analysis.

Box 5.2 includes a description of state policies for asset repairs and maintenance. In relation to the NT, there is no mention of the poor performance that has led to a number of communities taking legal action against the NT in relation to poor / non-existent tenancy management practices. Yet this matter was explicitly raised with the Panel by APONT in their submission (link here).

Fifth, the headline conclusion in the review is that 5500 new houses are needed by 2028 (see section 3.3). The review itself footnotes a number of caveats to this headline figure: it is based on 2011 census data and will require updating; it is based on modelling which only includes households requiring three bedrooms or more, with the consequence that ‘the overcrowding challenge is likely to be greater’ (Fig. 3.3 text).

The report states that adding these assets to the national remote housing asset base would decrease overcrowding to ’25-30 percent’ which is around ten percent above metropolitan rates. This is still an extremely high rate of overcrowding not seen anywhere else in the country, yet there is no discussion of why the Review states in the executive summary that this is an ‘acceptable’ level of overcrowding. Assuming the Government aimed to reduce overcrowding to metropolitan rates, there would be a requirement for approximately an extra 5000 houses.  

Moreover, in Box 3.2, the review includes a list of state data on overcrowding which when aggregated shows that the states consider 7500-plus new houses are required by 2028 (WA lists only current needs). Again, there is no attempt to analyse or discuss this data against the Review’s more conservative estimate.

Finally, there is no analysis of the likely reductions in total housing assets due to assets reaching the end of their expected life.

The review fails to undertake an up-front discussion of these issues, instead adopting an analytically flawed approach of first deciding the ‘acceptable’ level of overcrowding, and then retro-fitting modelling on narrow assumptions to come up with the 5500 new house figure. While this looks respectable against the 4000 new houses delivered under the current program, such a comparison ignores the 7500 refurbishments also undertaken under NPARIH. Indeed the headline conclusion focussed solely additional houses appears to assume that there is no longer a need for any refurbishments to be undertaken.

Sixth, analysis in the Review of state housing departments’ performance is underwhelming. For example, there is no detailed assessment of PTM performance (see above). On rent collection, Table 5.5 demonstrates a number of jurisdictions’ performance has fallen between 2011 and 2016. The report notes the states suggest (section 5.5.1) that this is due to tenant cancellations of rent deductions (a matter recently addressed by the Government) or suspensions of welfare payments under CDP (a matter the Government is in denial over). What is not addressed as a factor is the poor performance of state housing authorities in responding to tenant requests for repairs (see point three above). The report identifies this as an area requiring further policy work, and it is surely correct. Given that the Government has had a draft of the report since May 2017, an obvious question for the Government is what have they done to address this issue? There is no information available publicly to suggest that anything has been done or is in progress.

Seventh, the report appears to lay out the underpinnings of an argument for a reduced financial commitment from the Commonwealth in relation to remote Indigenous housing. The review suggests that funding responsibility for remote housing has not been clear (section 1.1.1) whereas it would be just as accurate to assert that both levels of government have assumed concurrent responsibilities. It is clear that the Commonwealth has had a longstanding role in funding remote housing (see Table 1.1).

The review also asserts that there is a potential role for ICHOs in the future delivery of remote housing (section 5.6) although it does warn that this is not a solution to the funding challenges (see section 5.7). The review also talks about ‘shared responsibility’, greater sharing of risks between the Commonwealth and the states, and then without any detailed preliminary argument or analysis, leaps in Chapter 9  to a recommendation out of thin air that the cost of the remote housing program should be shared 50:50 between the states and the Commonwealth. It is only a small next step to arguing for a reduced commitment from the Commonwealth, presumably based on the rationale that it should only match state funding commitments.

A comprehensive analysis of this issue would take into account the respective revenue raising capacities of the Commonwealth and the states; assess the interaction of program changes with GST horizontal equalisation processes, and look beyond housing to the respective contributions of each level of government to issues such as land servicing, infrastructure, essential series etc.

The ‘key finding’ in para 8.3 that ‘continued investment by governments will be required beyond 2018, at least in the maintenance of existing tenancies…’(emphasis added) suggests that the possibility that the Government will decide not allocate funding for new capital investment is or has been under active consideration. This is reinforced by the rather odd section at the end of the research synthesis paper by AHURI which accompanied the Review and which provides a ‘non-comment’ on the implications of a stall in investment. Clearly, someone asked them the question: what would a hiatus in funding mean?

Eighth, there is an extended discussion in Chapter 7 on Governance which ignores the transformative design of the NPARIH program, aimed at empowering the states and NT to deliver social housing under what was a new Intergovernmental Agreement on Federal Financial Relations which explicitly removed detailed input controls form intergovernmental transfers. While the Review discusses these reforms, its discussion is premised on a reversion to former ways of doing business, focussed on detailed input controls. This is a recipe for even greater confusion over responsibilities.

Conclusion

The eight high level issues above represent my assessment of the major flaws in the Review.

There are a range of lesser points worth mentioning: the arguments against the competitive bids process (see sections 4.7 and 7.1.1) are weak, not supported by adequate evidence, and ignore evidence to the contrary; many of the recommendations overall appear to come out of thin air; the finance analysis is underdone, at one point suggesting that PTM might be cut further (see section 8.1.2) and that targets for reduced taxpayer subsidies to social housing ought to be introduced (section 8.3).

In my view, these flaws arise from an attempt to gloss over or justify decisions made by the current Government in administering the program since 2013, and to lay the groundwork for announcing a new framework which will, under the cover of requiring greater investment by the states, likely deliver a reduced level of investment in remote housing by the Commonwealth in the decade ahead.

My final observation relates to the fact that this Review was auspiced and directly supported by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. In the last couple of years, the Department has argued that better evaluation and policy analysis is the solution to successfully addressing Indigenous disadvantage. The Department cannot be held responsible for the conclusions of an ‘independent’ Review panel. However, the Department provided the secretariat to the Review, and thus did have a role in ensuring the analysis and research which underpins the Review report is of a high standard. It is worrying therefore that the Department has allowed the partial and rather poor analysis embedded in this Review Report to see the light of day. It would be even more worrying if they allowed the Report to be used as the sole basis for Cabinet consideration of the future of the Commonwealth’s role in the supporting the remote Indigenous housing sector.

The next post will assess the policy issues which will shape the next phase of government engagement with remote housing provision.





Disclosure: In the interests of full transparency, I should indicate that I worked as an adviser to Minister Jenny Macklin from 2008 to 2011, and as a senior public servant with responsibility for NPARIH from 2011 to 2013.