With an election looming and some key Indigenous funding policies nearing expiry, is the pattern of government investment for Indigenous policies set to change?
Jon Altman of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University tells SBS reporter Rhiannon Elston why he doesn't expect to see Indigenous spending on the agenda on budget night.
Q: To start with a broad picture, has funding been increasing for government-based 'Closing the Gap' initiatives since they were first drawn up in 2008?
It most certainly has. There has been a series of a National Partnership Agreements (NPAs) that I think have certainly increased allocations to Indigenous policy, Indigenous Affairs. One of the problems, of course, that the government has is that the last census showed a greater than expected increase in Indigenous population. And so on a per capita basis, that puts some pressure on Indigenous funding. But nevertheless, the funding has increased. Paradoxically, perhaps, a lot of that funding is being allocated to remote Australia where need is seen to be the greatest.
And particularly, of course, the Northern Territory and Cape York are major beneficiaries. But the majority of the Indigenous population lives in non-remote Australia. Probably around 75 to 80 per cent live in non-remote Australia. So in a sense, the paradox is that government is… putting most of the money into remote Australia, where I think gaps are going to be the hardest to close.
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And they're assuming that mainstream provision of services will look after Indigenous people in non-remote Australia, where gaps are most likely to close. I think it's a very brave assumption that people will get equitable needs-based access to services in non-remote Australia if they're disadvantaged.
Q: That appears to be a recurring criticism; that the bulk of Indigenous funding lands in the Northern Territory and not enough is left for the other states.
The first thing the government really needs to do, and it's never done, is actually undertake some audit of what is needed. Because what we don't hear a lot about in Indigenous policy making is the historical legacy. In some sense what happened post the 2007 intervention is the extent of the legacy in very visible remote Indigenous communities was there for everybody to see, and the obvious government response to that was to try and band-aid what was very visible.
Poor housing, poor school facilities, poor community infrastructure. Poor medical centres. So the government has certainly tried to address some of that in those very visible places. But the truth is, to meet that historical legacy which has being growing exponentially for decades, is going to require very significant investments, very significant commitments, running into billions of dollars.
Q: With the Indigenous Health Outcomes NPA due to expire in June, we've seen the federal government recommit $777 million over three years with an expectation that the states and territories will also come to the table, and they have until June 30 to do that. So far, we haven't seen broad state-based commitment. What kind of implications could that have?
I think it will depend on the next government. We've got to remember when we had multi-partisan agreement through COAG on these National Partnership agreements, it was coast-to-coast Labor, and since then we've had a change and a number of state governments and territory governments are non-Labor. So the possibility of contested federalism has increased, and of course that could flip right round if you had a change of federal government, and suddenly you might see a new cooperative federalism between an Abbott government and at least those states and territories that are now conservative.
Whatever the case, I think there will be some very hard questions asked about the National Partnership Agreements when they come up for renegotiation in terms of their effectiveness. And one of the things we've found with Closing the Gap in terms of their track record at least for the period 2006-2011, has been quite patchy. Some of the gaps are closing quite slowly. Some of the gaps are widening, and some of them are proving very difficult to shift. So in a sense, there might be scepticism about both the targets and about the efficacy of the national partnership agreements in helping to close them.
Q: Do you expect to see any major Indigenous funding announcements in next week's budget?
I think the current government, it seems to be the new mode of operation, they've more or less fired all their fiscal bullets as far as Indigenous Australia is concerned. They've made their forward commitments to Stronger Futures, to Cape York, to Creative Australia to Carbon Farming Initiative; it has all been sign-posted so I actually don't expect to see anything new for Indigenous Australia in the budget.
The question is, what will the government do to make sure that when we have new schemes like DisabilityCare Australia… what mechanisms do we have in place to make sure that those people who are most in need and I think it's likely that even in relation to DC Indigenous People who will be most in need get the greatest access? And it seems to me that one of the problems we have with this notion of normalisation and needs-based equitable access to services including disability support, superannuation, jobs and so on, is that we assume the playing field is level, whereas clearly that's not the case.
Not just in terms of historical legacy and the poor physical, psychological, emotional condition of many Indigenous people but also that our institutions aren't very well tailored to respond to people from fundamentally different cultural backgrounds, and we just don't want to recognise that racially based discrimination is still a problem when it comes to accessing services.
