Why Aboriginal politics fail

Ministers fail to find answers

I clearly recollect the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr Gough Whitlam, standing before 60 of us Aboriginal people and asking that we tell him what we wanted from his government rather than 'what we think is best for you'. No other Prime Minister had ever made that statement and nobody since, including Kevin Rudd.—Chicka Dixon, Aboriginal activist and humanitarian [1]

Those words by the late Chicka Dixon voice the concerns of many Aboriginal people. They are sick and tired of politicians who seem to be unable to address Aboriginal issues to achieve real beneficial outcomes.

Following is an edited extract of Galarrwuy Yunupingu‘s opinion [2] on politicians and Aboriginal affairs. Galarrwuy is a long-serving former chairman of the Northern Land Council.

“Every minister I have known—Labor or Liberal—was no different from any other in this sense [of—often unsuccessfully—trying to find answers within their three-year period in office], even though some of them were my friends. They almost always request the same things and repeat the same things, then consult about the same things; then, by the time they finally have to do something, they leave, get moved or are thrown out of office.

“Aborigines too often forget that a politician’s full-time responsibility is to themselves and their government. That’s their first commitment. Whatever portfolio they receive is just for show. Very few can break the mould and certainly not in Aboriginal affairs.

“Aboriginal affairs ministers get a lot of scrutiny, so they are always busy trying to justify their decisions to the rest of their party members in parliament—to keep their reputations intact in the hope of a better appointment—or ducking for cover, worried sick about their jobs and whether they will be re-elected. That’s the real situation.

“Meanwhile, back in the bush, Aborigines have been sitting in their communities for the past 60 to 70 years waiting for service delivery and the deliverer has never arrived. I see this today with housing, health, education and infrastructure. Everything that has been said and promised in the past few years is still hanging in the wind, floating in the distance like a mirage.”

Galarrwuy Yunupingu echoes these feelings. In 2008, shortly after the election of Prime Minister John Howard, he voiced his frustration about the lack of progress in Aboriginal politics: [23]

“I am seeing now that too much of the past is for nothing. I have walked the corridors of power; I have negotiated and cajoled and praised and begged prime ministers and ministers, travelled the world and been feted; I have opened the doors to men of power and prestige; I have had a place at the table of the best and the brightest in the Australian nation - and at times success has seemed so close, yet it always slips away. And behind me, in the world of my father, the Yolngu world is always under threat, being swallowed up by whitefellas.”

Prof Patrick Dodson, inaugural and long-time chair of the former Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, shares similar views [3].

“It’s not that we haven’t had a discussion on matters that concerns us,” he says. “We’ve had plenty of those, we’ve had marches in the streets, plenty of reports. [But] what we haven’t had is a strategic conversation that is facilitated around rules that have got some international application in order to help us all get past the anger and frustration, because we’ve had all of those reports that have seemed to go nowhere.”

Reading or doing?—A politician’s challenge

New South Wales politician Victor Dominello who took over the state’s Aboriginal affairs portfolio in 2011 gives some insight into how Aboriginal politics look on the other side.

“As soon as I got into the portfolio, I was being absolutely inundated by people saying ‘here’s a solution, read this book, here’s a journal, what about this’ and so on,” he told an Aboriginal newspaper [4]. “Within a couple of weeks, I thought ‘this is crazy, it’s going take me years just to read all of this material’. And I think that’s part of the problem. Decision makers—people like myself who have to show political leadership—are in their offices reading, reading, reading but not out there and listening to the grassroots.”

Under the Indigenous Advancement Strategy, introduced by the government in July 2014, a minister had to check a 60-page document before signing off a grant application. [20]

Many know that solutions have to come from Aboriginal people themselves and not bureaucrats.

“People react differently when they travel around Indigenous Australia,” says Lauren Ganley [19]. “Some just see problems; others see opportunity; and most have questions. The ones you need to watch are those who have solutions.”

Of all politicians former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating set what is considered the “high water mark in political honesty” [4] with his speech in Redfern in 1992, where he bluntly admitted that “we committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion. It was our ignorance and our prejudice”.

There are also voices critical of the Aboriginal attitude. A reader of the Koori Mail Aboriginal newspaper wrote [5]:

“Stop giving up, stop being frustrated. Why don’t you strengthen your hearts, get a backbone and gather in council and form an Aboriginal government. One with the courage of its convictions to stand up and say enough is enough.”

There is no friendship in politics.—Ali Cobby Eckermann, Aboriginal poet [6]

It has to be understood by observers of Aboriginal politics in Australia that all governments' primary objectives on the surface is to deal with the bricks and mortar issues while beneath the covers social engineering is going on.—Michael Ghillar Anderson, Aboriginal leader [7]

Life is getting harder for our people. We are still being stigmatised, demoralised and disempowered even more. The government needs to work with our people and not dictate to us.—Barbara Shaw, town camp resident in Alice Springs [8]

Aboriginal affairs: A lot of money for little gain?

Australian governments pump billions of dollars into Aboriginal policies, health and assistance. Between 2008 and 2011 the total of all portfolio Australian Government Indigenous Expenditure (AGIE) figures were very similar at around A$ 3.4 billion [9].

But in 2011 the Australian Productivity Commission (the government’s independent research and advisory body) found the returns on this investment “dismally poor”, the Finance Department “disappointing at best and appalling at worst” [28].

Around 2008 the Western Australian government spent $1.2 billion each year on improving the living conditions of Aboriginal people [13], but the government’s approach was “seriously flawed” because funds were allocated to 22 different agencies with no single person or organisation responsible for improving outcomes. There was “an almost complete lack of leadership in the response by government to the disaster of Aboriginal living conditions”, a report by WA coroner Alastair Hope found [13].

An investigation by online magazine New Matilda in 2015 found that 65% of the Indigenous Advancement Strategy (IAS) funding for South Australia went to for-profit and commercial sectors and less than 21% to Aboriginal-led not-for-profits.

More than 60% of the IAS funding was directed to ‘Jobs, Land and Economy’, subsidising businesses to employ Aboriginal people. 65% of the these subsidies went to commercial or for-profit operations, 22% to the SA government itself. Aboriginal-led not-for-profits received subsidy funding for a grand total of 6 jobs across the state. [22]

Politics, politics, politics. Policy, policy, policy. Changes, changes, and more changes. What’s next?—Yalmay Yunupingu, Aboriginal artist and teacher [18]

Why government initiatives fail

Various reasons can cause projects and government initiatives to fail.

Blanket solutions don’t work

Government programmes often propose one solution that is then applied to many cases. But such blanket solutions rarely work in Aboriginal affairs. What might work in a community in Western Australia’s Kimberley region might not succeed in Central Australia.

“We have the bizarre situation where programmes are provided simply because someone thinks they are a good idea,” says policy analyst, Sara Hudson [10]. With no evidence of what works and no targeted resources government programmes are nothing but “wishful thinking”, Hudson says.

Despite over 200 years of white intervention, enormous amounts of money plied into white man’s programmes that haven’t worked – Anangu are still being subjected to this same soul destroying regime and their children are paying the price.—George Kenmore, [15]

Too many services

In some communities too many service suppliers try to achieve the same thing.

Roebourne in Western Australia has a population of 1,150, but there are around 67 local service providers and over 400 programmes funded by both Commonwealth and state governments. Toomelah in New South Wales, with only 300 people, has 70 service providers [17].

Because they were never ended, old programmes have built up over the years, many of which are no longer relevant, while new programmes have been introduced.

Such oversupply and duplication happens because the Commonwealth government duplicates state government programs in the areas of greatest need (education and community safety). But it looks as if there is no coordination or pooling of resources. No surprise that areas of shared responsibility have caused confusion and created many difficulties.

There is currently a substantial degree of overlap and duplication between the Commonwealth and States in Indigenous affairs as well as excessively bureaucratic processes and administrative arrangements.—National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO) [17]

High administration costs

Secondly, every programme has to be administered by a government entity. In the health sector, some funding arrangements are so complex that up to 42 different sources provide funding [10].

Administration can consume a significant portion of the funds allocated as the following example shows [11].

“Of $1.3 million allocated to another COAG [Council of Australian Governments] trial in the Far-East Kimberley region of Western Australia, only $327,000 was spent on Aboriginal people and programs over two-and-a-half years.

“The rest of the money was spent on salaries, travel and other related administrative expenses of the Department of Transport and Regional Services, which administers the program.”

This equates to 75% of administrative costs.

If you somehow follow the Aboriginal money trail, you'll quickly find that it bypasses the shanty towns, the camp dogs and diabetes row [and ends up with] white consultants and white contractors and white public servants. It ends up in the deep pockets of the Aboriginal industry.—Ray Martin, broadcaster and journalist [12]

Government wastes money for political reasons

Documents obtained under Freedom of Information laws show that governments waste thousands of dollars towards the end of a financial year “to reduce the department’s surplus” [15]. It’s a way departments use to avoid a reduced budget in the next financial year.

The documents exposed the South Australian governments had spent $360,000 on motorbikes for a program that could have been a positive empowerment and suicide prevention program for young Aboriginal men and boys. But the program was scrapped, and the motorbikes never made their way into communities. They were eventually sold off.

The history of Commonwealth policy for Indigenous Australians over the past 40 years is largely a story of good intentions, flawed policies, unrealistic assumptions, poor implementation, unintended consequences and dashed hopes.—Department of Finance’s Strategic Review of Aboriginal expenditure in 2010 [17]

No accountability

Gracelyn Smallwood, a James Cook University academic who has worked for 45 years in Aboriginal affairs, says there’s still a failure to hold bureaucrats to account for failed multi-million-dollar policies [14].

Installing satellite dishes for local television channels in remote communities might look like a good idea, but what if they need maintenance? At $2.50 per kilometre, a technician might charge $2,500 to drive to the community—each way [15].