Just when you thought he’d given up, Albanese surprises on Indigenous empowerment

Just when it was beginning to look like the Albanese government had chucked in the towel on improving the lives of Indigenous Australians after the failed Voice referendum, an exciting development was announced last week. “Labor wants fund to help people in remote communities own their homes”, The Australian’s headline read.

In brief, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia Madeleine King has lent her support to the Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility co-investing with the Indigenous people of Bidyadanga, the remotest Indigenous community in Western Australia, to support private housing aspirations and business ventures.

Making 99-year leases available on all houses on native title land in areas like Bidyadanga in Western Australia would be a huge breakthrough for Indigenous economic empowerment.Credit: West Australian Alternative Energy

Bidyadanga will enable private ownership using long-term leases. That’s the exciting part. Because, as I wrote last year, the way in which the Mabo ruling on Tiwi Islands land was applied to create native title on Australia’s mainland produced a barrier to Indigenous people actually using the land they notionally own.

The 99-year leases that will be available for private housing in Bidyadanga are a solution, alongside long-term leases of other lengths that community members will be able to access for commercial purposes.

All Australians understand what it’s like when a home of their own seems unattainable. The barriers to homeownership for Indigenous people living on native title lands are even higher than for people living elsewhere, as they are more than just financial.

For the time being, 99-year leases are still only available to a very limited number of Indigenous communities; which is crazy because the mechanism isn’t that complicated or arcane. A fun fact that many Australians might not know, is that the Australian Capital Territory uses 99-year leases. Some of the ACT’s 99-year leases rolled over last year and nobody noticed.

The Bidyadanga community has been working on realising their leasing aspirations with successive Western Australian governments. Things often move slowly in this space because the layers of bureaucracy are stifling. On the bright side, that means that the project has been kept alive through Labor and Liberal governments in Western Australia, indicating bipartisan support for the plan at a state level.

According to the masthead which broke the story, Labor “plans to open up remote Aboriginal communities to individual homeownership as a means of easing the chronic housing crisis for 92,000 Indigenous Australians living in locations classified as ‘very remote’.” That would, of course, require the mechanism to be embraced by the federal government, which is responsible for the Northern Territory, as well as by state governments. It is heartening that Madeleine King saw fit to publicly support the Bidyadanga project; it can be regarded as an important step by federal Labor towards making this mechanism available nationally.

Making 99-year leases available on all native title land would be a huge breakthrough for Indigenous economic empowerment, which would in turn make it a historic step towards closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians on a range of measures.

Housing is one of the priority areas measured in the annual Closing the Gap report. Adequate housing is considered essential to health and wellbeing because poor quality housing and overcrowding lead to ill-health through compromised hygiene and increased domestic violence. These have flow-on effects including poor school attendance and inability to pursue regular employment. These issues create a cycle of disadvantage which has made the gap especially intractable.

By contrast, the benefits of homeownership include a sense of control and agency. Luke Tipuamantumirri, who took advantage of a 99-year lease in the Tiwi Islands community of Nguiu more than a decade ago, is quoted in a 2009-10 Township Leasing report handed to Jenny Macklin, then minister for families, housing, community services and Indigenous affairs, as saying, “(When we rented) anybody could come and stay with me and we couldn’t say anything. But when you own a house, I can now say who can stay and who can go.”

The same report quotes another owner who was glad that, when he died, his family would inherit his house. This points to another advantage of homeownership that Indigenous people on native title lands are unable to access without 99-year leases. Social housing built by the government on native title land reverts to government when its inhabitant dies (or goes away for a while to pursue opportunities outside his or her community).

Housing built or bought under a 99-year lease is an ongoing asset to its owner and their heirs. Mainstream Australians aspire to own an asset of this type. It is a form of cultural infantilisation or “othering” to think that some Indigenous people in remote communities might not also aspire to all the psychic and material benefits owning a home brings with it.

The Albanese government’s first steps on this momentous journey are tremulous. Remote community housing is a standing item on the agenda of the Northern Australia Ministerial Forum, Minister King told me in an email response to my queries, saying that “all jurisdictions want to pursue long-term sustainable housing in the north, and this is something we are working actively on together”. But King emphasised that she is primarily focused on providing additional funding for social housing, into which billions have been poured over the years without any lasting improvement in Indigenous living conditions.

Still, even wobbly steps forward are better than the unsatisfactory status quo. Bipartisan support at a federal level is now needed to give the government confidence in continuing down this path. By supporting long-term leases, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton would show that he opposed the Constitutional mechanism of the Voice because his party believed it was a bad one, not just because it was put forward by Labor.

Despite the referendum debacle, it looks like the Albanese government has found a meaningful way to empower Indigenous Australians, regardless what Dutton decides.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.

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