Free-market response welcome

Financial empowerment and responsibility are the ingredients for a healthy and productive life. This is something that has been missing from much of remote Indigenous Australia, where a lack of opportunity and will has been allowed to fester. The new approach being advanced by the Albanese government is to be applauded. As we reported on Thursday, Labor has handed its new tsar for Aboriginal business extraordinary powers that could make remote-community residents the owners of defence infrastructure and the funders of energy projects. The aim is to steer the most disadvantaged Indigenous Australians away from reliance on government and towards the free market. Superannuation funds will be invited to buy bonds in Indigenous enterprises, including housing. Anthony Albanese says the plan is about “together writing a new chapter of self-determination”.

Obviously there are big hurdles to face, not the least of which is finding a way for investment funds to generate an adequate return for retirees. But, as a newspaper, we have long argued that employment, skills and responsibility are central to turning things around. This includes difficult discussions about communal ownership and private property, and allowing people to choose to live where their life prospects are greatest. The latest results of the Closing the Gap initiative are proof enough that the status quo is not delivering.

Mr Albanese is on a journey. His new vision is for government to work carefully with communities towards a future in which “Indigenous Australians have the economic security of a job and a home”. He has adopted the language of equal opportunity in which all Australians get the same chance in life, as opposed to equality of outcomes, which has empowered bureaucracy as an end in itself. Indigenous Australians Minister Malarndirri McCarthy is to be congratulated for her determination to break the preoccupation with public sector funding in support of private sector activity. This includes business development and mortgages for houses, and accessing greater opportunities in the wider economy. “There is a need to see ­Indigenous economic participation shift to be something more similar to the way the mainstream economy works,” Senator McCarthy said.

This is the wake-up call that the Indigenous welfare industry needs and, following the wasted energy and money spent on the voice referendum, the Labor government deserves credit for finally seeking to put it in motion.