Indigenous are ‘canaries in democracy’s mine’, says Megan Davis

Uluru Dialogue co-chair Megan Davis says Indigenous communities have become democracy’s ‘canaries in the mine’ as governments fail accountability tests on critical targets.

Uluru Dialogue co-chair Megan Davis. Picture: John Feder

Uluru Dialogue co-chair Megan Davis argues the lack of integrity in Australia’s political system is on display in the government’s failure to meet its targets in ­Indigenous health, education and crime crises plaguing ­Aboriginal and Torres Strait ­Islander communities.

In a speech in Sydney on Wednesday night, Professor Davis described Indigenous communities as “the canaries in the mine” of democracy because that was where the problems in the nation’s political system were most acutely felt.

“And when our voices fall silent, the air has already gone bad,” Professor Davis said.

She documented a lack of scrutiny that placed integrity at the margins, calling for answer­ability as Labor cracks down on freedom of information and transparency.

Professor Davis has long ­argued that the Closing the Gap agreement – bipartisan policy for almost two decades – is not working in large part because there are no consequences for failure. The Productivity Commission called last year for all governments to create watchdogs to make bureaucracy accountable for results.

However, five years in, only the ACT has done this. Victoria will have a watchdog soon, as part of its Statewide Treaty Bill, but other states are not close to creating one.

Delivering the Centre for Public Integrity Oration, Professor Davis said research after the failed voice referendum in 2023 had revealed important ­insights about Australians’ view of the proposal for an Indigenous advisory body.

“One was that few Australians knew that the voice to parliament proposal was driven by integrity issues that plague Indigenous communities,” Professor Davis said. “And by that, I mean the integrity issues relating to government and bureaucracy. And I say that because we know there tends to be a focus on Indigenous accountability to the state but less about the state’s accountability to Indigenous communities as Australian citizens.”

She said that, with integrity at the margins, Australia governed its Indigenous people “through discretion and often arbitrary decision-making”.

She pointed to remarks by Pat Turner, who is working on the Closing the Gap agreement as head of the Coalition of Peaks. Ms Turner told Senate estimates that whole-of-government departments were dragging their feet on Closing the Gap especially the National Indigenous Australians Agency, the main commonwealth department responsible for Indigenous affairs. “Integrity and accountability are not bureaucratic burdens; they are how citizens belong to the state,” she said. “Integrity at the margins is the measure of the nation’s democracy and it should be as important as the AEC and the pioneers of the secret ballot and preferential voting and Australia’s grand electoral system.”