Ken Wyatt backs call for funding checks

Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt has endorsed key elements of a scathing report into which Indigenous policies and programs are worthwhile.

‘I welcome the Productivity Commission’s report recommending the creation of a whole-of-government Indigenous evaluation strategy’: Minister for Indigenous Australians Ken Wyatt. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Indigenous Australians Minister Ken Wyatt has endorsed key elements of a scathing report from the government’s chief economic adviser on the dearth of evidence about billions spent on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs.

The report says little is known about which Indigenous policies and programs are worthwhile because assessments have been ad hoc and often an afterthought. The Productivity Commission calls on government agencies to listen and talk to Indigenous people more often — before, during and after spending money on programs designed to improve their lives — and to assess the results and publish the findings.

Mr Wyatt heard some of these arguments when he helped run the joint council that struck the new national agreement on Closing the Gap, rewritten after a decade of failed efforts to reduce Indigenous disadvantage in five out of seven targeted areas. Mr Wyatt and his co-chair, Pat Turner, ensured the 16 new Closing the Gap targets came with requirements including that government agencies are held to account for results and money is tied to performance.

“I welcome the Productivity Commission’s report recommending the creation of a whole-of-government Indigenous evaluation strategy,” Mr Wyatt said.

“Monitoring the effectiveness of programs and understanding what is working and what needs adjustment is essential to informing policy development and supporting robust decision-making.

“The government will consider the report and respond ­appropriately.”

The report sets out a nine-step guide for government organisations each time they spend money on Indigenous affairs, ending with the publication of the results.

The proposal is in large part the work of the Productivity Commission’s Romlie Mokak, a Djugan man from the Kimberley and formerly chief executive of the Lowitja Institute, Australia’s national institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health research.

The report comes six years since Warren Mundine, then chair of prime minister Tony Abbott’s Indigenous Advisory Council, called for a full audit of spending in Indigenous affairs, which is often estimated at $35bn a year.

Mr Mundine said on Friday governments must get to the bottom of what he considered peculiar costs.

“We need to know if there is any funny business going on — why for example does it cost the government say $600,000 to build a house in an Indigenous community when it should be $200,000?” he said.

“Anecdotally there are examples of someone flying from Darwin to a remote community to do something simple like change a washer. All that work needs to be regionalised.”

Mr Mundine also said a full audit of assets owned by Indigenous organisations was essential.

He said that in his work advising the Howard and then Abbott governments he learned that some organisations had useful assets — including buildings — that they did not know they owned.

The figure of almost $35bn in Indigenous spending a year is an estimate calculated from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population of about 800,000, or 3.3 per cent of the population.