Andrew Forrest report a ‘launch pad’ for indigenous reform

THE PM appears ready to act on the document’s less confronting proposals.

Forrest report a ‘launch pad’

ANDREW Forrest’s far-reaching blueprint to end the tragic disparity between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians is Tony Abbott’s first real test to become the Prime Minister for Aboriginal affairs he pledged to be.

The delivery of the Forrest report is a watershed moment for the nation, and the Prime Minister is acutely aware of it.

Until this moment, the Abbott government’s reforms in Aboriginal affairs, although important, have been incremental, attacking each problem individually. Forrest’s report provides what one senior Coalition adviser described as the “launching pad” for where the government will travel next on indigenous and welfare reform. Another calls it the “operating document” for which all change in indigenous affairs will be based.

This does not mean the government intends to introduce all of Forrest’s contentious and confronting recommendations, but it does reveal how determined the government is to substantially transform Aboriginal policy and deliver on its ambitious commitment to end the despair that persists in so many indigenous communities.

The report calls for many substantial changes, including the introduction of a national “healthy welfare” card for all, a significant reduction in the number of income support payments, and bans on young people accessing welfare unless they are training or in work.

Indigenous business would be given tax-free status under the blueprint’s vision, and parents would lose family payments if their children were not sent to school.

Forrest has told The Australian that indigenous people in remote communities are being “economically jailed” and suffering the “blight of disparity”. Immediate, dramatic action must be taken to reverse the disturbing trend of substance abuse and idleness.

A senior Coalition source central to the government’s indigenous affairs strategy tells Inquirerthere will now be an “aggressive push” to deliver on the “workable” elements of the Forrest report.

Abbott has ordered his bureaucrats to revolutionise the government’s indigenous strategy and to construct new policies around the Forrest recommendations that will achieve real and measurable change.

A new taskforce with high-level officials will go through the report’s 27 recommendations methodically and determine which can be rolled out immediately and in the mid-term.

Yesterday, standing beside Forrest, Abbott said the implementation feasibility taskforce in his department “will be reporting swiftly”.

“It will be working also with the team that’s working with the McClure review in the Department of Social Services. So, there is a whole-of-government approach to this, but it’s being spearheaded by the implementation feasibility taskforce in my department. We’ve also got a subcommittee of the Indigenous Advisory Committee which David Peever, formerly from Rio, is going to chair. So, we are working urgently on this visionary report, on this watershed report, to try to ensure that as much of it as we can is implemented as quickly as we can,” Abbott said.

At the same time the Forrest report will be subjected to a six- week consultation period that will end just as the Prime Minister marks the first anniversary of his swearing-in by spending a week in northeast Arnhem Land, hosted by Gumatj leader Galarrwuy Yunupingu.

This is no accident.

Abbott will stay in the community with other politicians and bureaucrats from September 15, making the deadline he imposed on himself to spend a week in a community every year.

He will use this time to provide a much clearer direction, based on what his implementation taskforce advises him, on the policies the government intends to proceed with from the report.

Inquirer can reveal that Abbott has decided his focus in indigenous affairs for the rest of his term will focus intensely on the twin issues of constitutional recognition of indigenous Australians and providing a holistic response to the Forrest report.

While some of the recommendations contained in the report could be delivered as early as this year, including tougher measures for parents who refuse to send their children to school, many of the reforms will form the centrepiece of next year’s May budget.

Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion tells Inquirer “constitutional recognition and the Forrest report” as well as safer communities will be the government’s central focus.

“This will be our framework for the future,” he says.

To complicate things, the government has another welfare reform process it is undertaking — the McClure review — which has already delivered an interim report calling for a simplified welfare payment structure.

The government will make its decisions on the future of the welfare system by using both the McClure report and the Forrest report as its framework.

One senior source says the two processes now will be combined and the government will consider both approaches because they “dovetail” and provide a cohesive forward vision.

But within the government the Forrest report is seen as the more radical of the two reviews and “to the right” of McClure.

Wesley Aird, who is on the McClure welfare review team alongside Patrick McClure and was a former member of John Howard’s indigenous council, told Inquirer yesterday that the two reviews have substantial overlap and this may lead to opportunities to work together in some areas.

He applauds Forrest for his “passion and creativity”.

“One thing our consultation has really brought out is that there are very divergent views at how to reform the welfare system and how to improve it.

“We are talking about an enormous system with so many programs, so many people and service providers. Of course there will be divergent views and of course there will be different sectors that will want different things. So that makes it very difficult for me to say whether or not the Forrest report is the way to go or what we are doing is going to deliver the fantastic outcome, but I think what we can try and do is to get a new architecture,” he said.

Forrest used the official launch of his report yesterday to challenge political leaders to act courageously by adopting his entire proposal, warning any piecemeal approach will be doomed to fail.

The government understands its response must be holistic but has no intention of signing up to the entire report.

The Prime Minister described Forrest’s report as “bold, ambitious and brave” but acknow­ledged some elements were “outside what is currently politically doable”.

Specifically, Abbott has rejected the recommendation for a national cashless welfare card that bans certain purchases for almost all welfare recipients, black and white.

“We have no plans to expand welfare quarantining as widely as Andrew is recommending, but welfare quarantining has been in place for quite some time,” Abbott said in the most direct rejection possible.

But on several other recommendations, Scullion tells Inquirer the report is the “way ahead”. “Where Twiggy wants to end up is the same place I want to end up,” he says.

Scullion says on the recommendation to increase the amount of business the commonwealth offers to indigenous businesses, the government plans to announce changes imminently.

Scullion has urged the public and stakeholders to look beyond the controversial recommendation for a national healthy ­welfare card and see that the report is full of recommendations that can lift indigenous people out of poverty.

“The recommendations are a pathway to where we want to end up. We might end up with a variant of Twiggy’s recommendations, but we are going down the path of keeping our eye on the goal of getting kids to school, getting people into work and making safer communities.

“The only thing we’ve said we aren’t exploring is broad scale 2.6 million people moving into a cashless economy. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t elements of what he is suggesting about working with the banks and changing the (income management) system. At the moment welfare quarantining has been ­effective but it is very inefficient and very expensive.”

Forrest, releasing the report alongside the Prime Minister in Sydney yesterday morning, said the report’s recommendations were “effectively a machine” that needed to operate in its entirety or else “it won’t work”.

“This is not a blunderbuss approach,” the Fortescue Metals Group chairman said. “There will be the temptation to pull a spark plug out, maybe pull a flywheel off or even a cylinder, but of course the engine then won’t work.

“The experts who have studied the review with me have said this will end the disparity (between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians), but in that process we ask all Australians to come on that journey.”

Forrest urged policymakers to abandon their “short-term political aspirations”.

“I reach out now to Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, Tanya Plibersek, opposition spokespeople, and government. Lay aside the political cudgels. Lay aside short-term thinking. Lay aside that vain belief that you will achieve something totally different by just doing more of the same,” he said.

The report has already galvanised a chorus of opposition, including from the peak Aboriginal representative body, the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples, which has described the idea of a cashless welfare card as income management on “steroids”.

Greens senator Rachel Siewert has branded Forrest’s plan a “command and control approach” that fails to empower welfare recipients.

“While some recommendations in areas around employment and early childhood care are sensible, they are packaged with top-down measures that show a fundamental lack of understanding of how you empower people,” Siewert said in a statement.

Labor is keeping its powder dry, promising to keep talking with Forrest about the recommendations and keeping hopes alive of a bipartisan policy ­response.

“We’re not putting down the shutters for some change, but I think the proposition that all 2.5 million people who receive a government payment of working age can’t be trusted to make decisions, that’ll be a bridge too far,” Shorten says.

But the head of the Prime Minister’s indigenous advisory council, Warren Mundine, tells Inquirer the change outlined is what the nation needs, joining Cape York leader Noel Pearson, who has thrown his full intellectual and political weight behind it.

“Indigenous is not synonymous with disadvantage. Our ancestors were strong, hardworking and always contributed to the tribe. It’s time for all indigenous leaders to ask themselves what they are contributing to end this rot infesting our communities and our people,” Mundine says.

“The current approach is not working. We need a radical break and the report has given us that opportunity. And I’m pleased the report took an across-the-board view. Because the rot of welfare dependence destroys people whether you are indigenous or not.

“We need politicians and public servants and the indigenous leadership to grasp the opportunity to put disadvantage behind us once and for all.”

While the report features many hardline policies, it also contains visionary ideas that must be adopted if children are to be lifted out of entrenched poverty.

Forrest calls for investment in early childhood, from conception to aged three, including the co-loc­ation of health and support services in schools or community hubs. He wants federal, state and territory governments to work together to improve school attendance, with the threat of docking parents’ family tax benefit payments if they fail to send their children to school. He wants to prioritise literacy and numeracy, use “explicit instruction” methods and motivate teachers with bonuses and scholarships.

Under his plan young people under the age of 19 must be working, in school or in vocational training if they want to receive the Youth Allowance. Centrelink and job service providers would be stripped of their discretion in waiving jobseekers’ obligations or transferring them to the disability support pension. The welfare system would be simplified to reduce the number of different working age payments.

And governments would be forced to source 4 per cent of goods and services from indigenous companies.

The broken job system would be overhauled with rewards for employment service providers that keep workers in a job for 26 weeks. And all vocational education and training funding, including TAFE, would be replaced with vouchers for employers redeemable at education providers to ensure training is directly linked to real jobs.

Forrest wants to make it compulsory to train prison inmates in English and maths, driving and job skills as a condition of parole.

There is no disputing that the changes in the report are huge, and a weak or risk adverse government would run a mile from many. But the system has failed. Without a rethink, failure will continue, and indigenous children born today will be trapped in a cycle of poverty that should be unimaginable in this country.