Productivity Commission pushes for state Indigenous powers and Aboriginal watchdog
Governments should relinquish powers on Aboriginal policy to communities and legislate watchdogs with more authority than the voice, the Productivity Commission says.
Governments across the country should relinquish powers on Aboriginal affairs policy to Indigenous communities and legislate watchdogs with more authority than the defeated voice would have had, to save failing efforts to close the gap, the Productivity Commission has declared.
Less than four months since 60 per cent of voters said no to an Indigenous advisory body in the Constitution, the commission accused governments of not listening to Indigenous communities despite signing up to do so in the Closing the Gap agreement and said watchdogs with the ability to “punish” them were necessary.
Its long-awaited final review of the Closing the Gap agreement signed by all governments four years ago states some powers need to be relinquished to Aboriginal community organisations in order to arrest government failures in Indigenous health, education and safety through the current state-federal deal.
“The gap is not a natural phenomenon; it is a direct result of the ways in which governments have used their power over many decades,” the report states.
“We have observed small tweaks or additional initiatives, or even layers of initiatives, as attempts to give effect to the (Closing the Gap) agreement. However, real change does not mean multiplying or renaming business-as-usual actions.
“Change can be confronting and difficult. But without fundamental change, the agreement will fail and the gap will remain.”
The commission’s radical blueprint, revealed on Wednesday, comes a day after Anthony Albanese and Linda Burney were accused in parliament by both the left and the right of failing to have an alternative to the defeated Indigenous voice to parliament.
The Prime Minister on Tuesday would not say whether he intended to implement the remaining two elements of the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart now that the voice – the first element – had failed.
“What we’re committed to is what we said during the referendum,” Mr Albanese said. “What the voice to parliament was about was making a practical difference on housing, on health, in education, in all of those measures.
“We’re looking at ways in which we can advance those. We’re doing work particularly on employment, making sure that real jobs are created with real training and real skills to lift up opportunity for First Nations people. And we’ll be having more to say when we respond to the Closing the Gap statement, which we’ll be doing in coming weeks.”
When pushed on his plans for a Makarrata commission, for which the government had set aside $5.8m, Mr Albanese said: “I’ve just answered the question.”
The voice was the first of three elements of the landmark Uluru Statement from the Heart, which the Albanese government fully supported when it came to power in 2022. However, in the wake of the referendum defeat, Mr Albanese and Ms Burney have refused to make treaty or truth-telling as priorities for 2024.
The Productivity Commission says governments must fundamentally change the way they operate, share decision making with Indigenous communities rather than just say they do.
“(It) is about power sharing, and this requires more than consultation and partnerships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people,” it says.
“It requires governments to relinquish some control over decisions and to trust that in doing so, they are enabling better outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.”
The report says power sharing would include amending the agreement to clarify the purpose of making decisions jointly with Indigenous communities. It would mean governments treating Indigenous community-controlled organisations such as Aboriginal medical services as “essential partners in program and service design and delivery, not simply as funding recipients”.
It would require regular meetings between ministers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peak bodies, the report states, and governments adequately resourcing the implementation of the agreement.
The commission says governments should write implementation plans more strategically, in collaboration with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Its call for the states to establish independent watchdogs with legislative powers aims at enforcing consequences for failure and noncompliance with the Closing the Gap agreement.
The current agreement has 17 targets – many of them privately regarded by the states, territories and bureaucracy to be overly ambitious. It was written after a decade of failure under the old Closing the Gap agreement struck by Kevin Rudd in the wake of the 2008 national apology to the Stolen Generations.
The Closing the Gap initiative aims to reduce significantly Indigenous disadvantage in key areas by 2031, including halving the rate of family violence in Indigenous communities and reducing the number of Indigenous youths in prison by at least 30 per cent.
Under the old agreement, only two of the seven Closing the Gap targets set in 2008 — early childhood education and Year 12 attainment — were achieved. Ambitions failed in targets for school attendance, child mortality, employment, life expectancy and literacy and numeracy targets. Four years into the new agreement, only four of the 17 targets are on track for 2031.
The Coalition of Peaks, which signed the Closing the Gap agreement and represents more than 80 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations, said through its acting lead convener Catherine Liddle on Tuesday that governments must take the findings seriously. “As Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, we know what is best for our communities, but governments across the board are still not meaningfully giving us a voice in the decisions that affect our lives,” Ms Liddle said.
“When Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are given ownership over the decisions that affect their lives, the resources they need, and the opportunity to partner with government, we see better outcomes.”
Independent Indigenous senator Lidia Thorpe said it was clear the Prime Minister was “running scared” from his initial promises to pursue the Uluru Statement from the Heart in full. “They won’t answer questions about truth telling and they won’t answer questions about treaty. The Minister for Indigenous Affairs has no plan for the Makarrata commission,” she said. “They spent $900,000 already on the bureaucracy and there’s no plan B ... Well, I say plan B is treaty. It’s the only way we can go now.”
Opposition Indigenous Australians spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price said the government must be honest about its intentions. “The Prime Minister and Minister Burney need to admit they got it wrong,” she said. “They committed to the divisive Uluru Statement in full and now they’re trying to quietly back away from it.”
She said there was clearly “no back-up plan” to address Indigenous disadvantage.
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