Stop ‘making excuses’ NSW Aboriginal Affairs Minister declares

The NSW minister charged with beginning the state’s treaty process has declared its government has to stop ‘making excuses for poor outcomes’ in Aboriginal communities.

NSW Aboriginal Affairs Minister David Harris. Picture: Sue Graham

NSW Aboriginal Affairs Minister David Harris has declared the state’s treaty process will ensure the billions of dollars in government funding is well spent, arguing the existing scattergun approach creates inefficiencies and cultivates mistrust.

In an interview with The Australian just a day after being sworn in as part of the recently elected Labor government, Mr Harris said the state government had to stop “making excuses for poor outcomes” in Aboriginal communities, as he called for bipartisan support for the treaty process.

“Without the moral/ethical imperative that I hold personally dear, and many people do, there is actually an economic imperative to improve the way we spend money to improve outcomes for Aboriginal people,” he said on Thursday.

“You don’t have to understand a whole lot other than the fact that money is being spent, and it needs to be spent effectively. And the best way of doing that is empowering Aboriginal people through self-determination and capacity to deliver those programs.”

The state’s new Labor Premier Chris Minns has committed $5m for a 12-month consultation period engaging three commissioners to speak to Indigenous people across the state to determine if there is a desire to begin the process towards treaty or agreement making; and if so, what exactly that should look like.

NSW Aboriginal Affairs Minister David Harris being sworn in by the Governor of NSW Margaret Beazley at Government House Sydney on Wednesday. Picture: NCA NewsWire/ Justin Lloyd

Despite having the largest population of Aboriginal people in the country, NSW is the only state not to have begun a treaty process. Mr Harris said that an interim NSW Treasury report into Indigenous-related expenditure showing 54 per cent of taxpayer-funded projects had not been assessed should “ring alarm bells”, saying a proper legislated structure with proper stakeholder consultation would deliver better financial returns.

The inefficiencies of $5.5bn in government spending stemmed from a lack of an overarching strategy informed by consultation, Mr Harris said, saying the current “ad hoc” approach tended to result in pilots or short-term programs.

“And so what happens is, you get mistrust in the community because they get funded for a certain period of time, they get trained up and then the funding runs out,” he said. “Then they’re all left out in the lurch again. We’ve moved to the point where we can’t keep making excuses for poor outcomes. We have got to do better and that’s the whole reason around closing the gap.”

It was fundamental that he did not premeditate what an outcome of the treaty process might look like, Mr Harris said.

But he noted the existing framework in NSW – including multiple reparations schemes and myriad peak bodies already advising government – meant the state was well in advance to other jurisdictions. “So having treaty or agreement making as a process is about bringing all of those existing bodies together to get a more coherent policy in NSW,” Mr Harris said.

Resolving the number of unresolved claims in the state’s reparations schemes, the interaction between the federal Native Title Act and the state’s Land Rights Act, and protecting culturally significant heritage sites and artefacts would all be addressed in parallel with consultation on treaty.

While the nascent process would not begin until after the voice referendum concluded, Mr Harris said he hoped for bipartisan support on the journey to treaty, saying he knew many Coalition members were in support of the federal voice to parliament, and improving outcomes for Aboriginal people.

Former Liberal premier Dominic Perrottet had argued that a treaty was unnecessary, instead arguing in favour of tying individual ministers to closing the gap measures made them “accountable”.

But Mr Harris rejected this approach, saying they were not “mutually exclusive” concepts.

“The whole idea of a treaty or agreement making process is that you improve the delivery of services and programs and build capacity in community-leader organisations to close the gap,” Mr Harris said.