Reform would close the gap

This year marked 10 years since the release of the landmark report Closing the Gap, which for the first time held governments accountable for addressing the endemic inequality that exists between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. There has been significant progress in areas such as Year 12 completion, employment and reducing infant mortality, but in some areas the gap has widened.

Does that mean we have been too ambitious? Of course not. It is incumbent on this generation to be ambitious in pursuing a better future for First Nations people and to right the wrongs of the past by tackling injustice, poverty and disadvantage. We cannot hope to achieve this unless we learn from mistakes, build on good work and acknowledge what doesn’t work.

In 2016, the Productivity Commission was scathing in its assessment of 1000 government programs to tackle indigenous disadvantage, finding that just 34 of them had been properly evaluated. It recommended more robust evaluation and publication of results.

We then asked the Queensland Productivity Commission to examine how res­ources devoted to service delivery in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities could be best used to meet their needs. It was clear from those findings, delivered in June, that we must reform and reframe the way we work with the state’s 19 remote communities. They have given us a clear message: “Stop consulting us. Stop engaging us. Stop doing things to us and start doing things with us. Start to hear what we’re saying, and make us equal partners and key enablers in turning around the disadvantage our people face.”

These requests are central to achieving real change. We must stop punishing people and start empowering them. I am steadfast in my desire to make this happen. I want the Palaszczuk government’s response to be more than just a shopping list of things we are providing communities. We must throw away the bureaucratic playbook that has hampered change, and must work together to give real meaning to local authority, local decision-making and self-determin­ation.

I have tasked my director-general, Chris Sarra, to work with communities to test and work through the QPC recommendations and to put in place a framework that will enable commun­ities to thrive. It’s an agenda not devised and proselytised from Brisbane but shaped by the people who live in the unique communities across our state — communities such as Cherbourg, Yarrabah, Doomadgee and Thursday Island.

Thriving Communities will build on past successes and acknowledge failures. There is a clear place for the policy agenda advanced by Noel Pearson’s welfare reform trial and the Families Responsibilities Commission. For 10 years the FRC has been fac­ilitating behavioural change through conditional access to welfare payments in five communities in Cape York. Like Closing the Gap, the program has had mixed success.

Despite its protestations, the federal government knows this too. In June 2015, Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion wrote to the Queensland government seeking support for a new “lower cost approach” to the FRC, citing the current model as expensive and with limitations. Consequently, for two years, all parties have been engaged in a review of the model — a fact notice­ably absent from Scullion and special envoy Tony Abbott’s recent commentary. There also has been no mention of their failure to allocate funds to the program beyond this month.

While the federal government remains distracted by internal turbulence, we are committed to working with communities to give them the self-determination they need.

Jackie Trad is Queensland Deputy Premier, Treasurer and Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships.