Operationalizing a Responsibility Agenda in Australia’s Indigenous Communities: Confused, Doubtful and Subversive Public Housing Tenants

Abstract

In Australia, significant current reforms to Indigenous affairs emphasize the mutual responsibilities of government and citizens. Under these new arrangements, government is mainstreaming many programmes and services for Indigenous people, whilst demanding that they assume greater responsibility for their own welfare. For its part, housing welfare in remote Indigenous and town camp communities is being repositioned under the mainstream public housing model. This paper reports on qualitative research on the micro-scale of housing policy implementation to highlight the local operation of a responsibility agenda in these settings. Based on interviews with Indigenous housing stakeholders, it argues that the outcomes of an ethopolitics in housing welfare are necessarily contingent in these milieus. The analytical framework of realist governmentality assists in capturing the relationship between government technologies and the actions of governable subjects. Specifically, new understandings of tenant reflexivity and resistance clarify why the prescribed tenant identity – the responsible tenant – fails to materialize in practice.

Key Words:

• Housing governance
• Governmentality
• Indigenous housing policy
• Social housing
• Tenant participation

Acknowledgements

This article is based on empirical data from research supported by the Australian Research Council Grant More Than a Roof Overhead: Meeting the Need for a Sustainable Housing System in Remote Indigenous Communities (LP 0883615). The author thanks the town camp residents of Halls Creek (Western Australia) and Alice Springs (Northern Territory), the Northern Territory Department of Housing, Local Government and Regional Services, the Western Australian Department of Housing and Works and Tangentyere Council for their participation. The author also thanks the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback.

Notes

1. Contractual technologies include, for example, acceptable behaviour contracts (UK) and tenant incentive schemes (Australia).

2. Although HMAs are voluntary agreements, they are a (former) FaHCSIA requirement for DHW to manage housing in each community.

3. This research endeavoured to actualize best practice for ethical Indigenous sector research (including the importance of Indigenous voices in these endeavours), but recognizes on-going contestation surrounding the rights of Indigenous Australians to approve in-community research with or about them (NHMRC 2003; NHMRC and ARC 2007; Sherwood 2010; AIATSIS 2012). Ethics approval was provided by the Human Research Ethics Committee at RMIT University.

4. This experience of inertia was especially common in Western Australia possibly due to the interim tenancy arrangements (albeit these paralleled the responsibilities within the pending agreement).

Additional information

Funding

This article is based on empirical data from research supported by the Australian Research Council Grant More Than a Roof Overhead: Meeting the Need for a Sustainable Housing System in Remote Indigenous Communities [LP 0883615].