Disenchantment, Normalisation and Public Value: Taking the Long View in Australian Indigenous Affairs

Abstract

This paper situates contemporary dilemmas of Indigenous development in the underlying themes and principles of Indigenous policy over the medium-term—approximately, the last twenty-five years. It brings together the involvement of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), the radical restructure of public administration with the introduction of New Public Management and the underlying trend towards ‘normalisation’ of Indigenous people and communities, which follows widespread mainstream disenchantment. Within this broad trajectory, some significant developments receive attention—the rise and fall of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), the recent decline of the Indigenous community-controlled service sector and the disenchantment that sanctioned the Northern Territory Emergency Response, following allegations of Indigenous child abuse. The paper signals its own disenchantment with the lack of progress under New Public Management and the policy framework of normalisation of Indigenous peoples. It concludes by advocating fiscal and structural reform that would reconfigure policy towards management for public value. This approach rejects formal concentration on Indigenous deficit and reaffirms the state's responsibility for fulfilling a range of diverse local and regional intangible, as well as material, values.

Keywords:

• Indigenous Affairs
• Public Policy
• Normalisation

Notes

1. These observations arise from the author's interviews with about twenty CEOs and directors of Aboriginal service organisations in the Kimberley region of Western Australia during 2010. Some of the results of these interviews appear in Sullivan (2011b).

2. Space does not permit examination of the relationship between the 2004 Framework with the national government's Blueprint for Action in Indigenous Affairs of 2006. The two share ideological kinship, but the Blueprint was not a COAG statement, and its only physical manifestation appears to be in a speech by the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, which was issued as a press release (Brough 2006).

3. Of course, there are no ‘non-Indigenous communities of similar size, location and need elsewhere in Australia’, but the intention to normalise is clear.

4. A succinct outline of horizontal fiscal equalisation is provided in Yu et al. (2008, 51). A more technical outline is provided by the Commonwealth Grants Commission at: http://cgc.gov.au/publications2/publications/2011_update/2011Update/contents/Navigable_report_pages/21 (accessed 13 July 2012). A thorough analysis and critique is provided by Fitzgerald and Garnaut (2002).

5. In some states, reports are screened before becoming formal ‘notifications’ of concern over abuse. In other states, all reports are initially classified as notifications (AIHW 2012, 1–2).

6. There is a margin of error of some 28,000 cases, since 17,954 were ‘closed with no outcome possible’, and 10,156 were still under investigation at the time of the AIHW report (AIHW 2012, 7).

7. These figures can only give a rough indication of proportions, since reporting standards differ across jurisdictions (AIHW 2012, 1–2). The ability to report and investigate probably also varies considerably and affects the statistics, since there are inexplicable discrepancies in substantiated cases of notifications across jurisdictions. WA substantiated 17.3 Indigenous cases and 1.4 non-Indigenous cases per 1000 children in their respective populations, while the Australian Capital Territory, with the highest in the country, substantiated 54.8 Indigenous cases and 4.2 non-Indigenous cases per 1000 children in their population (AIHW 2012, 15). It is beyond belief that both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in the ACT, which enjoys the highest per capita income in the country, abuse their children at much higher rates than other Australians. Clearly, there are other factors at play, possibly involving different standards, as well as differing investigative capacities. These differences mean that the statistics are indicative at best and possibly give a quite inaccurate picture of actual circumstances.

8. For example, early in 2009, at a meeting with state and territory housing ministers, the Commonwealth minister, Jenny Macklin, reportedly ‘ordered all bureaucrats out of the room before “reading the riot act” to ministers, threatening to withdraw their funding if they failed to meet milestones on delivery under the agreement’; she told The Australian newspaper: ‘If they don't deliver on their milestones they won't get any more money … This is not about any particular minister or government. It's been an area of failure over a long period. Frankly, not enough people have cared about it’ (Franklin 2009).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patrick Sullivan

Patrick Sullivan is an Adjunct Professor at the Australian National University