Evidence and Contestation in the Indigenous Policy Domain: Voice,Ideology and Institutional Inequality

There is a tension in the evidence‐based policy paradigm as it concerns Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, particularly with regard to their standing as evidence providers. Aboriginal people in Australia have primarily been seen as a ‘problem to be solved’ and racialised views of Aboriginal competence have allowed for past policy, now recognised as harmful, to be justified as being ‘for their own good’. This article considers some of the complexities of the evidence‐based policy paradigm as it applies to the Indigenous policy domain, arguing that in such a turbulent field the use of evidence is inevitably ideological and selective. The article concludes that, in light of persistent institutional inequalities, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices and perspectives in genuine dialogue about policy is the only way to navigate this difficult terrain with any chance of success.     

The Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 (QLD): A form of private governance in action?

The Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 (QLD) (ACHA) removes the Queensland Government from any direct role in the regulation of Aboriginal cultural heritage, and operates by encouraging and in certain circumstances, requiring agreements between developers and Aboriginal groups. This paper argues that these agreements constitute a form of private governance. Agreements between developers and Aboriginal groups have traditionally been seen as falling outside private governance literature as they are domestic and contractual in nature. However, private governance theory has recently been used to understand agreements between developers and Indigenous groups in Canada and this paper will demonstrate that the approach of the ACHA constitutes a form of private governance. This paper will analyse the ACHA against key principles for good governance and explore the challenges for the protection of Aboriginal cultural heritage when the state is removed as regulator.     

Co-design or top-down welfare conditionality? An analysis of the impact of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander submissions to six parliamentary inquiries into the Cashless Debit Card

The former Coalition Commonwealth Government consistently asserted that representative Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (hereafter Indigenous) organisations supported the introduction of the Cashless Debit Card (CDC) in multiple trial sites. Consequently, they depicted the CDC policy as an alleged exemplar of a co-designed policy model based on partnership with Indigenous community groups. This article examines the validity of this argument by analysing the views expressed by Indigenous organisations via written and oral submissions to the six parliamentary inquiries into the CDC from 2015 to 2020. Our findings suggest that with the exception of the first inquiry, most Indigenous submissions opposed the introduction or the expansion of the CDC. Yet, these critical views received only limited acknowledgement in the inquiry reports, and seem to have little or no impact on government policy concerning the CDC. It appears that the CDC policy is more accurately identified as a top-down policy imposed by government on local Aboriginal communities which, with some exceptions, neither requested nor consented to the policy.     

Institutional vehicles for place-shaping in remote Australia

Some communities in remote Australia represent the most impoverished people in the country, with the problem especially acute amongst Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Effective remedial intervention is often undermined by the absence of democratically elected, local government institutions. Place-shaping as a developmental process enables local people to become agents of change, and thereby self-determine and shape their places for the future. This paper considers the different institutional structures which could underpin place-shaping in remote settlements. Drawing on a range of governance structures, an emphasis on less traditional entities and polity-forming bodies may better serve the interests of remote people.     

What Makes an Aboriginal Council Successful? Case Studies of Aboriginal Community Government Performance in Far North Queensland

Indigenous community governments are at the frontline of current efforts to ‘close the gap’ between Indigenous and non‐Indigenous living standards. Yet there is little empirical evidence about successful performance by these organisations and considerable scepticism about whether introduced Western governance models can ever be viable in Indigenous communities. To identify the governance attributes that contribute to successful performance, case studies were conducted at three Aboriginal councils in far north Queensland. The untested assumptions in current notions of ‘good governance’ were examined. Currently accepted good governance principles and practices were investigated to ascertain their actual causal relationship with council performance. The research further identified key contextual, historical and cultural factors that are important in shaping successful or unsuccessful governance. Practical strategies are suggested for policy‐makers and Indigenous leaders to build the performance of Indigenous community governments.     

National Policy‐Making in Indigenous Affairs: Blueprint for an Indigenous Review Council

This article examines the dearth of any representative Indigenous role in national Indigenous affairs policy‐making and suggests a remedy. After making the case for a specific Indigenous place in national policy‐making, the article considers the reasons for the failure of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), the body that filled this brief for a decade and a half. The article then considers three possible ways of ensuring an Indigenous role in the policy‐making process: a replacement for ATSIC with specific policy powers; set seats for Indigenous representatives in federal parliament; and the creation of a new elected body whose role would be to review Indigenous affairs legislation. The article concludes that the latter proposal in particular is worth trialling as it would ensure a significant Indigenous voice in national policy‐making while learning from the mistakes that led to ATSIC's demise.     

Torres Strait Governance Structures and the Centenary of Australian Federation: A Missed Opportunity?

In his 1993 Boyer lecture, Getano Lui Jnr called for a change in the status of Torres Strait governance structures within the Australian federation, nominating the centenary of Federation on 1 January 2001 as a possible time for change. In 1996, the Commonwealth Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs initiated a parliamentary committee inquiry into greater autonomy for the people of the Torres Strait, which reported favourably in 1997. This report was not, however, greeted all that favourably by Torres Strait Islanders and it now seems unlikely that any significantly new governance structures for Torres Strait will be in place by the centenary of Federation. This paper attempts to explain why.     

The governance of public affairs

• Government and governance are frequently treated as synonyms. Governing is what governments do in formulating and implementing policies. A burgeoning political science literature uses the term governance in a different way to describe the growing tendency of governments to govern in partnership with a range of non‐state actors and, as a purported consequence, the marginalization of governments within policy‐making processes. Here, some writers go so far as to talk about ‘governance without government’. In a forthcoming book, Rethinking Governance: Bringing the State Back In, Stephen Bell and I argue that this dominant ‘society‐centred’ perspective on governance is flawed. In our view whilst governments are indeed now more likely to forge relationships with a larger range of non‐state actors, they nevertheless remain the central players in governance arrangements. Indeed we argue that governments have been strengthened through the relationships they have developed. This article reviews some of the extant literature on governance and specifies the basic terms of our ‘state‐centric relational’ approach.

Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Being a Good Senior Manager in Indigenous Community Governance: Working with Public Purpose and Private Benefit

This article seeks to understand the role of being a senior manager in Indigenous community governance, particularly though not exclusively in remote Aboriginal communities. It argues against the tendency of would‐be reformers of Indigenous community governance to focus on the competence and ethical qualities of those who occupy these roles and asks instead how can isolated managerialism in Indigenous community governance be overcome? The article begins with an overview of Ralph Folds' analysis of relations between Pintupi settlements and the larger Australian polity. While taking much from Folds' analysis, the article argues that ultimately he relies too heavily on the idea of antithetical worldviews across the settlement interface, on a problematic distinction between the official and private uses of publicly allocated resources and on too idealist a view of the Australian state. The article argues that the state's allocation of public resources inevitably involves a flow of private benefits and that public purposes and private benefits are not different phenomena, but rather different perspectives on state action. In contrast to Folds' idealism about the state, the article outlines a more thoroughly realist or materialist analysis of being a good senior manager in Indigenous community governance. In its concluding section, the article makes some suggestions for overcoming isolated managerialism in Indigenous community governance oganisations.     

Intergovernmental Cooperation in the Provision of Public Safety: Monitoring Mechanisms Embedded in Interlocal Agreements

This article examines how monitoring mechanisms embedded in interlocal agreements (ILAs) are associated with vertical and horizontal intergovernmental relations. The authors hypothesize that ILAs established by local governments with higher‐level governments are likely to rely on a clearly specified set of rules to establish an administrative structure, whereas ILAs established by local governments with other local governments rely on associational benefits to ensure that policy preferences are aligned across multiple political boundaries. The article examines ILAs established by small town, county, and municipal governments in Denton County, Texas, for the provision of emergency medical, police, and fire services. Findings show that more than half of the ILAs specified a financial reporting system, but an almost equal percentage did not contain features requiring financial records to be available for audit by a third party. Quadratic assignment procedure correlation analysis confirmed the presence of cross‐monitoring mechanisms and showed that the patterns of ILAs tend to cluster around a geographic space.

Practitioner Points

• Monitoring mechanisms embedded in interlocal agreements (ILAs) matter, highlighting the important managerial functions played by frontline officers drafting ILAs.
• The rules embedded in ILAs are important not only for encouraging intergovernmental cooperation but also for reducing the risks associated with contract failures.
• With the increasing number of ILAs, local government officials need to consider various types of ILAs that are suitable to meet jurisdictional interests and policy preferences.

     

The Challenge of Strengthening Nonprofits and Civil Society

The Winter Commission Report was centrally concerned with improving the performance of state and local governments. Since the issuance of the commission’s report in 1993, the delivery of services by state and local government has been substantially changed by the growing role of nonprofit organizations in providing public services and representing citizen interests. As a result, state and local governments and nonprofit agencies are faced with complex governance challenges. The central argument of this paper is that despite the dramatic changes in the relationship between government and nonprofit organizations in recent years, the key tenets of the Winter Commission report—the need for improved training and education, greater transparency and accountability, more emphasis on performance, and improved citizen engagement—remain deeply relevant in improving the governance of the public services in an increasingly complex policy process and service delivery system at the state and local levels.     

RECONCILING PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY AND ABORIGINAL SELF-DETERMINATION/SELF-MANAGEMENT: IS ATSIC SUCCEEDING?

Abstract: Since the early 1970s commonwealth governments have been pursuing policies of self-determination/self-management in relation to Aborigines. In 1987, the Hawke government announced its intention to establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) to further this policy goal. During the debates over ATSIC's formation, the issue of public accountability in the existing administration of Aboriginal affairs came to public prominence. The result was some extensive reworking of the ATSIC proposal, which in 1989 reemerged with a strengthened emphasis on public accountability. This article traces the events and arguments surrounding ATSIC's formation and then goes on to examine ATSIC in practice. It asks whether ATSIC is succeeding in reconciling the two imperatives of Aboriginal self-determination/self-management and public accountability.     

In search of a governance institution model for Jakarta Metropolitan Area (JMA) under Indonesia's new decentralisation policy: old problems,new challenges

This study explores a possible governance model for Jakarta Metropolitan Area (JMA) under Indonesia's new Decentralisation Policy. At present the management of JMA development is coordinated by Badan Koordinasi Pembangunan Jabodetabekjur (BKSP) —Coordinating Board for JMA Development, but this agency is ineffective and powerless to perform its tasks because of lack of authority and power. The establishment of JMA governance model should take into account the existence of the BKSP which has been politically accepted by all provincial and local governments in the region. Involvement of central government in JMA governance is very important. A mixed model of urban governance is most suitable for the JMA. Thereunder the central government should have authority to plan and develop major physical infrastructure for the whole JMA, while the provincial and local governments retain their respective general administrative functions. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Enduring neoliberalism in Alberta's oil sands: the troubling effects of private–public partnerships for First Nation and Métis communities

Changes in federal government relations with First Nations and Métis in Canada have been described as shifting over time, from fur trade colonialism, to welfare colonialism, to neoliberal partnerships. Acknowledging changes and continuities in Aboriginal peoples–state relations over time, this article examines the effects of recent policies that emphasize private–public partnerships for economic development on Indigenous communities in northern Alberta. We argue that while the term ‘partnership’ connotes equality, cooperation, and consensus, the actual workings of partnerships are anything but equal, and the effects include fragmentation, competition, and lack of overall accountability. These outcomes work against the needs and aspirations of Indigenous communities.     

Spin: from tactic to tabloid

• Over the last fifteen years, the word Spin has come to define both the process of political communication, and the practice of public relations itself. The history of the term requires some examination. Arguably, until around 1992, Spin did not have such a widespread meaning—it was simply one tactic in an election campaigner's armoury.
• Now it seems to embrace the whole process of communication, not only between election campaigners and the media, but also between a Government and its people, or between a public relations professional in any field, and his or her target publics.
• The development of Spin as a word has gone through a number of stages which will be addressed in the course of this paper. It now has widespread popular usage, which has arisen through two principal processes: The increasing celebrity status of the spin‐doctor role: and the usefulness of the word to tabloid sub‐editors.
• By 1997, when New Labour came into Government, the discourse of spin was firmly established.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Modifying children's court care plans to acknowledge poverty and disadvantage

This think piece suggests that Children's Court Care Plans should include a new section that documents poverty and social disadvantage, especially of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, when they are under investigation for child abuse and neglect. New South Wales in Australia is used as the exemplar state, but this suggestion may find an echo elsewhere.

Points for practitioners

• As a general proposition social and economic circumstances should be considered in addition to parental dysfunction in child protection proceedings in Children's court.
• Care Plans prepared for hearings in the NSW Children's Court, often developed in response to serious harm report investigations, currently do not contain information about parents' poverty and social disadvantage and hence decontextualise family living circumstances.
• Consistent with international evidence, Care Plans should require information about parents' socioeconomic situation, including social disadvantage of residential neighbourhood, status and cost of household tenancy, and household income.
• Taking account of social and economic circumstances has the potential to generate savings in out-of-home care that can be re-allocated to support services to reduce poverty and social disadvantage and thereby reduce the need for removal of children from parental care.

     

Will the National Disability Insurance Scheme Improve the Lives of those Most in Need? Effective Service Delivery for People with Acquired Brain Injury and other Disabilities in Remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities

The aims of National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) are to provide long‐term, person‐centred care and support to all Australians with a significant and ongoing disability, including individuals with an acquired brain injury (ABI). The scheme has significant potential to provide equitable opportunity of access to health and disability services. Historically, however, service provision in remote and outer regional areas of Australia lags behind more densely populated centres. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders living with disability are already significantly marginalised. Further to this, people with an ABI are very often misunderstood and overlooked by disability services, health professionals and governments, and frequently fall victim to the criminal justice system. This paper provides an overview of the state of ABI disability for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in remote and outer regional settings, and the present sets of barriers they face to obtaining quality care and effective interventions. A significant opportunity has emerged with the advent of the NDIS but equitable benefit can only be achieved if additional and specialised measures are devised and implemented to appropriately screen for, and assess, incidence of ABI; disability services are appropriately resourced to overcome the pre‐existing disadvantage, and education, training and recruitment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders with the NDIS is undertaken to lead attitudinal changes in community to disability and health services. This paper concludes with recommendations for the NDIS to meet its laudable objectives.     

Contracting for Indigenous Health Care: Towards Mutual Accountability

In Australia and other industrialised countries, governments contract with the non‐government sector for the provision of primary health care to indigenous peoples. Australian governments have developed policies and funding programs to support this health sector, but the current arrangements are unduly complex and fragmented. The results of our study show that the complex contractual environment for Aboriginal Community‐Controlled Health Services (ACCHSs) and their funders is an unintended but inevitable result of a quasi‐classical approach to contracts applied by multiple funders. The analysis in this article highlights potential policy and program changes that could improve the effectiveness of funding and accountability arrangements, based on the use of an alliance contracting model, better performance indicators and greater clarity in the relative roles of national and jurisdictional governments.     

The Tasmanian Electoral Roll Trial in the 2002 ATSIC Elections

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) elections since 1990 have used the Commonwealth Electoral Roll (CER) as a large under-specified list of potential voters. Dissatisfaction with this arrangement within the Tasmanian Aboriginal community led to a trial roll of Indigenous electors being drawn up for the 2002 ATSIC elections in that State. This paper recounts a number of contexts in which this trial was developed. It also recounts the experience of the trial itself, which did not work out as successfully as those who had promoted it had hoped. Finally it looks at lessons from the trial and options for the future.     

Coombs’ Bastard Child: The Troubled Life of CDEP

In the mid 1970s HC Coombs was a major promoter of the idea behind the CDEP scheme: that rather than pay lots of Aboriginal people in remote areas unemployment benefits it would be more constructive for them to be employed part‐time by local Indigenous organisations to undertake socially useful tasks. From this simple idea was born one of the most significant and, in time, one of the largest Indigenous‐specific programs Australia has seen, the Community Development Employment Projects scheme. The birth was not easy and neither has been the subsequent life of what I have called, with great licence, Coombs’ bastard child.