Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage Report 2005

Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage Report 2005.

Kerry Arabena

Visiting Research Fellow Native Title Research Unit AIATSIS

Friday 16 September 2005

The Mint 10 Macquarie Street Sydney NSW 2000

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I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the country on which we speak other Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the room, representatives of the Productivity Commission, Reconciliation Australia and the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission invited guests and other speakers.

I have been invited to present information relating to the Overcoming Disadvantage Report 2005 and its implications for Torres Strait Islander people. My grandmother was born on Mer, my father on Thursday Island and I was born in Brisbane. Whilst I have had the opportunity to visit my ancestral home, I have not had the opportunity to live there for extended periods of time; much of my life has been spent with various communities across Australia and makes me a Torres Strait Islander on the Mainland.

This report aims to describe methods that governments can implement to address the root causes of disadvantage so 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can reach their full potential wherever they live'.

I read the entire report from cover to cover and found it disheartening to find the only references to someone being something other than 'Indigenous' was on page 3.48 in a Table about home ownership, page 3.61 in a reference to identifying 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander' children in the child protection system and on page 3.71 where the term 'Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander' was used to racialise the categories of 'victims' and 'offenders' in homicides.

Because of the use of the word 'Indigenous' I was unable to determine any specific Torres Strait Islander issues to comment on, rendering TSI people indistinguishable from Aboriginal people and as such, invisible.

For this reason, I would like to focus today on these things:

2. State or politically structured identities.

There are, of course, vast differences among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in our cultures, political-economic situations, and in our relationships with governments and the wider society.

But the struggle to survive as a distinct peoples based on foundations constituted in our unique heritages, attachments to land and sea, and natural ways of life is what is shared by all of us, as well as the fact that our existence is in large part lived as determined acts of survival against the state who would seek to erase us culturally, politically and physically. ¹

The challenge of 'being Indigenous' is a crucial issue for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people today. Who we are, and how we live, is framed by artificial, state-created identities that resist and minimise the recognition that is provided to our cultures, our history, our capacities to contribute and our on-going connection to the land and sea.

Aden Ridgeway has argued that being defined as disadvantaged does not address long standing structural and systematic barriers and we are coopted into over simplified debates based on language benign in appearance but loaded in meaning.² Some of the language used throughout the report is particularly potent and demonstrates Aden's point well.

For instance, on page 5.19 a paragraph in the section referring to hospital admission, birth weight and infant mortality data says that whilst data collection has been identified in the report as an important area to address in future work a limitation of the birth weight research is that it is based on births to Indigenous mothers only.

This data is loaded with particular meanings and history. This information has been used in the past to question the Indigenous mother's capacity to look after herself 'properly' during her pregnancy and her capability to integrate and socialise the child into mainstream society. Her capacity determined her vulnerability to policies that would separate her from her child. This was never an issue for non-Indigenous women who had Indigenous children. She was, by virtue of her race; capable of looking after herself and integrating her child into mainstream society because of her training. She was neither vulnerable nor policed. Authorities did not require data to be collected for non-Indigenous mothers.

Similarly, tables containing state based information in the Juvenile diversions sections detailed that 'an Aboriginality' or 'Indigenous status depended on 'self identification' of the juvenile, or was derived from the 'racial appearance of the offender which is a subjective assessment of the police officer'. ³

Again, practices of oppression, removal, exclusion or inclusion in Australia have often depended on someone else determining what we look like, and how we were responded to is as a result of the attitudes and values that underpin that person's world view.

The section about the 'outcome from education' approach states that most people who had attained a certificate level three or above qualification were in the labour force, however, Indigenous people with a certificate level three or above qualification appear to be nearly three times more likely to be unemployed than non-Indigenous people with a certificate three or above qualification.

Whilst the report advises that care needs to be taken whilst comparing this information, the way I read it is that if you attain this level of qualification you may fare better than other Indigenous people, but you can't change being black. This is not so much a description of Indigenous disadvantage, but employer preference. Racist employers may in fact contribute to Indigenous disadvantage. What whole-of-government approach do we have in place to manage this?

Incomplete and incomparable data has been used to make the modern modes of overcoming disadvantage both possible and judgeable. The ways in which the information is collected and presented provides clear political authority to government. This Report, in my view establishes the parameters of the power imbalanced relationship between workers in service delivery institutions, governments and Indigenous Australians.

The data in this report is not corrupt, but is highly charged. Implicit in the data sets are the political judgements and choices of what to measure, how to measure it, how often to measure and how to present and interpret the results.⁴ Reducing the complexity of our circumstances to measurable indicators is neither ideologically nor theoretically innocent; the process of simplification embodies both the expectations and the beliefs of the responsible technicians and officials.⁵

The report sets out to measure the impact of changes to policy settings and service delivery; providing a concrete way to measure the effect of COAG's commitment to reconciliation through an agreed set of indicators. The selection of some of the activities to show how we are being reconciled is interesting.

[Refer to Slide]

We have been told that Indigenous disadvantage will be remedied by establishing equal partnerships between government, individuals and families to

"allow us the opportunity to shape our own destinies". ⁶

These destinies, however, need to demonstrate a preparedness to engage with and support unequivocally the views of government; ensure that government does not have to manage any of the political consequences of Indigenous identity (including separate governing structures or the accommodation of separate cultural identity) and make manifest our legitimacy within mainstream society so that we have the same opportunities, the same choices and we have the potential to take responsibility for managing our affairs.

Whilst I am sure that there was no sinister intent in constructing the identity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as a homogenised group of 'Indigenous others' in the report, it did make it difficult to find credible, distinguishable and coherent information to demonstrate the effectiveness of whole-of-government interventions in overcoming the disadvantage experienced by Torres Strait Islanders. This in some ways, undermines the visionary and strategic core objectives articulated in the introduction to the report.⁷

To make Torres Strait Islanders more identifiable in the next report, I would make the following suggestions:

1. Include data from the Commonwealth agencies involved with Torres Strait Islander people who implement the Torres Strait Treaty.
2. Differentiate between Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples on the Mainland.
3. Change the narrative in which the 'Things that Work' is reported

The COAG Trials have been hailed as a success and are being rolled out across the country. Many bureaucrats and others have actively promoted the methods used by governments in these trials as effective. There is limited research and certainly no evidence to show if these methods of engaging with a community produce long term benefits for the participants; particularly when a number of regions, through the ATSIC Regional Council consultations were keen to seek a TSRA model for their region. Stories of success, as contained in the report, are constructed in a narrative that shows the success of the government with the implication that the success only came about because of the new partnerships. The people with whom they engaged are often viewed as compliant but competent partners; either beneficiaries of government innovation, or conversely exalted as examples of Indigenous innovation.

The forward to the 2005 report states that there is clearly more going on in Indigenous communities than can be captured by statistics. I have attempted to provide comments about the usefulness of the report and while I agree with the majority of the indicators I am concerned that the homogeneity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will be reflected in the initiatives that are bought to bear in communities. The SRAs and RPAs as yet are not grounded in agreed to baseline data at a local and regional level to show whether collaborations and partnerships that are developed under the new arrangements are in fact making the kind of difference necessary for all Australians to participate in this, the wealth of our country.

In following years, the Productivity Commission may develop supplements that show the data for regional activity as agreed to by regional agencies and communities with their representative organisations. Non government organisations could contribute to the development of this data set, and facilitate collaborations in regions that benefit their constituency.

The report, I am sure will develop and improve over time. I am pleased that the Productivity Commission has invested in this resource; I hope that all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities will have the opportunity to do so as well. It was a good exercise to sit and read and write and reflect on the framework for progressing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues. Thank you all.

Endnotes

1. Alfred, Taiaike and Corntassel, Jeff 2005 Being Indigenous: Resurgences against contemporary colonialism in Government and Opposition, Blackwell Publishing. University of Victoria, Canada.
2. Ridgeway, Aden 2005 'Addressing the economic exclusion of Indigenous Australians through native title'. The Mabo Lecture, Native Title Conference, Coffs Harbour 3 June 2005, Pg 5. available from http://www.aiatsis.gov.au
3. Steering Committee for the Review of Government Service Provision, 2005 Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage Key Indicators Report, Productivity Commission, Commonwealth of Australia, pp 7.30 - 7.31
4. Rose, Nikolas, 1999 Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought . Cambridge University Press p 204
5. ibid p 204
6. Senator Amanda Vanstone, Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, Minister assisting the Prime Minister with Indigenous Affairs Opening Address, Bennelong Society, Sydney September 4, 2004:4 http://www.atsia.gov.au/media/index.htm
7. Steering Committee for the Review of Government Service Provision, 2005 Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage Key Indicators Report, Productivity Commission, Commonwealth of Australia, pp 1.2

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Last updated 28 September 2005.