remoteFOCUS The Challenge, Conversation, Commissioned Papers and Regional Studies of Remote Australia August 2012 Edited by: Dr Bruce Walker Commissioned Papers by: Dr Mary Edmunds Professor Ian Marsh An initiative facilitated by Desert Knowledge Australia and supported by: i This collection of reports has been edited by: Dr Bruce W Walker, remoteFOCUS Project Director With contributions by: Dr Mary Edmunds, Edmunds Consulting Pty Ltd Professor Ian Marsh, Adjunct Professor, Australian Innovation Research Centre, University of Tasmania The work is reviewed by the remoteFOCUS Reference Group: Hon Fred Chaney AO (Convenor) Dr Peter Shergold AC Mr Neil Westbury PSM Mr Bill Gray AM Mr John Huigen (CEO Desert Knowledge Australia) Any views expressed here are those of the individuals and the remoteFOCUS team and should not be taken as representing the views of their employers. Citation: Walker BW, (Ed) 2012 The Challenge, Conversation, Commissioned Papers and Regional Studies of Remote Australia, Desert Knowledge Australia, Alice Springs Copyright: Desert Knowledge Australia 2012 ISBN: 978-0-9873958-1-8 Associated Reports: Walker, BW, Edmunds, M and Marsh, I. 2012 Loyalty for Regions: Governance Reform in the Pilbara, report to the Pilbara Development Commission, Desert Knowledge Australia ISBN: 978-0-9873958-0-1 Walker, BW, Porter DJ, and Marsh, I. 2012 Fixing the Hole in Australia’s Heartland: How Government needs to work in remote Australia, Desert Knowledge Australia. ISBN: 978-0-9873958-2-5 ISBN Online: 978-0-9873958-3-2 Copyright: Desert Knowledge Australia 2012 Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike Licence For additional information please contact: Dr Bruce Walker Project Director | remoteFOCUS M: 0418 812 119 P: 08 8959 6125 E: [email protected] W: www.desertknowledge.com.au/Our-Programs/remoteFOCUS P: 08 8959 6000 E: [email protected] i remoteFOCUS The Challenge, Conversation, Commissioned Papers and Regional Studies of remote Australia The Challenge Chapter 1. The Challenge of Governance in Remote Australia 1 Chapter 2. The Current State of Remote Australia 7 The Conversation Chapter 3. Conversations with remote Australia 16 Chapter 4. A Framework for understanding the conversation with remote Australia. 36 Commissioned Research Chapter 5. Responding to Economic Globalisation: Strengthening and Centralising State Capacity 44 Chapter 6. Mainstreaming Indigenous Service Delivery 51 Chapter 7. Are there Structural Barriers to Whole-of-Government? 57 Chapter 8. Beyond Whole-Of-Government: Varieties of Place-Centred Governance 69 Chapter 9. Framing the Remote Australia Challenge: What Narratives and Contexts are Pertinent? 90 Chapter 10. remoteFOCUS and Pilbara Aboriginal People 103 Chapter 11. Doing Washing in a Cyclone, or a Storm in a Teacup? Aboriginal People and Organisations in the Pilbara: An Overview 120 Chapter 12. A new story - Roebourne: a case study 152 Chapter 13. Harnessing the cyclone - Gumala Aboriginal Corporation: a case study 181 Chapter 14. Connections, continuities, and change - Martu and their country. 214 ii Chapter 15. Imagining a region: prototypes and possibilities for Pilbara Aboriginal people 242 Regional Studies Chapter 16. Loyalty for Regions: 271 Chapter 17. Central Australia - Context for Governance Reform 324 Bibliography 336 iii 1. The Challenge of Governance in Remote Australia Professor Ian Marsh Public concern about remote Australia focuses on the wellbeing of Indigenous Australians - this is reflected both in the role that the federal government has adopted and in the responsibilities that it has assumed. The remoteFOCUS report 1argues that this is insufficient: the scope of policy needs to be extended to include all the residents of this area and the delivery of services radically decentralised. Extension of the scope of policy to all residents is essential for at least four reasons: The potential to develop regional economies, which is critical to Indigenous development, implicates all other residents and these decisions need to be taken jointly. The increasingly youthful Indigenous population will inevitably play a larger role in the unfolding of overall developmental strategies. Land Rights means the influence of Indigenous communities on access and use of remote places is vastly increased and they are often key stakeholders in any larger economic decisions affecting these regions. Fund flows to Indigenous communities and to repair backlogs in services are an important element in regional economies and thus potentially affect all residents. The delivery of services needs to be radically decentralised to honour sentiments and intentions that have been repeated frequently but that have proved impossible to translate into practice. Despite this, no official body has ever questioned the basic framework for programme delivery or asked whether governance might itself be a primary contributor to policy failings. By contrast, the adequacy of present governance arrangements is the focus of the remoteFOCUS project. It is instructive to recall how frequently and how repeatedly the need for collaboration with affected citizens and more contextualised solutions has been invoked as fundamental to policy success. For example, focusing only on Indigenous Australians, the most recent policy statement (Framework for Engaging with Indigenous Australians, November 2011) states: Genuine engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians is fundamental to our efforts to improve life outcomes and close the gap in the Indigenous disadvantage. 1 Walker BW, Porter DJ, and Marsh I. 2012 Fixing the Hole in Australia’s Heartland: How Government needs to work in remote Australia, Desert Knowledge Australia, Alice Springs 1 A critical step in improving outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians is for government agencies, service providers and contractors is to engage them as valued stakeholders in the development, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies, programs, services and legislation that have an impact on them. Also in November 2011, the Commonwealth released its Indigenous Economic Development Strategy which states: Government cannot act alone. Success depends on working in partnership with Indigenous leaders communities and individuals and with business, industry peak bodies and non-government organizations Closing the gap requires a genuine partnership with Indigenous Australians at all levels and the Government is committed to a relationship based on trust and mutual respect Real sustainable change cannot be achieved by government alone. It relies on Indigenous Australians, the private sector, the not-for-profit sector and all levels of government Genuine engagement with indigenous Australians is fundamental to the Australian government’s efforts to increase personal and economic well-being and close the gap in Indigenous disadvantage. (Indigenous Economic Development Strategy 2011- 2018 P18/19) Writing in 2005, Dr Peter Shergold, the former Secretary of DPMC and a primary author of the current framework, has observed: ‘We need to drive governance programs in the direction of connectedness. Programs need to be made more flexible, responsive to community needs and priorities and delivered in a holistic manner….More importantly, there needs to be a delivery of programs in a seamless manner to local communities’ (2005) In a further speech in 2006, he voiced his personal frustration at the persistent failure to achieve significant change: ‘I am aware that, for some fifteen years as a public administrator, too much of what I have done on behalf of government for the very best of motives has had the very worst of outcomes…..In my personal opinion three things need to be done….We need to tailor government programs to the particular circumstances of discrete communities…..We must ensure that discretionary government expenditures are negotiated to goals that address local needs….Community challenges are almost invariably holistic in their nature and require a variety of programs from all three tiers of government to be delivered in a coordinated whole of government manner….’ (2006). These particular sentiments are echoed in more general terms in recent reports on broader public sector reform. At the federal level, such ideas figure prominently in the Moran Review (Ahead of the Game, Blueprint for the Reform of Australian Government Administration, March 2010); and at a state level, in the Western Australian Economic Audit Committee Report (Putting the Public First, Partnering with the Community and 2 Business to Deliver Outcomes, October 2009). This latter report is particularly relevant. For example, it asserts that ‘agencies operating in silos will be a thing of the past’. It also envisages a radical decentralisation of programmes via the introduction of self managed budgets and devolution of programme responsibilities to communities and community organisations (p. 47). Both these reports underline the profound challenge to centralised processes, cultures and organisational and budgetary arrangements that are involved in the next iteration of public sector reform. The most recent comprehensive overview of the Indigenous policy framework by a senior official team (Strategic Review of Indigenous Expenditure, Department of Finance, February 2010) identified the many obstacles that continue to confound achievement of espoused outcomes. This report repeatedly stresses the need for more contextualised