Archive for the 'Policy' Category
FUTURES
Saturday, November 6th, 2021
As humanity ends the second decade of the twenty-first century AD there is active consideration in some quarters of what the world will be like after the pandemic, the Covid-19 infection which has brought many countries to a near halt. Consideration of “futures” has been pursued for many years. Unfortunately, that seems to remain no more than an academic pursuit so far as many governments are concerned.
An important element of the exploration of the future is the nature of work and of jobs. That was a topic pursued in 2015 by the Royal Society of New South Wales and “learned” academies concerned with science, technology, humanities and the social sciences in the first of the forums now held at Government House in Sydney toward the end of every year.
The forums invite people notably interested in a particular topic to speak about their ideas. In 2021 the topic is the digital age.
The principal speaker at the 2015 forum on the future of work was the prominent scientist and technologist Dr Alan Finkel. He noted the enormous challenges which would face Australia in future decades.
The challenges addressed in the 2015 forum have only increased in the last six years. Therefore what was said six years ago remains relevant today.
I have added here the text of a paper submitted to the Journal of the Royal Society for its issue concerned with the 2015 forum on work.
This is the abstract.
The future of jobs and work in Australia is reviewed against the background of recent economic and other policies in Australia in the last several decades. The impact of technology is only one of the issues to be addressed. Some of the assumptions as to what factors contribute to prosperity and community wellbeing are explored. The role of government and behaviour of business is considered. Attention is drawn to some recent reports on jobs and the future in Australia and the world and some suggestions offered as to actions that should be taken in Australia to achieve outcomes that benefit all.
Education in Australia 1973 to 2019
Thursday, February 28th, 2019
Over the last 15 or so years I have posted on this website many essays about education, especially in Australia including as it concerns government policies. In four essays posted in the last few days I have returned to this topic and summarized two of the most important inquiries of the last several years and the responses to them, both by researchers and academics on the one hand and commentators on the other and the response of government.
_______________
See related articles below
_______________
The first inquiry on the funding of schools has been the subject of a large volume of commentary and argument and some of the recommendations from it have been incorporated in legislation. The second inquiry on teaching has attracted far less commentary
A consistent theme has been that the government response has been inadequate to the purpose whilst the research relevant to the inquiries has been increasingly of high quality: along with developments in other countries, the research has largely been ignored by government.
The first essay related to this post summarises developments from 1996 and the other three concern the two reports by the panels chaired by distinguished business man David Gonski AC.
Gonski, in a speech shortly after the publication of the first report commented on his experience visiting and talking with the people who were consulted in the preparation of the report. His comments contrast very strongly with the general tenor of the commentary in the public sphere, the assertions about teacher quality, union and government bureaucracy involvement.
It would be entirely appropriate for a lot less notice to be taken of much of the commentary in favour of much more attention to the wisdom and knowledge of those who have, through research and experience in the industry, contributed so much to what we now understand. And of course, most of all to the best understandings possible of what would bring the greatest gain to those who should benefit.
One of the most important factors contributing to educational achievement is equity, extra support for those having difficulty for whatever reason from socioeconomic background and health through disability of various kinds. IN the 1970s and the later 2000s under Labor governments, inquiries addressed this issue so far as school education was concerned. However, as we near the close of the second decade of the 2000s more funding is allocated to the more advantaged than ever before. Any attempt to reverse this will be an almost monumental task as those benefitting push back.
There is a parallel with the response to attempts to remove provisions which benefit the advantaged in superannuation, taxation and investment. Support for investment in early childhood has hardly advanced in 50 years, certainly not to the level found in several other countries, in Europe especially.
Australia has almost the most inequitable school education funding of any OECD country. Australia lags comparable OECD countries in terms of participation of younger children in early learning, especially of three-year-olds. The effect is greatest amongst lower socioeconomic status families.
Funding for schools, public and independent schools including Catholic schools, comes from both the Commonwealth and State and Territory Governments. State governments have for the most part reduced their funding though the Commonwealth has maintained they should take up the balance of funding for public schools. Several states claim to have made progress. Victoria promotes itself as the “Education State”; New South Wales has claimed benefits from application of the funding flowing from the agreements with the Gillard government as part of the National Plan.
______________________
Whilst Australia ranks high as a place to live, it ranks low in areas like innovation and funding of scientific research. In business the level of oligopoly is high, one commentator reporting that Australia is referred to as “Treasure Island”. A disturbing example of how conservatism has affected the response to major challenges can be found in availability of digital communication, climate change and energy prices.
Australia is second in the world in delivery of online services, according to a UN survey. But in respect of internet speed Australia ranks 55th in the world.
Contribution to carbon emissions per capita is amongst the highest in the world.
It is true that there have been 27 years of annual economic growth (due principally to action taken by the Rudd government in response to the Global Financial Crisis) and Australia is the second most wealthy nation, after Switzerland, in terms of median wealth per person. In terms of GDP Australia ranks 13; however, GDP is increasingly recognised as an unsatisfactory indicator of actual wellbeing.
Much of the wealth is due to booming house prices: the huge household debt is overlooked. Much of Australia’s wealth is due to exports of resources and not to value created within the country! Comparisons with countries like South Korea and Vietnam, countries overrun by armed conflict in the last 70 years, as well as Scandinavian countries, are revealing!
___________________
These essays review school education and related issues since 1970 and especially since 1996.
Several particularly important statements are below. Following those I list the previous essays which are most relevant to the present discussions.
The following three statements are amongst the most important pronouncements on education policy of the last 50 years. They are from the second report of the panel chaired by David Gonski, entitled “Through Growth to Achievement”, a panel comprising distinguished educators and others, a report drawing on extensive submissions and consultations and on some of the most important relevant research.
“Australia has a strong educational heritage and committed educators. Since 2000, however, academic performance has declined when compared to other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, suggesting that Australian students and schools are not improving at the same rate and are falling short of achieving the full learning potential of which they are capable. As a nation, we need to act now to raise our aspirations and make a renewed effort to improve school education outcomes.
“As a nation, we need to act now to raise our aspirations and make a renewed effort to improve school education outcomes…”
___________________
Enabling all Australian students to realise their full learning potential, and re-establishing Australia’s education system as world-leading, is an ambitious but achievable goal, which requires a commitment to sustained, long-term reform.
The strategy set out in this report, and articulated in the 23 recommendations, will transform Australian school education.
The Review Panel recognises that the scale of these reforms is ambitious, particularly given Australia’s federated education model. The challenges, however, cannot become an excuse for inaction. The evidence is clear; the reforms embedded in the strategy are necessary to achieve educational excellence in Australian schooling.
Taken together, and implemented in a sustained way, these reforms will reverse the decline in student outcomes in recent decades, and prepare current and future generations of school students to succeed in life and 21st century careers…
____________________
“Australia needs to review and change its model for school education. Like many countries, Australia still has an industrial model of school education that reflects a 20th century aspiration to deliver mass education to all children. This model is focused on trying to ensure that millions of students attain specified learning outcomes for their grade and age before moving them in lock-step to the next year of schooling. It is not designed to differentiate learning or stretch all students to ensure they achieve maximum learning growth every year, nor does it incentivise schools to innovate and continuously improve.
____________________
“Although this problem is widely recognised by teachers and educators, schools’ attempts to address the issue are hampered by curriculum delivery, assessment, work practices and the structural environments in which they operate.
“The constraints include inflexibility in curriculum delivery, reporting and assessment regimes, and tools focussed on periodic judgements of performance, rather than continuous diagnosis of a student’s learning needs and progress. This is compounded by a lack of research-based evidence on what works best in education, the absence of classroom applications readily available for use by teachers, multiple calls on the time of teachers and school leaders, and a lack of support for school principals to develop their professional autonomy and prioritise instructional leadership.”
____________________
The following statement is from a review of “Through Growth to Achievement”
“In a world where education defines opportunity, schooling must support every one of Australia’s 3.8 million school students to realise their full learning potential and achieve educational excellence.
“Australian students should receive a world-class school education, tailored to individual learning needs, and relevant to a fast-changing world. They should be challenged and supported to progress and excel in learning in every year of school, appropriate to each student’s starting point and capabilities.
“Schooling should enrich students’ lives, leaving them inspired to pursue new ideas and set ambitious goals throughout life.”
Chris Bonnor, “Gonski’s second coming”, in John Menadue – Pearls and Irritations 1 May 2018
_____________________
However, the following statements arguably have more bearing on policy than anything in either of the Gonski reports.
Developments in fake news and fake reality, facilitated by social media, artificial intelligence and complex algorithms, together with conditional ethics, have made the pursuit of rational decisions based on reviewed and agreed evidence very difficult. The proposition that whilst people are entitled to their own views but not to their own facts is not everywhere accepted, as evidence is counteracted merely by assertions of the opposite. We are possibly moving to the margin of the enlightenment, overturning some 400 years of the development of knowledge and understanding.
_______________
It is a tragedy that government continues to see everything through the lens of funding, especially costs. Progress is not anywhere principally linked to money. It emerges from how people work together and how decisions get made, on innovation and creativity, on clear, agreed and supported understanding of what the intention of action is and who is supposed to benefit.
Government’s focus on money does no more than exit the stage by trying to spend as little as possible so that the citizenry and the corporate sector can pay as little in taxes as possible. It is based on the proposition that government creates very little value indeed and that its activities hinder other parts of the economy in creating value. Unfortunately, much of media commentary goes along with this together with an effort to identify potential conflict between players.
The pursuit of small government is an inevitable consequence and has left the community to be governed by people often lacking the necessary knowledge and skills.
The result is the pursuit of populism and a search for someone to blame.
_______________
The following statement, an extract from a response to a proposed health policy initiative by Jennifer Doggett, “Labor’s big-ticket risk-minimisation strategy” (Inside Story 15 February 2019) is pertinent:
Progress … is so slow not because of a lack of mechanisms but because of fundamental differences in the interests of the two levels of government. They have different constituencies, political roles and constitutional responsibilities, and a new federally funded and run health commission won’t change that.
“The real problem is not a lack of independent … policy advice. Governments and oppositions have access to numerous sources, both within the public sector (not only from relevant departments but also through processes such as Productivity Commission inquiries) and outside it … The problem is that this advice is routinely ignored.”
_______________
One of the most important statements about school education is from a study of a school in San Francisco whose 950 students with passports from more than 40 different countries. Despite its test scores putting it at one of the lowest-performing schools in the nation, 84 per cent of its students were accepted to college.
Diane Ravitch, education historian and former administrator wrote in the New York Review of Books March 24 2016, “What [Kristina] Rizga [author of “Mission High: One School, How Experts Tried to Fail It, and the Students and Teachers Who Made It Triumph” (Nation Books)] learned is worth sharing. For one, she discovered that “there are too many politicians, powerful bureaucrats, management and business experts, economists, and philanthropists making decisions about the best solutions for schools.”
_______________
In the last few months,
- A comprehensive review has found overwhelming evidence of a strong causal relationship between increased school funding and student outcomes
- a parliamentary audit committee has criticised the Commonwealth Government for failing to account for the way it has distributed funds to schools in accordance with the legislation
- the secretary of the NSW Department of Education has emphasised one of the most important outcomes of school education: it should equip students to think
- former NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli endorsed a plan by the ALP to fund two years of early learning and supported a campaign by the Early Learning and Care Council calling on all political parties to commit to funding two years of age-appropriate, play-based quality learning for all children. The plan to expand access to pre-school education has been called the next great social policy reform, one that the Morrison Government ignores at its peril
- Chris Bonnor and colleagues have addressed the disturbing trends in funding of schools and the consequent concentration of disadvantage.
_____________________________________
Continue to the four essays:
- Australian Education Policy 2019
- Education Policy in Australia: The fifty years from Whitlam to Morrison
- The First Gonski Report
- The Second Gonski Report – Through Growth to Achievement”, a “Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools
Related articles
These are among the earlier essays most relevant to the present series of four essays
School Leadership and School Autonomy: The outcome of any change in the management structure of schools must be improvement of student outcomes. That school principals might become responsible for budgets and staffing does little more than turn them into glorified administrators. Much of the financial and staffing area is no more than instrumental.
Tests, League Tables and Accountability: A Democratic Right to Know?: … the demand for accountability and transparency, is common. So is the demand for quantitative data to achieve accountability. This is true of transport, hospitals, government services and activities generally. That quantitative data are not always indicators of the most critical aspects of the actions and performance of an enterprise, any more than they are of a person, is ignored in this. There is also the implicit assumption that the people responsible for the enterprise’s activities cannot be trusted.
Public or Private: Marketisation, Parental Choice and Competition: … average educational achievement levels are significantly influenced by the performance of those children who come from less advantaged backgrounds. The debate about the “education gap” is a debate about the distribution of resources within society. Establishing independent schools does not address the education gap in any way. Surveys of achievement internationally show no gain from independent schools when the data is controlled for student’s socio-economic background.
Teaching and School Performance: Amongst recent studies those about Finland are particularly interesting to many. Pasi Sahlberg lists three fallacies of teacher effectiveness common in the US:
- teachers work mostly independently, in fact they mostly work in teams
- the teacher is the single most important factor in improving quality education, in fact this ignores family background and peer influences
- a succession of great teachers in a row would lead to very significant educational improvement of students, arguably judging capability of teachers at recruitment is difficult and superior competence takes time to develop.
The School Education Bunfight or how Populism, Ideology and Political Cowardice distorts Policy: a link is asserted between educational attainment as measured by test scores and economic growth as if all that is needed is to improve educational achievement. The social determinants of education are ignored.
Jobs and Growth are being Undermined by Corporate Behaviour: the Great Tax Hoax
Thursday, December 29th, 2016
The Coalition government in Australia and the policy of the incoming President of the US Donald Trump propose substantial decreases in corporate tax rates and assert this will stimulate growth and jobs.
However, consideration of past decreases in tax rates reveals the recent behaviour of corporations and their executives and boards as an increasing trend to devote retained earnings to share buy backs and dividend distribution. Thus additional revenue flowing from further tax breaks is likely to contribute to further enrichment of the already super rich including many at the helm of large corporations, especially in the financial sector. Few companies are paying the marginal tax rate and many are avoiding tax altogether.
The campaigns by business to downsize government, reduce wage growth, limit union influence and reduce regulation have been self-defeating. The behaviour of the super-rich is the principal driver of the significant increase in inequality over the last 40 or so years, especially the Global Financial Crisis. This has led to a stalling of demand. In Australia, substantial investment has been directed to property, now a vehicle for financial enrichment at the expense of those wishing to find somewhere to live.
It is vitally important to recall that rising prosperity benefiting the population generally does not depend simply on economic growth: unending growth is a concept believed in only by the naive and many economists. The United Nations Development Program Report for 2009, Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development points out that improvements around the world in education and health have been due principally to cross border transfer of ideas: there is little if any correlation with economic growth! Growth in incomes is not unimportant but it is not the main reason for improved prosperity.
In other words we can learn a great deal from other countries and other domains: seeking out those lessons is vitally important. Most particularly the notion that for any individual country the growth of population is critical is nonsense. Indeed, countries where the birth rate has slowed are generally more prosperous and a significant influence on that is education of women.
Governments have a fundamentally critical role in both encouraging transfer of ideas, in the provision of education for women and in encouraging responsible and sustainable population policy. Many developed economies lack any coherent population policy.
In Australia weakening of institutions, increasing inequality, primitive approaches to debt, especially for infrastructure development and to deficit budgeting, ongoing downsizing of government along with poor investment in education, health and science and a lack of understanding of innovation and what drives it is putting Australia’s future at risk. Isolation from the ideas emerging in other countries is a major feature of public policy!
Continue to Managerial Firms and Rentiers: How Corporate Behaviour is driving Inequality
A postscript to the associated essay notes the recently published book on Neoliberalism by George Monbiot and also deals with the behaviour of banks and the involvement of US administration officials in failing to prosecute bank executives for their behaviour which led to the Global Financial Crisis.
Related post:
A postscript to the associated essay “Managerial Firms and Rentiers” notes the recently published book on Neoliberalism by George Monbiot and also deals with the behaviour of banks and the involvement of US administration officials in failing to prosecute bank executives for their behaviour which led to the Global Financial Crisis.
The Myth of School Choice and the Distortion of Education Policy
Sunday, April 24th, 2016
At the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai in March Education Director for the OECD Andreas Schleicher criticised the Australian education system for falling behind global standards. He pointed to the very significant drop in the results of students at the top of the PISA test rankings in the past year. He said “[Australia] more or less defines teachers by the number of hours that [they] teach in front of students. That is part of the problem. We treat teachers as interchangeable widgets on the frontline – they are just there to implement prefabricated knowledge.” Schleicher said many countries were struggling to keep the best teachers in the profession because of curriculums that restrict creativity.
The OECD through its PISA program which explores literacy in 15 year olds in writing, math and science every three years has been criticised very heavily in some countries as driving the education agenda. Countries determine their own policies but unfortunately the ideology which underlies PISA – standardised testing, along with performance pay and independent schooling – has been adopted too vigorously by some countries. The important findings about effective school education policies and practices brought out in the comprehensive reports of PISA and Education at a Glance are ignored or even deliberately misinterpreted.
___________
In Australia parents are moving their kids in ever larger numbers to schools they perceive to be better based mainly on scores in standardised tests – NAPLAN – published on the MySchool website. What is happening is a drift of students from advantaged backgrounds away from public schools, which generally have large numbers of students from disadvantaged backgrounds, to independent schools. As a result learning gaps between children from different backgrounds are widening. Parents are responding to test scores and to other factors. That should have been anticipated by those deciding to privilege standardised testing and support extra funding for independent schools.
The Myth of School Choice: Government support for Independent Schools and Standardised Tests traverses the recent report from the Grattan Institute which illuminates important outcomes of the Howard Government’s support of independent schools and the reactions of parents to that. The focus on NAPLAN has problems drawn out in a report by Chris Bonner and Bernie Shepherd for the Centre for Policy Development and a study by David Zyngier of Monash University. That independent schools do not contribute to better educational achievement when socioeconomic background is taken into account is shown by a sophisticated report by researchers from the University of Queensland and colleagues. As it has been by many previous analyses!
Study after study has shown no significant educational gain by the much better resourced independent schools. The extra funds would have been better spent supporting those children with greatest needs, those from disadvantaged backgrounds having trouble with the learning program.
The Turnbull Coalition Government, like the Abbott Government before it, has refused to fund the last two years of the National Plan for School Improvement framed in response to the Gonski Panel’s recommendations: it maintains there are insufficient funds. However, there is substantial evidence to the effect that funds are available by addressing the substantial tax expenditures – tax concessions – introduced in recent years; Australia is a relatively low tax country and a major contribution to debt is private debt funding purchase of houses and apartments.
The response by the Turnbull Government to the States’ refusal to consider operating their own income tax systems has left unresolved the funding of schools (and hospitals) through agreements between the former government and the states, with the Prime Minister maintaining that the states have no grounds on which to ask the Commonwealth to raise taxes and claiming the previous agreements were made in “barely credible circumstances”. The Myth of School Choice: the Economics of Independent Schools and Australian Government Policy shows just how wrong this is and how billions of taxpayer funds have been wasted. A report by Lyndsay Connors and Jim McMorrow and detailed analysis by Trevor Cobbold illuminate the situation.
Proposals to have the Commonwealth fund independent schools and the States fund public schools were strongly criticised and are not supported by the Government’s own Green Paper on the Future of the Federation. In Victoria a review by former Premier Steve Bracks recommends policies reinforcing the Gonski reforms.
Despite adoption of policies in the US and UK based mainly on neoclassical economics which privilege private sector participation in generating public goods like education, favour competition and choice and deploy financial incentives to drive change, there are examples in those countries, as in Australia, of exciting outcomes from schools which do address the main features of effective learning in schools.
The Myth of School Choice: Genuine improvement happens when everyone collaborates for the benefit of the children summarises an important review by education historian Diane Ravitch of two very interesting books on schools in the United States. It isn’t simply quality teachers or the administrative independence of school principals and it certainly isn’t standardised testing which make the difference! Kristina Rizga, author of Mission High: One School, How Experts Tried to Fail It, and the Students and Teachers Who Made It Triumph, about a high school in San Francisco with an enrolment of students from a wide cultural diversity, many from disadvantaged backgrounds, points out, “too many politicians, powerful bureaucrats, management and business experts, economists, and philanthropists are making decisions about the best solutions for schools. In short, the people in charge don’t know nearly as much about schooling as the students and teachers they are trying to “fix.””
Despite everything, at Mission High in San Francisco great gains were made by students through the intense enthusiasm of their teachers.
Rizga says, “What matters in quality education – critical thinking, intrinsic motivation, resilience, self-management, resourcefulness, and relationship skills – exist in realms that can’t be easily measured by statistical measures and computer algorithms, but can be detected by teachers using human judgment. America’s business-inspired obsession with prioritizing “metrics” in a complex world that deals with the development of individual minds has become the primary cause of mediocrity in American schools.”
Diane Ravitch points out “grand ideas cannot be imposed on people without their assent. Money and power are not sufficient to improve schools. Genuine improvement happens when students, teachers, principals, parents, and the local community collaborate for the benefit of the children.”
And education does not by itself fix poverty.
Indigenous Peoples: Closing the Gap in the Face of Resilience, Courage and Humour
Saturday, February 14th, 2015
The following post was first published on the website of Civil Liberties Australia under the title, Aborigines: resilience, courage and humour. The post is a response to the Report by the Productivity Commission, Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage published 19 Nov 2014. It is also cross posted on my blog.
As the lights go down at the Belvoir Theatre, an elderly man with a wonderful white beard leads other actors in a recalled presentation to a Royal Commission.
In 1874 the Victorian government moved to close an economically successful enterprise at Coranderrk, near Healesville. Nearby farmers protested the land was too valuable for Aboriginal people. The people resisted. But anyway the area was closed in 1924 despite protests from Wurundjeri men, returned soldiers from the Great War: people were moved to Lake Tyers. There are scores of similar stories, hardly known.
Uncle Jack Charles, now 72, was taken from his mother at Cummeragunja mission as a one year old and raised in a boys’ home at suburban Box Hill. He was the only Aboriginal child there: they ”thrashed the living bejesus out of me’’, and worse. Jack was in and out of jail for minor crime and substance abuse. Reunited with some family at age 17, it was two more years before that included his mother. Jack is considered a founder of black theatre: he now helps young Aboriginal people.
As I watch Uncle Jack Charles perform, I perceive the resilience, courage and humour permeating every performance, comprising cultural achievement in spite of a life lived against the odds. (The play Beautiful One Day, also performed at Belvoir, has the same characteristics.)
Indigenous people are still here, teaching us cultural lessons, as we who are not indigenous have passed from hideous assimilation to integration through policies based on arrogance and now ignorance.
Denial, exploitation, removal of children, murder and rape, suppression of language. Refusal to acknowledge the past. Refusal to acknowledge a unique relationship with land with all its meanings, and managing the land through ice-age and desert periods. Refusal of equal rights despite judgements of the High Court, despite legislation, despite Royal Commissions, despite so many statements from elders white and black, despite increasing achievements in every field, not only music, painting and literature.
Disadvantage: Closing the Gap?
The extraordinarily comprehensive and, in some places, terribly disturbing Productivity Commission Report of late 2014 reveals trends that are a disgrace of international proportion against global standards. The report is comprehensive and detailed: every aspect of Indigenous disadvantage explored. It contains numerous examples of “Things that Work”. And it received about as much media attention as the chime on a time clock.
Horrendous statistics overshadow small gains and losses. Health, education and housing, which characterise Indigenous peoples’ problems worldwide, remain major issues. Australia is worse than anywhere: 78% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander households lack acceptable access to water, sewerage and electricity service, but that figure is 5 points down from 2008…so overcrowding declined!
There is no progress in employment (likely affected by changes in the Community Employment Program), or in disability and chronic disease at 1.7 times the incidence for non-Indigenous people.
An increase in the non-Indigenous rate of family and community violence means the Indigenous rate remains 2.2 times the non-Indigenous rate. Over the nine years to 2012-13 the rate of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children on care and protection orders increased almost five times from 11 to 49 per 1000 children; for non-Indigenous children the rate was between 3 and 6 per 1000 children.
Adult Indigenous jailing increased by 57% in the past 14 years. Youth imprisonment increased sharply to 2008 and has since remained at about 24 times the non-Indigenous rate. Repeat offending is 1.5 times the rate of 55% for non-Indigenous prisoners, as in 2000.
The over-representation of indigenous people in prison in Australia is 10 times that of the USA!
The suicide rate in the five years to 2012 was almost twice the rate for non-Indigenous Australians. The hospitalisation rate for intentional self-harm increased by almost 50% to more than 400 per 100,000 in the past eight years; for other Australians it remained relatively stable.
In education, the figures are also far worse than for Indigenous people in other countries. In New Zealand, 85% of Maori have post-school qualifications and in the US it is about 65% of Native Americans: in Australia less than 20% have such qualifications.
Decades of continuing discrimination
Gough Whitlam, on election as Prime Minister of Australia in 1972, directed one of his first two major initiatives at Aboriginal people: no more grants of leases on Aboriginal reserves in the Northern Territory, appointment of Justice Woodward to commence an inquiry into land rights, and establishment of special schools.
Before and since Whitlam, any moves to advantage Indigenous peoples have been opposed by special interests in pastoral and mining activities and by state governments, except South Australia. In Western Australia discrimination continues as Premier Colin Barnett does his best to remove Indigenous people from remote areas, refusing allocation of mining royalties to support them and maintains mandatory sentencing for minor crime.
In 2006 Prime Minister Howard and Minister Mal Brough established the Northern Territory Intervention or National Emergency Response (NTER) to address alleged high levels of child abuse and neglect, with some allegations later found to be fraudulent and invented by an employee in the Minister’s office. The army was sent in, social security payments were managed, the Racial Discrimination Act was suspended. Contrary to recommendations from a government-commissioned report, action was centralised.
Delivering the 2007 Vincent Lingiari lecture, Reconciliation Australia co-chair Fred Chaney expressed shock: the Intervention was contemptuous of Aboriginal property rights and the principles of non-discrimination, authorised micro management of lives, forced people into towns with devastating social consequences likely returning people to dependence, crushing the engagement essential to progress.
The Intervention has produced no gains. In the five years to 2011 Indigenous hospitalisation rates increased by 14%, income support recipients by 20%, reported child abuse by 56% and school attendance declined by 2 percentage points according to emeritus Professor Jon Altman.
Professor Larissa Behrendt says trying to change behaviour through welfare quarantining in an already dysfunctional situation likely exacerbates the stress on households. Improved attendance would be better achieved by breakfast and lunch programs, bringing the Aboriginal community, especially elders, into schools; teacher’s aides and Aboriginal teachers; a curriculum engaging for Aboriginal children which blends development self-esteem and confidence through engaging with culture as well as academic excellence.
A failure of policy: What could have been
Dr Christine Nicholls, now at Flinders University, was principal of Lajamanu School in Yuendumu for almost a decade. In Quarterly Essay 36 (2009), she points out that the issues of housing, health and employment need to be equal, simultaneous and concurrent foci of government and private attention before education can bring about real and lasting change.
People visited from government agencies out of town but nothing happened! The kids have otitis media (a disease of the Third World!) and can’t hear properly: if you can’t hear, you muck up in school, and don’t learn. It is ignored.
Few ESL teachers are employed, the value of teaching in language is denied, housing construction is appalling (and successive governments have done nothing about it). There is nowhere at home to do homework, overcrowding (with its attendant problems of potential child abuse), compromised health and hygiene. Lack of work for parents. Successive governments come to power wanting to be the one that fixes “the problem”. None do, small successes are not built on.
Many programs to advance Indigenous people are supported by private donations, corporate philanthropy, some together with government. Several help young people particularly. What on earth persuaded the Howard and Abbott governments to force on to Indigenous people wholly ineffectual policies that simply repeat all the mistakes of the past, are based on colonial and assimilative policies and in the end waste money and destroy people’s lives?
Governments could have decided to be far more engaged in ensuring proper housing, education and health programs. They could have ensured a substantial funding component of every initiative went to training Indigenous people. They could have stopped trying to justify policy by lying! And the federal government could have rejected the sometimes racist and backward looking objections of many provincial governments. Almost none have the courage to face down critics wanting to solve it all through rational economic solutions like private ownership and put everything in the “they need to adapt to our society” basket.
The majority of Indigenous people live in New South Wales and Victoria. The situations revealed in the Aboriginal-directed and -produced, award-winning TV dramas Redfern Now are situations of all people in towns and cities on the margin: difficulties of employment and daily living: health issues flowing from bad diet, cheap fast food, substance and alcohol abuse, poor housing.
There are three fundamental requirements: Self Determination, Financial Security, and support of Women/Early Childhood and Parenting
Self Determination
The right to self-determination must be embraced completely. Sovereignty matters! The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development has run hundreds of research studies over more than two decades in Native American communities. When Native Americans make their own decisions about what development approaches to take, they consistently out-perform external decision makers on matters as diverse as governmental forms, natural resource management, economic development, health care and social service provision.
Self-determination is a constant theme in every speech by Indigenous people. It is an expression of control over one’s own life. Many, non-Indigenous and Indigenous, have pointed out that redressing disadvantage in the longer term depends upon people having the power to make decisions that affect them, to be responsible for the programs designed to meet their needs, and accountable for the successes and failures that follow.
Michael Dockery of Curtin University has found these same outcomes for Indigenous people in Australia. But no notice is taken. What is axiomatic for white groups in society is seen as a threat if given to black groups! Capable institutions of governance, adoption of stable decision rules, establishment of fair and independent mechanisms of dispute resolution and leaders who introduce new knowledge and experiences, challenge assumptions, and propose change are recognised as essential by Harvard.
Financial security
Second is equitable funding as the bottom line, and more beyond that as success builds. Under-funding has typified programs for more than 100 years. Except for the Whitlam government, almost every federal government has strenuously failed to adequately fund Indigenous programs. Wages and social security payments have been withheld and compensation ignored. The funding must acknowledge the right to determine the nature of projects directed to community improvement.
Under the government of Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Tony Abbott:
- $43 million will be removed from legal aid over four years;
- $160 million is being cut from health programs;
- language support has lost money; and
- funding for the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples was eliminated.
Recently Prof Altman has pointed to the success of the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme which began in the 1970s: it increased earnings, provided more time for ceremonial activities, and crime decreased. Howard cancelled the increasingly demonised scheme because it wasn’t “real work”. In December 2014 the Abbott government announced a work for the dole scheme for remote Australia. Utterly pointless!
Early childhood and parenting
Australian and international understanding of early childhood, mother–child relationships, cognitive development and the impact on later life has increased significantly. These relationships are critical. The stimulation and warmth of the relationship contributes to a successful later life. Young children learn how to behave, and about human relationships and self-control which is a greater predictor of later “success” than any other indicator. And they learn self-confidence which helps manage the stress of later life better.
Recalled experiences in early childhood carry over to later parenting situations. So a potential cycle is developed. Therefore maximum support must be given to women and young families. Preschool staffed by qualified teachers and before that maximum effective support. Later, while Indigenous parents may not be clear about what school has to do with education, because of their background, that does not mean they have no interest in education. On the other hand intervening at school age will not likely undo the damage of early life. And availability of jobs after schooling is completed is essential.
Conclusion
The Productivity Commission and many people working and studying in the area have identified successes. But generally governments have not addressed the causes of problems, they have not co-ordinated the policies across significant areas and have not recognised the obligations to First Peoples whose right to the land was denied for 200 years. The invidious comparisons with the Indigenous peoples of other countries testifies to that.
There is a crisis of intellectual laziness combined with arrogance. In particular, the critical importance of cultural issues have not been attended to, nor has the impact of removal from land and of forced removal of children from families, which continues. Nothing has been learned from elsewhere.
The paternalistic approach which denies people any sense of control over their own lives leaves them more than marginalised. A friend points to the fact that many Aboriginal people have little understanding of white institutions and the implications of such things as court judgements.
But they know very well what denial of liberty means. Anything approaching racial profiling, failure to deliver in the judicial and police arena, criminalising minor crimes, mandatory sentencing and imprisonment produces more destructive behaviour and undermines progress elsewhere. It should be stopped immediately. Everything should be geared to developing a sense of self-worth grounded in a unique culture so that Indigenous identity is genuinely valued by the whole Australian community. Surprising as it may seem, many Aboriginal people regard all white people as of greater value than any Aboriginal person.
David Gulpilil won best lead actor for his role in Rolf de Heer’s film Charlie’s Country at the annual Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts (AACTA) event in January 2015. There are lessons in that if we only think about them.