2. The Top Down Effect
Indigenous Australia has been the lab rat that successive waves of federal governments have experimented with since Federation. Experiments over the last 100 years have included Protection, Assimilation including the Stolen Generation policy, Self-determination which became way to a blame the victims, Mainstreaming which pretended Indigenous Australia had no implicit cultural and historical issues, and now the bureaucratic micro-management implicit in the NTER with it’s need to suspend the operation of the racial Discrimination Act to operate. If it was not so tragic, it would be amusing to see how the previous government’s commitment to private housing and employment as the answer for Indigenous improvement translated into extra housing for bureaucrats in remote communities and employment of those bureaucrats. It may be inherent in management worldviews that what a situation needs in more management instead of more services.
For CAYLUS, it has been perplexing knowing that in the remote communities the safety of the youth requires a good recreation program, with skilled youth development workers and a functional rec hall, but that instead of these resources the communities got federal government employees with nebulous job descriptions and housing for those employees that, due to the haste in which it all happened, cost as much as a well resourced rec hall. As stated above, we know the needs of the community due to our long association with the region and our expansive and ongoing consultation. The infrastructure and resources required are not beyond what is readily available to other Australians who do not live in remote communities.
A current example of the top down effect has been the recent tendering of the Integrated Youth Services in four remote communities in the southern NT. We understand the tender was decided on by public servants with no experience in delivering the services being tendered, none of whom were from the region nor had they lived on the Indigenous communities in question. It is probable none of them had visited the communities or region. Because of this lack of corporate knowledge, they made the decisions in a vacuum of knowledge. If there were people involved in the decision re the tender who had some experience and knowledge regarding the services needed and the realities of the region, they might not have given the contract to a service provider who was not from the region and who made promises in the tender document that were clearly going to be impossible to keep. Through no fault of theirs, Mission Australia (MA) were encouraged by the uninformed to make the traditional mistakes of the inexperienced. It appears MA looked at existing successful youth programs, in particular the Mt Theo model and the Docker River model, and wrote that they would deliver these services. What they failed to understand was that there was a slow developmental process involved in getting to those outcomes.
CAYLUS is offering MA guidance based on our experience in running these services in the region, and recently they have employed a Manager with remote experience, and one of the chief agents in the successful Docker River program, so there is hope they will be able to improve their service provision over time.
It is strange how often this issue arises in this region : successive waves of government bureaucrats implementing policies that have already proved to be ineffective. The inevitable roadcrash is then blamed on the Indigenous people who the flawed policy was applied to and the bureaucrats move on, to be replaced by another wave of people who follow the same tragic pattern. It seems this is a product of the top down approach, and reflects the fact that in federal bureaucracies the players are constantly changing while the problems on the ground continue. The NTER to date has been the ultimate top down response, initiated by the PM and carried out with a stated commitment not to consult.