2. Changing the Philosophy of the Emergency Response
It is unlikely long-term social change can be achieved through a vehicle such as the Northern Territory Emergency Response. (NTER) The history of non Indigenous interaction with communities in the Territory has primarily been one of intervention and it has not been successful.
It has become popular in recent years to blame the failure of policies such as “self-determination” for the current state of affairs in Indigenous communities. Likewise others will claim that policies of the past 30 years have created a system of “welfare dependency” which has crippled Indigenous advancement. These are simplistic euro-centric notions that try to explain away the very complex reasons for the failure of policy and service delivery systems.
The reasons for the failure of Indigenous policy to achieve outcomes in remote communities are linked to more fundamental issues. Primarily the inability of policy to acknowledge or work with the relevant Indigenous governance, social organisation and cultural practises that applies in many remote area communities. Rather there has been a life-long history of the application of inappropriate top down policies dating from the time government “settlements” and church “mission stations” were first established.
Policies that are based on research, sound community development principles and delivered through programs supported by proven methodology have been unpalatable to the broader Territory community and to politicians over the past 50 years. Bitter public debate has occurred around issues such as the right to vote, equal wages, land rights, the right to consume alcohol, social security and the perceived negative impact of Indigenous people on tourism and economic development.
The first Territory Governments, the Everingham and Tuxworth Governments (circa 1978/86) were aggressively pro-development with low social policy priorities. The Everingham “5 Year Plan for Aboriginal Advancement” in 1978 was the definitive policy for Government agencies at the time. This was an 8 page document that contained little detail and was not adequately resourced. The policy was abandoned in 1983. At the same time both Chief Ministers were known to be implacably opposed to the Hawke Governments policies on Aboriginal Affairs and few of the Australian Governments policies or programs were supported. Many were actively opposed and the absurd situation emerged whereby Australian and Northern Territory public servants were implementing philosophically opposed programs on the same communities. The Territory Government of those years was particularly opposed to the concept of Aboriginal Land Rights and by inference the role of Aboriginal Land Councils. Valuable time and energy was spent trying to discredit their work within communities and no doubt visa versa.
Whilst the Everingham and Tuxworth governments espoused “self-management” in principle, if not in practise, this officially ended two decades ago when in 1987 the Hatton Government abolished the Department of Community Development that had been responsible for the management and administration of Territory Indigenous communities and for many of the services and programs government delivered.
In a statement to the House announcing mainstream administrative arrangements Chief Minister Hatton stated,
"We will not retain a "specialist” department delivering government services and programs to Indigenous people. The Territory Government will, through its mainstream departments, provide the same or similar services to all Territorian's irrespective of race or colour or cultural practises or place of residence. Aboriginal Territorian's will access these services in the same way as all other Territorian's."
Whilst the new arrangements reflected a particular ideology it was a model that ignored the realities of working in a cross-cultural environment with disparate communities that had little capacity and less infrastructure and it failed to engage with emerging Indigenous community leadership. Or perhaps preferred not to. It was certainly a model that allowed agencies to develop and implement programs without Indigenous participation. In almost all the cases I am aware of agencies transposed mainstream programs designed for non-Indigenous urban regions into remote area communities.
It should be remembered that many of the communities the new policies affected had been established less than 30 years. Ali-Curung (1956), Lajamanu (1957), Barunga (1958) Santa Teresa (1954) and Kintore (1982) are good examples. Many communities lacked infrastructure and capacity to access programs or influence their design and implementation.
The opportunity in the Territory to put in place underpinning long term strategies based on research and community development practises and principles was, in my opinion, limited to a narrow time-frame of between 1976 and 1982.
In my view it has not been a failure of specific policies but rather a failure of both levels of government to develop policies and programs that are relevant to Indigenous communities. In the Northern Territory successive governments must be held responsible for the continuing failure of mainstream methodology to provide adequate services over the past 30 years.
The intervention philosophy now needs to shift its response to a philosophy that can assist develop strategies that are consistent with the aspirations of communities, can include Indigenous participation in the processes and supports the development of local capacity to best deal with local issues. The use of the word “Intervention” and “Northern Territory Emergency Response” to describe these practises should no longer be used. The practises that communities will support and work well for them are significantly different to those of NTER.
Attachment B provides the most recent (if not only) research paper available
in Australia that has evaluated the methodologies and principles of two very
divergent approaches to program development and implementation at the same
community. The Australian Governments “Shared Responsibilities Agreement”
at Ali-Curung is compared with the principles and practises used to implement
two other programs including the “Northern Territory’s Aboriginal
Law and Justice Strategy”. The underlaying philosophies and methodologies
are significantly different. So are the results.