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by Kerry Arabena
A recent media release from the Torres Strait and Northern Peninsula Area District Health Council called for urgent government action on the appalling health status of people in the Torres Strait and Northern Peninsula Area, citing the ‘lack of community ownership, poor access to health services, limited affordable nutritious food supply, overcrowding, high cost of living, poor educational outcomes and meaningful employment’ as major causal factors.[1] The District Health Council and community representatives concluded their two-day regional planning workshop by stating:
We have basically been ignored and forgotten by the Queensland and Australian governments.
What the District Health Council and the Community representatives appear to be calling for is the opportunity to meet with governments, offer commitments and undertake changes that benefit the community; in exchange for government funding, particularly funds that address community concerns under the cross-border free movement provisions in the Commonwealth Treaty with Papua New Guinea.
It is disheartening that in the only region in Australia to retain active, representative, and executive structures since the 2005 amendments to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Act 1989 (Cth),[2] people feel unable to engage with Governments to overcome structural barriers that contribute to their disadvantage. The new arrangements in the administration of Indigenous affairs were to offer communities new and innovative ways to broker solutions with government.
This paper reflects on strategies that monitor the implementation of the whole-of-government approach and implications for Torres Strait Islanders attempting to overcome disadvantage.
On 15 April 2004, the Australian Government announced it was introducing significant changes to the delivery of services to Indigenous communities. It announced that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (‘ATSIC’) and its service delivery arm, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Services (‘ATSIS’) would be abolished. Responsibility for the delivery of all Indigenous-specific programs was distributed to the relevant government departments. Shared Responsibility Agreements were defined as detailed documents that would operate at a family or community level to
set out clearly what the family, community and government is responsible for contributing to a particular activity, what outcomes are to be achieved and the agreed milestones to measure success.[3]
Clearly, Torres Strait Islanders living in the Torres Strait and Northern Peninsula Area have not yet been provided with opportunities to develop Shared Responsibility Agreements with government.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Mr Tom Calma, has stated that Torres Strait Islanders on the mainland risk being ignored and forgotten in the new arrangements and sought to establish
the extent to which Torres Strait Islanders on the mainland are able to participate and the adequacy of their representation through the new processes.[4]
Mr George Mye of the Veteran Island Councillors Elders Group, and inaugural ATSIC Commissioner for the Torres Strait region stated recently:
There were tears on my shoulder, north, south, east and west – across the country. They need something of their own because they are always last in the queue for anything down on the mainland.[5]
Torres Strait Islanders living in the Straits and on the mainland appear to have been marginalised through the implementation of the new arrangements in Indigenous affairs. The most recent Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner’s Report states that governments will need to improve their capacity to engage Torres Strait Islanders in the new arrangements in the administration of Indigenous affairs.[6]
The whole-of-government approaches to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs are being monitored by the Steering Committee for the Review of Government Service Provision. The commissioning of the ‘Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage Report 2005’ (‘OID Report 2005’ or ‘the Report’) by the Council of Australian Governments (‘COAG’) demonstrates a new resolve at the highest political level to ‘tackle the root causes of Indigenous disadvantage’ and monitor outcomes in a ‘systematic way that crosses jurisdictional and portfolio boundaries’.
The OID Report 2005 has significant implications for Torres Strait Islander people. Clearly, Torres Strait Islander people have aspirations and approaches that would overcome disadvantage, but in the post-ATSIC environment these have not been adequately engaged with.
The Report’s use of the word ‘Indigenous’, however, renders Torres Strait Islander people indistinguishable from Aboriginal people; and as such, invisible. Throughout the Report there are only four references to someone being something other than ‘Indigenous’: one in a table about home ownership,[7] another identifying ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander’ children in the child protection system[8] and the third where the term ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander’ was used to racialise the categories of ‘victims’ and ‘offenders’ in homicides.[9] Another reference to ‘Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’ in the report was used to distinguish people who practiced self-harming behaviour and who had attempted suicide from the majority of others in society.
Some interests like those invested in the OID Report 2005 would seek to make our Torres Strait Islander histories invisible, by subsuming our complexities into a uniform Indigenous identity without acknowledgment of the vast differences among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people; differences in our cultures, political-economic situations, and in our relationships with governments and the wider society.
Our struggle to survive as a distinct people is based on foundations constituted in our unique heritage, attachments to land and sea, and natural ways of life. This is shared by all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, as well as the fact that our existence is in large part lived as determined acts of survival and resistance against the state which would seek to erase us culturally, politically and physically.[10]
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 ongoing connection to the land and sea. In the case of the OID Report 2005, the presence of an artificial, state-created identity is exemplified by the use of the word ‘Indigenous’.
Aden Ridgeway has argued that being defined as ‘disadvantaged’ does not address longstanding structural and systematic barriers and we are co-opted into oversimplified debates based on language benign in appearance but loaded in meaning.[11] Some of the language used throughout the Report is particularly potent and demonstrates Aden’s point well. For instance, in the section of the OID Report 2005 referring to hospital admission, birth weight and infant mortality data, it is stated that whilst data collection has been identified 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.[12]
This data is loaded with particular meanings and history. Information such as this 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. Yet this was never an issue for non-Indigenous women who had Indigenous children. The non-Indigenous mother 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 ‘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’.[13]
Again, practices of oppression, removal, exclusion or inclusion in Australia have often depended on someone else determining what we look like. How we are responded to is a result of the attitudes and values that underpin that person’s world view.
The Report’s 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.[14] 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?
The values inherent in monitoring the whole-of-government approach are at risk of being undermined by the use of incomplete and incomparable datasets that provide clear political authority to government. The data in the OID Report 2005 is not corrupt, but is highly charged. Implicit in the data sets are the political judgments and choices of what to measure, how to measure it, how often to measure and how to present and interpret the results.[15] 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.[16]
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. 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.[17]
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 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.[18]
To make Torres Strait Islander people who live in the Straits, and those who choose to live on the mainland, more visible in future reports, a range of strategies could be implemented including providing an overview and analysis of the Torres Strait Treaty. This Treaty defines maritime boundaries, environmental protection, and protects the traditional ways of life for traditional inhabitants in the Torres Strait Protected Zone. There is a range of Commonwealth agencies involved in the implementation. This analysis could emphasise the importance of the interaction between sectors, and between governments and Torres Strait Islanders and is a useful demonstration of a whole-of-government approach. This analysis would then pick up on the concerns of representative groups like the Torres Strait and Northern Peninsula Area District Health Council, provide information to include against a number of indicators contained in the report and provide a governance case study for inclusion in the next report.
Whilst there is no denying that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are similarly disadvantaged, there are varying needs between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living on the mainland that derive from distinctive cultural identities. As the OID Report 2005 states, cultural considerations are of utmost importance to advancing reconciliation in Australia, and recognition of these distinct cultural identities could be better attended to by the agencies monitored by the Productivity Commission.
Torres Strait Islanders on the mainland have detailed a variety of disadvantages including those related to access and equity, cultural maintenance and acknowledgment of a separate though rich cultural history. Whilst there may be difficulties in separating data between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, including Torres Strait Islanders on the mainland in detailed studies such as that conducted by the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Wadeye community in the Northern Territory would be useful. It may be of benefit to commission such a study in regional areas in which larger populations of Torres Strait Islander people live, (particularly in Brisbane, Townsville, Cairns or Darwin), to assess both the methods in which these communities are being engaged post the abolition of the ATSIC Regional Councils, and the development of Shared Responsibility Agreements with Torres Strait Islanders on the mainland. This may not give a fair or accurate representation of the circumstances faced by Islander people across the country, but would provide some level of understanding about the distinct cultures, needs and responses by governments to overcome the disadvantage experienced by the Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia.
The foreword to the Report states that there is clearly more going on in Indigenous communities than can be captured by statistics.[19] Whilst there is agreement with the majority of the indicators in the Report, the concern is that the homogeneity of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will be reflected in the initiatives that are brought to bear in communities.
The Shared Responsibility Agreements are not yet grounded in agreed-to baseline data at a local and regional level with Torres Strait Islander people, nor with their representative groups. Currently, there is little capacity to show whether collaborations and partnerships that are developed under the new arrangements are making the kind of difference necessary for all Australians to participate in the wealth of our country.
Importantly, Torres Strait Islanders must resist being made ‘invisible’ in the new arrangements in Indigenous affairs. We need to advocate for the development of responsible relationships between governments and community members, and invest in community-grounded methods of measuring the effectiveness of the interventions of government in our lives. This will ensure that our vision, our contributions and our future will be visible; and our efforts to reform our communities can be attributed to Torres Strait Islanders, changing the narrative in which ‘community initiatives that work’ are reported.
Kerry Arabena is a descendant of the Merriam people in the Torres Strait. She is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (‘AIATSIS’).
[1] Ivy Trevallion, Torres Strait and Northern Peninsula Area District Health Council (Press Release, 18 November 2005).
[2] The Torres Strait Regional Authority retains a legislative basis to their operations, and were not abolished when the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission Amendment Bill 2005 (Cth) was considered in the Parliament in 2005.
[3] Australian Government, Office of Indigenous Policy Coordination, ‘New Arrangements in Indigenous Affairs’ (2004) 17.
[4] Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, ‘Social Justice Report 2004’, (2005) Ch 3, 28.
[5] Commonwealth, Hansard – Senate Select Committee on the Administration of Indigenous Affairs, 26 August 2004 (Mr George Mye MBE OAM) 37.
[6] Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, above n 4, 108-109.
[7] Steering Committee for the Review of Government Service Provision (‘SCRGSP’) ‘Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage Report: Key Indicators 2005’ (2005) 3.48.
[8] Ibid 3.61.
[9] Ibid 3.71.
[10] Taiaiake Alfred and Jeff Corntassel, ‘Being Indigenous: Resurgences Against Contemporary Colonialism’ (2005) 40 Government and Opposition 597.
[11] Aden Ridgeway, ‘Addressing the Economic Exclusion of Indigenous Australians through Native Title’ (Speech delivered at The Mabo Lecture at the Native Title Conference 2005, Coffs Harbour NSW, 3 June 2005) 5 available at <http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/rsrch/ntru/conf2005/papers/RidgewayA.pdf> at 1 December 2005.
[12] SCRGSP above n 6.
[13] Ibid 7.30 – 7.31.
[14] SCRGSP, above n 6.
[15] Nikolas Rose, ‘Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought’ (1999) 204.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Senator Amanda Vanstone, Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, ‘Opening Address’ (Speech delivered at the opening of the Bennelong Conference, Sydney, 4 September 2004) 4 at <http://www.atsia.gov.au/media/speeches/4_09_2004_bennelong.htm> at 1 December 2005.
[18] SCRGSP, above n 6, 1.2.
[19] SCRGSP, above n 6.
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URL: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/IndigLawB/2005/64.html