If you’re thinking of voting No in the Voice referendum because governments have been spending so much taxpayers’ money trying to “close the gap” without much sign of success, perhaps you need to reconsider. If the Voice to parliament of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people is enshrined in the Constitution, obliging our politicians and bureaucrats to listen, chances are that money will be better spent.
But I can tell you now the message First Nations people will be trying to get across: we want the local spending on health and education and the rest to be administered by Indigenous-led local organisations.
Why? Because when you do it that way, the money’s spent by people with a much better understanding of what the problems are, and the best ways to go about fixing them. Because when the government’s being represented by Indigenous-run outfits, they get much more trust and co-operation.
I’ve realised this mainly by reading a report, Better Outcomes and Value for Money with a Seat at the Table, issued by the Lowitja Institute, a largely government-funded, Indigenous-controlled health research organisation, based in Melbourne.
Let’s start with some facts about government spending on Indigenous people.
According to the Productivity Commission’s most recent estimates, for the 2015-16 year, spending by all levels of government on Indigenous people totalled $33 billion, representing 6 per cent of those governments’ total spending of $556 billion.
Some mates of mine believe Aboriginal people get a lot of government money the rest of us don’t. Only $6 billion of that $33 billion was specifically targeted to Indigenous people. The remaining $27 billion was the share of ordinary spending on hospitals, education, aged care and, importantly, the justice system, used by Indigenous people.
Even so, that $33 billion represents average annual spending of $44,900 per Indigenous person, compared with $22,400 per non-Indigenous person.
Why are Indigenous people getting twice as much? Because they have more disadvantage than the rest of us, and so need more help. For instance, their burden of disease is 2.3 times that of non-Indigenous people, the report says.
Indigenous people “have survived centuries of systemic racism, economic and social exclusion, and intergenerational trauma. As a result, our peoples now die far earlier and experience a higher burden of disease, disability, poverty, and criminalisation than other Australians,” it says.
But here’s the upside. Because governments are spending so much, “slight improvements in the efficiency of the existing spend would generate substantial savings, both directly and through flow-on impacts to other policy areas,” we’re told. For a case study, read to the end.
The federal government first signed a statement of intent to work in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in 2008, to “achieve equality in health status and life expectancy … by 2030”.
This partnership was refreshed and strengthened in 2020 by a National Agreement on Closing the Gap, made between peak Indigenous community organisations and all federal, state, territory and local governments.
The agreement accepted four priority reforms: formal partnerships and shared decision-making, building and strengthening the community-controlled sector, transforming government mainstream organisations, and shared access to data and information at a regional level.
Are you getting the message? In practice, however, the report says, “these changes have been patchy and incremental despite increased investment from government”.
“An Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice could support more effective public investment in our wellbeing because our communities know what they need and how to deliver outcomes with the right support,” we’re told.
The report argues that government-run, top-down programs to close the gap haven’t worked as well as community-controlled initiatives.
Research indicates that Indigenous-controlled community health organisations “attract and retain more Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients than mainstream providers, are more effective at improving our health, and see more significant health benefits per dollar of expenditure,” the report says.
It was Indigenous community health organisations that had the knowledge and expertise to rapidly respond to the especially great threat presented to their people by COVID-19.
Throughout the first year of the pandemic, just 147 cases of the virus were reported among Indigenous people, out of 28,000 total cases in Australia. There were no Indigenous deaths and no identified cases in remote Aboriginal communities.
In the second year, Indigenous community health organisations worked tirelessly to ensure their communities were vaccinated.
Turning to education, the report says the federal government’s “remote school attendance strategy”, begun in 2013, with total spending of more than $200 million over eight years, had seen falling attendance rates.
By contrast, the report argues, in 2017, the community-led Maranguka justice reinvestment project in Bourke achieved a 31 per cent increase in year 12 retention, a 23 per cent reduction in recorded rates of family violence incidents, and a 42 per cent reduction in adult days spent incarcerated.
These improvements were calculated to have saved the NSW economy $3 million that year – five times the project’s operating costs.
I’ve drawn my own conclusions from all this. So close to the vote, I leave you to draw yours.
