Enough Talk! 4 ways we can ACTUALLY help Indigenous Australians

It is time to start closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous, rural and urban, Australians once and for ALL. Nyunggai Warren Mundine presents a practical path forward summarise in this video.

We cannot achieve change if we use the same inadequate approach and programs that have failed for years.

Indigenous people need financial and economic independence, not handouts or paternalism. The guiding principle should be to harness the free-market ethos and incentivise economic participation. All government activities and policies must nurture both personal and community-level responsibility to achieve prosperity. Government should allow people to build their own futures instead of expecting them to rely on welfare and government programs.

Read the paper

For more on the plan to empower Indigenous Australians read Warren’s latest paper, “Where to now? The road Ahead for Indigenous Policy”. The paper makes recommendations based on economic incentives and real solutions with circuit breakers via the justice system, welfare system and community-based protections.

The paper presents a plan driven by free market solutions which are proven to improve the standard of living in disadvantaged communities. The proposed policies do not segregate and further isolate remote Indigenous communities. Rather, they consider struggling remote Indigenous communities as any other socio-economic disadvantaged group. Warren offers an effective pathway to closing the gap.

The Voice failed. Now what?

The 2023 Voice referendum sent a clear message to governments,  to corporates and to the rest of the big end of town. Australians do not want divisive and ideology-driven solutions or race-based policies.

Politicians should stop listening to the noise of the Indigenous elite in academia, the public service and government funded organisations. Politicians should listen to the silence.

The silence in remote Indigenous communities is deafening. Over 60% of Indigenous voters in remote communities across Australia’s north abstained from voting in the Voice referendum.

Australians want REAL improvements in Indigenous lives. Policies should focus on delivering outcomes.

Market economy and democracy, the rule of supply and demand as well as the rule of law provide a blueprint for economic prosperity. Around the world the market ignores race, culture or religion, providing prosperity for all. It can work for remote Indigenous communities too.

Summary of recommendations

This paper proposes a roadmap to closing the gap through real economic solutions under four pillars:

1. Economic Participation
2. Education
3. Safe communities
4. Accountability

1. Economic participation is achieved through business creation and employment.

This languishes in remote Indigenous communities because there is no private, individual property ownership on traditional lands. Centralised Indigenous bodies collectively own all land.

And, despite owning vast amounts of land and billions in funds from royalties and other payments for use or loss of land, Indigenous people in these communities live in abject poverty, dependent on centralised, community-controlled organisations for housing and other needs.

This model also exists in towns like Alice Springs with the Aboriginal town camps, which Aboriginal controlled ‘councils’ collectively own and control. They run some of the most appalling and derelict housing and communities in Australia.

This needs to change.

We must replace collective ownership of townships on traditional lands and town camps with private, individual property ownership.

For example, places like Canberra have already established models of land ownership and land reform with tool such as will 99 year leases.

2. Education is the key to employment.

There is virtually no employment gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians who have education at the Certificate III or above and none at the highest levels of education. The gap in educational attainment accounts for almost 40 percentage points of the gap in employment.

To get an effective education, a child must attend school 90% of the time. Most Indigenous children in remote communities are not. Over three quarters of Indigenous children in Very Remote areas and nearly two-thirds of those in Remote areas are not getting an effective education because they aren’t in school.

We need to get all Indigenous children to school, every day and in all of Australia.

The new Closing the Gap framework has targets for Year 12 and tertiary attainment but none for school attendance. They have it around the wrong way. Kids can’t learn if they aren’t in class.

3. Safe communities and economic participation are two sides of the same coin.

Alice Springs has been in crisis for over 2 years after alcohol bans and cashless welfare were abolished. But the underlying cause of this crisis is more fundamental. In every community the world over, social breakdown, violence and drug and alcohol abuse go hand in hand with low school attendance, unemployment and chronic intergenerational welfare dependency.

Only economic participation will lift people out of this cycle. But economic participation will not thrive in unsafe communities.

For example, communities beset by crime, drug and alcohol abuse, violence and other social dysfunction, will have fewer businesses and employment opportunities. Meanwhile more people will get involved in criminal activity.

Acohol bans and cashless welfare had started to break this cycle. But they must remain in place until these communities come back from the brink. Only then, once communities have some breathing space will we be able to achieve more permanent change.

Then we need a bridge from dysfunctional behaviour to economic participation. Firstly, make employment and education a consequence of crime. For example, sentence offenders to work or go to school. Additionally, this should apply to everyone – Indigenous and non-Indigenous.

4. Accountability is essential for the effectiveness of every policy and initiative, however well intentioned.

The new Closing the Gap framework adopted in 2020 falls woefully short on accountability.

The outcomes are qualitative. As a result, it is unclear what success looks like. The targets are flawed. Many are unmeasurable. For example, the data isn’t available or is of low quality.

Many are indirect and do not necessarily drive the behaviours required to improve Indigenous lives. Moreover, some even work against each other. For example the outcomes and targets on Indigenous incarceration, out-of-home care and family violence.

• The only sustainable way to reduce Indigenous incarceration is to reduce the crimes committed by Indigenous people. Further, most violent crimes are against Indigenous victims. Yet, nothing addressing commission of crime is listed as an indicator for any of these targets.
• The only sustainable way to reduce Indigenous children in out-of-home care is to reduce violence, sexual abuse and neglect of Indigenous children in their families and communities. Factors that underpin that behaviour include alcohol abuse. Yet, nothing addressing these issues is mentioned in the indicators for this target.
• There is a target to reduce family violence and abuse against women and children. Yet that target has no available data to measure it. Additionally, the baseline data is inadequate.

Conclusion

Most of the gap would close within less than a generation if every Indigenous child went to school every day, every Indigenous adult was employed in a real job, and the communities in which Indigenous people live were safe and allowed private property ownership. Just those few achievements would result in improvements across all areas. Race based and ideology-driven policy will not improve Indigenous lives. Australians have sent governments a very clear message that they want a different way.