Social Justice Report 2006
Information Sheet 2: The challenge of equal access to mainstream services
Background
New arrangements for the administration of Indigenous
affairs (introduced as of 1 July 2004) transferred responsibility for the
administration of Indigenous specific programs to mainstream government
departments. The new arrangements aim to remove, or at least reduce, the
barriers that prevent Indigenous peoples from accessing existing mainstream
services on an equitable basis. This objective has been called ‘harnessing
the mainstream’.
Indigenous
disadvantage and human rights
International
human rights standards provide a guide for government service delivery aimed at
reducing the significant disadvantage faced by Indigenous peoples in Australia.
Service delivery should occur within a deliberate, concrete and targeted strategy that includes specific, time-bound and verifiable benchmarks and
indicators to ensure that people’s enjoyment of their human rights
improves over time.
In Australia,
international human rights standards require an integrated and purposeful
approach to the improvement in Indigenous living standards which should include:
- Improved access to mainstream services;
- Indigenous specific programs to respond to particular circumstances; and
- flexibility and sensibility to the cultural and social norms and aspirations of Indigenous peoples.
The challenge of improving Indigenous access to mainstream services
Currently, most expenditure by Australian governments
for the provision of services to Indigenous peoples is made through mainstream
services generally available to all citizens. Indigenous Australians are not
accessing these mainstream services on an equitable
basis.
There is a tendency to substitute rather than to complement and supplement programs within portfolios – so that the burden may be left to the Indigenous-specific
programs, and the mainstream programs step back from the
task.
There is a particular challenge to
improve mainstream access in urban locations. This is particularly given that
the federal Government has made remote Indigenous communities its priority for
Indigenous-specific funding under the new arrangements.
It is clear that the government is yet to
bed down its policy direction for Indigenous affairs. This is not only
destabilising and confusing for Indigenous Australians, it is diverting valuable
resources from producing changes on the ground that will improve the daily lives
of Indigenous peoples.
Progress in ‘harnessing the mainstream’ under the new arrangements
The new arrangements for Indigenous affairs have a number of key elements that could contribute, or do contribute more effectively to ‘harnessing the mainstream’ and delivering improved access to services for Indigenous Australians.
The Social Justice Report has the following findings about the current approach being adopted:
- Regionally focussed service delivery: Indigenous Coordination Centres (ICCs) are designed to be the focal point of the new relationship that government is forging with Indigenous communities. The potential of these is not being fully met at present. There is a disconnect between ICCs and the communities that they are meant to be serving.
- Solution brokers: Solution brokers are staff from different government departments, usually located in ICCs or state offices/departments. The role of a solution broker is potentially valuable, however there are concerns that the recruitment practices for these positions do not sufficiently recognise that the ability to communicate effectively with Indigenous people is an essential skill and an integral component of all merit-based selection processes.
- Shared Responsibility Agreements (SRAs): Despite being allocated only a relatively small share of total Indigenous program funding, SRAs have come to embody the government’s commitment to partnership, local agreement-making and mutual obligation. A year further into the new arrangements and it appears that the majority of SRA funding continues to come from Indigenous specific expenditure and not mainstream programs – they are yet to become an effective tool to ‘harness the mainstream’.
- Regional planning processes and agreements: There is an intention to move towards ‘comprehensive’ or ‘holistic’ SRAs - this seems sensible and timely. Along with Regional Partnership Agreements (RPAs) these more comprehensive agreements could be used to contribute to a regional needs-analysis approach in order to map mainstream and Indigenous-specific services together. The challenge is to balance the directness and immediacy of a bottom-up family or community-based approach, through small one or two-issue SRAs, with the efficiencies and effectiveness of coordinated planning and service delivery on a wider community or regional basis.
- Issues concerning engagement with Indigenous communities: There is a compelling need to support authentic and credible regional representative structures and processes for Indigenous communities that allows them to: engage with governments; be consulted; and where appropriate, provide informed consent. The absence of such structures remains the fundamental flaw of the new arrangements.
- Monitoring and evaluation mechanisms – ensuring accountability for the new arrangements: There is a danger that an ‘accountability gap’ could develop between the rhetoric of improved outcomes through mainstreaming on a ‘whole-of-government’ basis, and the reality of actual outcomes for Indigenous peoples and communities on the ground. There is a need for rigorous monitoring of the implementation of the new arrangements to ensure government accountability. There have been some positive steps forward in this regard. Overall the range of information on accessing mainstream government services is patchy at best. There appears to be no overarching framework of benchmarks and indicators specific to issues of improving access to mainstream services. This amounts to a major evaluation gap in the new arrangements for the administration of Indigenous affairs given the centrality of this objective in reducing Indigenous disadvantage.
