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McCausland, Ruth --- "Shared Responsibility Agreements: Practical Reconciliation or Paternalistic Rhetoric?" [2005] IndigLawB 35; (2005) 6(12) Indigenous Law Bulletin 9


Shared Responsibility Agreements: Practical Reconciliation or Paternalistic Rhetoric?

by Ruth McCausland

In April 2004, Prime Minister John Howard and the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Amanda Vanstone, announced the Government’s intention to abolish the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (‘ATSIC’) and to transfer the funding and responsibility for its programs to mainstream government departments. Minister Vanstone described these new arrangements for the administration of Indigenous affairs as a

new conversation, going direct to communities. For many, the first time they’ve been given the opportunity to express where they want to go and how they see government can play a role.[1]

A primary focus of this ‘new conversation’ has been the negotiation of Shared Responsibility Agreements (‘SRAs’) with Indigenous communities, whereby extra government funding for infrastructure or services is provided on the condition that communities commit to specific behavioural change or other actions. The most high profile SRA has been that of Mulan in Western Australia, where the community committed to washing kids’ faces daily and other hygiene measures in exchange for the Australian Government installing petrol bowsers and the Western Australian Government agreeing to monitor and review the adequacy of health services in the community.

In the May/June edition of the Indigenous Law Bulletin,[2] Kari M S Kristiansen and Kerrianne Cox set out the detail of the Australian Government’s stated approach to the development of an SRA, and various criticisms of the SRA framework. The authors illustrate this description with the case study of Beagle Bay, where they have been involved in negotiating an SRA with the Australian Government. They state that the SRA process sets up non-legal imperatives derived from individuals, groups and communities identifying and advancing their strategic aspirations outside of a funding regime or externally-driven generic planning mechanism. Their conclusion is that the legitimacy of the SRA process will ultimately be tested by the extent to which it contributes to enhanced quality of life for Indigenous Australians.

The conclusion of the authors is irrefutable. Addressing the levels of chronic disadvantage in areas of health, housing, education and employment experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and supporting distinct Indigenous rights and culture should be the ultimate goal of government policy. However, the ideology underpinning the government’s new arrangements in Indigenous affairs and evidence of their implementation to date raises serious questions about the legitimacy of the SRA process from the outset.

Mulan Shared Responsibility Agreement

The Mulan SRA was the first to gain widespread public attention in late 2004. While various Indigenous leaders criticised the Mulan SRA as a form of blackmail,[3] as racially discriminatory,[4] and as making an illogical connection between children’s hygiene and the more convenient provision of petrol,[5] Minister Vanstone responded: ‘A community gets what it wants – a petrol bowser ... [a]nd the kids get better health outcomes. Who could complain about that?’[6] The Prime Minister stated:

it is not just a question of money, because a lot more money has been put into Aboriginal health. It is a question of culture. It is a question of practice. It is a question of attitude. It is a question of community responsibility.[7]

The administrator of Mulan’s Aboriginal Corporation was quoted extensively in media reports as saying that the community itself came up with the idea, and approached the Government.[8]

There were other factors in this deal, however, that were less reported. The administrator also said that earlier requests for funding for a petrol bowser had come to nothing,[9] until he received advice from a senior Indigenous affairs bureaucrat that entering into an SRA committing to particular health measures might lead to such funding being more forthcoming.[10] Eighteen months before the SRA negotiations, the school in Mulan introduced a community-initiated twice-daily face-washing program, which had already led to the incidence of trachoma in children under 16-years-old dropping to 16 per cent.[11] However, the pre-program rates of trachoma were quoted by politicians and in the media as justification for the SRA. In April this year, Brendan Nelson, Minister for Education, Science and Training, who has signed a number of SRAs with Aboriginal communities, stated in reference to Mulan that

[s]ix months after the government enduring accusations of paternalism, the results are mind blowing. Trachoma which afflicted 70% of children is now undetectable. Fred Hollows would be impressed.[12]

This raises significant questions about whether the Federal Government’s policy approach, endorsed by state and territory governments who are often also a party to such SRAs, is genuinely about improving the health and welfare of Indigenous people through community-driven negotiations that respond to local priorities, or about imposing a top-down framework to prove an ideological point.

Emergence of the SRA framework

In fact, the Mulan agreement was not the first SRA. There have been a number of agreements negotiated as part of the Council of Australian Governments (‘COAG’) trials. The COAG trials aimed to improve the way governments interact with each other and with communities to deliver more effective responses to the needs of Indigenous Australians.[13] The Government has stated that its new mainstreaming arrangements were based on the lessons learned from the COAG trials - the importance of building capacity and effective governance in communities; the need for effective implementation of shared responsibility principles; the need to strike a balance between driving change and allowing change to happen at its own pace; and that sustainable change takes time. While the effective implementation of these principles could lead to significant change, and the trials are showing great promise as a way for governments to work more effectively together and with Indigenous communities, their success has yet to be properly evaluated. Also, it appears that some of the underlying principles of the COAG trials have been lost in the hasty adoption of the SRA framework as a way of working with all Indigenous communities.

Under the Government’s new arrangements, SRAs have emerged as a kind of quasi-contractual arrangement that imply two parties – Indigenous communities and governments – are entering into them by choice, with both parties having equal responsibility for and benefit from the agreement. However, in reality there is an enormous power imbalance embodied in such agreements. They make responsibilities for the provision of basic services and infrastructure – which governments have to all citizens – conditional on specified behavioural change in Indigenous communities. They shift perceptions of responsibility for existing problems and lack of progress to Indigenous communities themselves.

Evaluating and measuring change

While it is crucial to have practical, tangible outcomes to work towards and to measure change against in addressing problems in Indigenous communities, it is also important that more complex systemic responses to the causes of disadvantage and discrimination are not replaced with individualised, short-term, reactive agreements. While there has been no punitive outcome identified as following from a community not delivering on its obligations – other than governments considering not entering into further agreements with that community – nor are accountability mechanisms in place if governments do not live up to their commitments. If such agreements fail, it will almost certainly be those communities that are portrayed as somehow at fault.

One SRA signed recently that raises particular issues is one of a number negotiated between the Murdi Paaki Regional Council and the Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training and the NSW Department of Education and Training. This particular agreement incorporates a number of community working parties in the Murdi Paaki region; a COAG Trial site.[14] Under the SRA, the Federal Government will fund the installation of airconditioning units in up to 200 community-owned houses in the region and ‘arrange CDEP participants to assist in their fabrication, installation and maintenance. The NSW Government will administer the funds and give technical support.’[15] As part of the SRA, the Murdi Paaki Regional Housing Corporation have agreed to employ a coordinator to oversee the program, create tenancy agreements in some communities, and ‘renegotiate rents to cover maintenance costs.’[16] However, the agreement also sets out the longer term outcomes of the SRA:

It seems extraordinarily disproportionate and unrealistic that such systemic problems are linked to the provision of air conditioners. There is no clear indication in the Agreement or on the Government’s website regarding how such outcomes are to be measured, or the ramifications if Aboriginal people in the Murdi Paaki region are perceived to be not living up to their commitments. Without a comprehensive acknowledgment or evaluation of the causes of past policy failures in Indigenous affairs, the government’s new focus on SRAs has been introduced with little critique or detail about how such agreements will be negotiated, agreed upon and measured. Blaming Indigenous communities themselves for the problems in their communities - whatever the impact of past or current Government policies or experience of systemic disadvantage or discrimination– is not new. This appears to be an all too familiar and one-sided conversation.

Fair and equitable?

As is evident from Kristiansen and Cox’s article, SRAs may provide some Indigenous communities with the opportunity to negotiate for funding that they may not have been able to access under previous government arrangements. SRAs may genuinely have the support of communities who sign them; however, that does not necessarily make them fair or equitable. There remains an enormous power differential between governments and communities. Notions of ‘choice’ facing communities entering into such agreements are problematic given that Indigenous people can not otherwise access desperately needed government funding for services or infrastructure. It is not paternalistic to highlight the disparity of power and choice between governments and Indigenous communities.

The Government’s approach to negotiating SRAs means that those communities with the greatest capacity to negotiate will have the greatest opportunity to access the ‘discretionary’ pool of funding set aside. Some community representatives and administrators are particularly resourceful and experienced at negotiating with governments, and may be able to engage in the process to their community’s benefit without committing to unrealistic outcomes. However, communities should not be required to commit to behavioural change in order to access funding for infrastructure or services that other Australians take for granted. The SRA framework also prioritises discrete remote communities over urban communities, where the majority of Indigenous people live. Indigenous communities should not have to compete with each other to access a small pool of government funding.

As Kristiansen and Cox point out, SRAs may provide an opportunity for communities to ‘do a deal with government’ and meet the needs of people in ‘imaginative and resourceful ways’.[17] The Mulan example demonstrates that Indigenous people are initiating measures to address systemic health and other problems in their own communities. However, such measures should be supported and resourced to continue on the basis that they are demonstrated to work and empower communities, not on the basis of a requirement by governments that Indigenous people must bargain for what others consider basic entitlements.

Conclusion

The ideology underpinning the Government’s recent policy changes and evidence of their implementation to date have greater resonance with past government policies of assimilation than a ‘new conversation’ bringing real and practical outcomes as a result of working in partnership with Indigenous communities. The wide ranging changes to the administration of Indigenous affairs have been introduced with little evaluation of what has genuinely worked in the past in Indigenous policy, using measures that are relevant to Indigenous communities as well as governments. The outstanding issue of underspending in key areas of Indigenous health, education and housing remains. The Government rhetoric simply does not seem to be matched by reality in its ‘new conversation’ in Indigenous affairs.

Ruth McCausland is a Senior Research Fellow at the Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning, University of Technology, Sydney. Ruth is an advisor to the Ngiya Institute for Indigenous Law, Policy and Practice, and has a background in human rights and Indigenous policy. This analysis is drawn from a paper given at the Australian Social Policy Conference 2005 and an article that appeared in the New Matilda online journal on 9 March 2005.


[1] ABC Radio, ‘Vanstone Snubbed at Reconciliation Talks’, The World Today, 31 May 2005 <www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2005/s1381072.htm> at 1 August 2005.

[2] Kari M S Kristiansen and Kerrianne Cox, ‘Shared Responsibility Agreements: Legally or Morally Binding?’ [2005] IndigLawB 26; (2005) 6(11) Indigenous Law Bulletin 8.

[3] Aden Ridgeway quoted in Mark Coultan and Mark Metherell, ‘A New Deal for Indigenous Australia’, The Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney), 11 December 2004, 25.

[4] Mick Dodson quoted in Patricia Karvelas and Amanda Banks, ‘We are just Saving our Kids’, The Australian (Sydney), 10 December 2004, 1.

[5] Pat Dodson and Noel Pearson, ‘The Dangers of Mutual Obligation’, The Age (Melbourne), 15 December 2004, 17.

[6] Ibid.

[7] ‘Howard Hopes for a New Era of Indigenous Relations’, AAP, 10 December 2004.

[8] ABC Radio, ‘Mulan Deal a Return to Native Welfare Days: Dodson’, PM, 9 December 2004, <www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2004/s1261745.htm> at 1 August 2005.

[9] Steve Pennells, ‘Rules Unfair, Say Proud Mulan People’, The Age (Melbourne), 10 December 2004, 1.

[10] Amanda Banks and Paige Taylor, ‘Routine Routs Eye Disease’, The Australian (Sydney), 10 December 2004, 1.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Brendan Nelson, ’Agreements Proving Effective’ (Press Release, 13 April 2005), <www.brendannelson.com.au/news/default.asp?action=article&ID=325> at 1 August 2005.

[13] Council of Australian Governments, Communiqué, 5 April 2002 <www.coag.gov.au/meetings/050402/index.htm> at 1 August 2005.

[14] Australian Government, Shared Responsibility Agreements (2005) <www.indigenous.gov.au/sra/nsw/fact_sheets/nsw06.html> at 1 August 2005.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Kristiansen and Cox, above n 2, 10.


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