Bennelong Society Conference 2003:
An Indigenous Future? Challenges and Opportunities

ATSIC and its Future

The Hon Phillip Ruddock MP

Thank you Senator Ferris, for your introduction.

Ladies and gentlemen, I greatly appreciate the opportunity of addressing this third Bennelong Society conference on 'An Indigenous Future? Challenges and Opportunities'.

Australia's Indigenous people and their culture have made and continue to make a unique contribution to this country. Their contribution together with the significant contributions of the early settlers and more recent migrants has helped build the nation we belong to today.

Firstly, I want to acknowledge the Ngunnawal people as the traditional owners of this land and pay my respects to their elders and traditions.

I have been asked to speak on the subject of 'ATSIC and its future'. You will appreciate that with the ATSIC Review now in full swing, I am going to be a little cautious because I don't want any comments I make to be misinterpreted as the Government having predetermined the outcome of this review. We certainly have not.

It is a review that is timely---indeed overdue---and I hope it will give us a sound basis from which to move forward and modernise the way the needs of Indigenous people are addressed by the Australian Government, and very importantly, Indigenous people themselves.

But before I come to ATSIC, there are a couple of general points I want to make about Indigenous affairs more generally in terms of recognising the very difficult circumstances in which many Indigenous people live.

In doing so I do not want to cast Indigenous people in the role of victims. There's been plenty enough of that over the past few decades. Indeed, we've seen it arise again in the past two weeks in Western Australia in relation to the tragic car crash death of an Indigenous boy.

I have said before and I will say it again, this disempowering rhetoric of victim-hood is unhelpful. In fact, it is downright destructive. It sends a message to Indigenous people, to governments, and to the broader community that the problems are insurmountable. They are not.

Now I don't want to convey the impression that I don't appreciate the issues that underlie the significant burden of social and economic disadvantage faced by many Indigenous Australians. Many Indigenous people still live in poverty, do not succeed at school, and experience high levels of unemployment and poor health. There is no valid argument or evidence to the contrary.

It is also true that Indigenous people in many rural and remote communities have problems accessing some of the basic amenities that we take for granted, things like water and power supply, housing, telecommunications, public transport, roads and sanitation.

And this reality underlines for me the need to take a step back and look at the way Indigenous-specific assistance is currently provided, and consider circumstances where it may be appropriate to target assistance more narrowly to those Indigenous individuals and families most in need.

We need to continue to think about the way Indigenous specific program resources are distributed---and the associated need to tap the mainstream. The present pattern of distribution of Indigenous specific funding is still substantially historical or per capita, rather than predominantly needs-based.

The Commonwealth Grants Commission found that 'the more remote ATSIC regions tend to be those with the greatest level of socio-economic disadvantage, and those in physically accessible areas have the least disadvantage'---recognising of course, that Indigenous people as a group are disadvantaged compared to the rest of the Australian population.

The grants commission also found that by and large existing funding patterns do not reflect the actual distribution of Indigenous need. Moreover, unlike their urban counterparts, Indigenous residents in remote Australia often do not have a mainstream provider option.

We therefore need to place greater reliance on mainstream services in urban and similar areas. Otherwise, by devoting Indigenous-specific resources to such locations, we both delay fixing the problem elsewhere and we effectively relieve the mainstream programs of some of their responsibility.

At the same time, we do not want to remove incentives for Indigenous people to provide for themselves. What we want to do is to assist them to create and seize opportunities as they arise.

It was this challenge in particular that led me last year to articulate a series of five propositions as to what the national policy priorities should be in Indigenous affairs.

I was accused by some Indigenous commentators of being assimilationist in my comments, which I was not. I was simply stating the reality that if Indigenous people are to survive and thrive in this country, they have to develop the skills necessary to do it---and that is their responsibility; of course, with the support of governments.

So the first of the priorities was the need to recognise that there is a partnership of shared responsibility between governments and Indigenous people. Governments and outsiders alone cannot effect the necessary changes.

• Indigenous Australians have rights like all other Australians---rights to education, health services and the like. Governments therefore have obligations to provide those services in a fair, reasonable and appropriate way.
• But rights and responsibilities are inseparable, and there is a view, well founded I believe, that the responsibility of the individual has not been given sufficient attention.

The second element was placing greater emphasis on meeting the needs of the individual and the individual family. That is, empowering individuals as members of families and communities rather than viewing the Indigenous world through the construct of community, however it might be defined. Further, this requires us to consider the functioning of Indigenous organisations to identify whether they are providing services that can demonstrate tangible outcomes.

Next was tackling substance abuse, and in particular alcohol, as a major health priority, indeed, as a absolute necessity in terms of breaking the shackles of family violence, welfare dependency and the like.

Fourth was pursuing English literacy and numeracy as the most basic foundation to securing the long-term economic self-sufficiency of Indigenous people.

And lastly, getting the mainstream service delivery system working for Indigenous people is a priority for the government and the subject of significant ongoing activity, as I've already discussed.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me turn now to the subject of ATSIC and its future---and begin by looking back to its creation as a body unique in the world; a hybrid that is both government agency and the elected voice of Australia's Indigenous peoples; both advocate and adviser.

The preamble to the ATSIC Act makes interesting reading, providing a snapshot of the motivation that lay behind ATSIC's creation, and if I can summarise, I would say it was to make restitution for the wrongs of the past and to give Indigenous people an effective voice within the Australian Government.

The ATSIC Act has four objects:

• to ensure maximum participation of Indigenous people in the formulation and implementation of government policies that affect them
• to promote the development of self-management and self-sufficiency among Indigenous people
• to further the economic, social and cultural development of Indigenous people, and
• to ensure coordination in the formulation and implementation of policies affecting Indigenous people by the Commonwealth, State, Territory and Local Governments, without detracting from the responsibilities of these other levels of government to provide services to their Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander constituents.

Backing these four objects is a comprehensive list of functions backed by the power to do all things necessary or convenient to be done for or in connection with the performance of its functions.

So briefly, what are those functions? Well, they include:

• to formulate and implement programs
• to monitor the effectiveness of programs conducted for Indigenous people by bodies other than the Commission
• to develop policy proposals to meet the needs and priorities of Indigenous people at the national, state, territory and regional levels
• to advise the Minister on Indigenous affairs and to advise him / her on the coordination of the activities of other Commonwealth bodies, and
• to protect Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural material and information; although these are not all of the Commission's functions.

I have recited these foundational facts about ATSIC because they are instructive benchmarks we can use to examine how the Commission has performed. They are also, in my view, a sound basis on which to engage and empower Indigenous people in a partnership aimed at making their lives better.

As you know, the Australian Government engaged a team of three highly capable people---Jackie Huggins, John Hannaford and Bob Collins---to undertake a review of ATSIC.

The Government initiated this review because more than a decade after ATSIC's establishment there was a growing feeling that it was not adequately addressing or achieving outcomes in relation to their core objectives.

The Review team found that:

• A common theme was ATSIC's lack of capacity to provide sound and timely policy advice and to influence governments at all levels. Stakeholders thought most governments now see ATSIC as a marginal player that is not actively pursuing policy development opportunities. They believe that the organisation does not have the requisite skills and understanding of government to drive a policy agenda.

There has also been evidence in recent years that policies and procedures followed by the administration---in such areas as ATSIC's Business Development Program and aspects of its grant management---have fallen short of best practice, with significant losses of funds from failed businesses and Indigenous organisations.

However, it is clear in my mind at this juncture, ATSIC will continue to exist in one form or another, and I am hopeful that it will be in a form that allows elected officials to exert more influence on the policy development and decision-making processes of not just the Australian government, but the States and Territories as well.

There is a diversity of issues that demand attention in relation to a reform of ATSIC. The challenge will be to negotiate a pathway through this complexity that leads us to a value-added, and value-adding, organisation.

I will not talk further about the Review as John Hannaford will do this after morning tea.

Ladies and gentlemen, the review of course has not been going on against a static background. Indeed, the past few months have been a time of significant change in the Indigenous affairs landscape.

On July 1st the new Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Services agency (ATSIS) came into existence---created out of the administrative arm of ATSIC.

While the creation of ATSIS is an interim measure pending the outcome of the ATSIC Review, and I want to emphasise this point very strongly, its creation was a necessary response to the public confidence free-fall in which ATSIC got itself caught in recent times.

The establishment of ATSIS has placed funding decision-making in relation to particular Indigenous communities, organisations and individuals at arm's length from the ATSIC elected arm.

Prior to this, there was a perception that ATSIC elected officials were making funding decisions that lacked transparency and may have involved patronage or personal gain.

The depth of worry about this issue is best captured by the ATSIC review team's finding that 'the governance of ATSIC, its Board and regional councils was raised particularly by Indigenous participants who exhibited a level of overwhelming concern'.

Now the elected arm has responsibility for determining policies and priorities for targeted funding, as a Board should, without the risks of conflicts of interest to which they were previously exposed.

These are aimed to ensure that funding is allocated on the basis of relative need, utilising competitive tendering and other outcomes-based approaches to service delivery, while also ensuring that organisations receiving public moneys are led by fit and proper persons. The CEO of ATSIC and ATSIS has also instigated concerted action to address administrative shortcomings, including: more intensive investigation and compliance activity; tightening and more rigorous application of acquittal procedures; comprehensive program reviews; and the like.

In support of these new arrangements, I have given quite detailed directions to the ATSIS chief executive officer in relation to delivering services to and implementing programs for Indigenous people.

Importantly, my directions require that ATSIS take all reasonable steps to ensure that it conforms to the policies and priorities set and promulgated by ATSIC.

I also want to make the point that the separation of powers instituted by the Government was not inevitable. It was an issue we had been canvassing with the Board for many months and the Board was on notice.

But when the crunch came and action was needed, the Board was willing only to give in-principle support with too many qualifications and no guarantees that it would be implemented satisfactorily.

To their credit, some of the commissioners and the majority of regional council chairs, including the new Acting Chairman, Lionel Quartermaine, understood the message and argued for separation of powers by choice, rather than force.

This group of leaders summarised the challenge---and the failure to act---in the following terms:

• This was an opportunity to take the initiative and control our own agenda. It was an opportunity to embrace and promote a broad vision of Indigenous governance and management, including separation of powers.

They went on to say that:

• To many Indigenous people and the wider community, the message will be that the Government has forced us to do what we should have done ourselves---and which we support in-principle anyway.