When Labor came to power in 2007, one possible consolation for those who opposed the Northern Territory Intervention, and indeed those who were sceptical of its efficacy, was the prospect that under a new government, its effects would be rigorously evaluated. Such hopes might also have been vain ones, and so it appears to have been.
In a very useful piece at The Drum, Michael Brull evaluates the evaluations:
In October, Eva Cox wrote an extensive study of the intervention for the Journal of Indigenous Policy, focusing in particular on the regime of imposed income management. Documenting at length the intervention’s failures, and the objections and complaints by carefully informed civil society groups, she notes that the government has consistently ignored evidence of the intervention’s failures. Cox advised further that “Despite government claims managements of ‘evidence’ for the benefits of the new program, its own evaluation proposal makes it clear the evidence is not there.”
However, on November 10, the Government began crowing once again about the “evidence” it had for the intervention. They claimed that an “independent” evaluation found that “Aboriginal people living in remote communities in the Northern Territory feel safer and receive better levels of government services than they did four years ago”. Unsurprisingly, The Australian gave the intervention and Jenny Macklin uncritical support.
Brull observes:
The Evaluation report is sprinkled with facts unfavourable to the intervention, which are routinely minimised. It also often quietly admits that it has no real evidence to draw the desired conclusions.
He concludes:
… it is worth noting that all of this is in a report that supposedly presents the evidence for the intervention. It is worth noting again that this is all in a report that overwhelmingly ignores critics of the intervention, and even objective data that is not flattering to the intervention, like the Closing the Gap reports. These reports go to great lengths to obscure the failures of government policies to address the shocking conditions in Indigenous communities. This makes them something more than white lies, or propaganda.
They are outright betrayals of the most poverty stricken, desperately needy and marginalised people in Australia.
There’s always going to be a dynamic where evaluators go looking for successful indicators in public policy, particularly where there is strong political will behind that policy. That dynamic needs to be resisted, but it seems it has not been in the methodologically sloppy and ideologically laden evaluations of the Intervention.
Evidence for policy also needs to take into account its ethical dimension.
On that, Frank Brennan, someone with a very distinguished record in Indigenous human rights activism, repays reading.
In his Gerald Ward lecture, Father Brennan said:
…I want to insist that there is no substitute for relationships and respect for human dignity when designing welfare measures for the assistance of the poor and the excluded of our society, especially indigenous Australians in remote communities. The historic Apology by our national parliament provided the basis for that ongoing building of the relationship. But it ended last Monday with ministerial calls for the racially targeted docking of welfare payments for parents whose children are not regularly attending school on remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory
Great post Kim. Any reasonably “objective” analysis of policy implementation in all things indigenous is shrouded by a veil of inexperience IMHO.
FWIW I have often found it odd that many student teachers (& students) I have come across over the years are keen to go and “help” “people” in Africa. All well and good of course, however they seem either blissfully ignorant or belligerently in denial of the opportunity to help people closer to home. A little bit of direct experience goes a long way in informing the broader public on things like workable education and health needs of those most disadvantaged communities in our very midst.
Perhaps more student teacher institutions of all kinds might start a compulsorily and ongoing “let’s help people” program into the NT? Where the results of this bad policy could be seen and directly experienced. Where lifetime links and support networks could be fostered. Certainly in my former institution, student teacher placements onto Palm Island completely shifted those students perceptions of a community that until then, they had only ever heard bad things about about from the MSM. Many of them are still working at it, not all on PI, but in other places across the country. I say all this because, sadly, it looks like this policy and other income management schemes are going to be around for a while
whoops, that’s “compulsory” and ongoing…..
Eric, I came across a program run by several universities which actually sent students to Africa to “help” because it was thought that it might accustom them to working with Indigenous people. It’s not hard to see the problems this evinces on both the university and student sides of the fence!
Yes, vain hopes…Entirely unsurprising though. It seems to me that there are two critical parts to this problem. The first, as you point out, is ignoring the evidence that does exist that would provide guidance as what to do- what parts of the overall “intervention” package to keep, what to tweak and what to get rid of. The second part is more complex, and yet is possibly more important, that of working out what things we are not looking at, and not measuring that are critical to creating “success” (defined in terms of all (not just some) of the stakeholders). Of course to do this you need to do the hard and time consuming work of sitting down and talking to people to work out what is important and why. Even then you are still only at the start of a policy development process that might actually work. My experience is that people within the government, whether that be at the NT or the Federal government level, are not encouraged to do this, nor do they even understand what is really at stake. There appears to be to be a persistent belief that the problems in terms of outcomes are to do with recalcitrant blackfellas, not the policies (if that can be believed)!
Thanks for the kind words
Yes Mark, quite. And one doesn’t want to be churlish about going off to Africa either, it broadens the mind and all that. But with such severe conditions just up the road one would think that a bit of forced acclimation might go a long way. Just taking tales of that direct experience back into the suburban classroom…….
And Eric, that is before you even consider that most Africans are as different to Aboriginal Australians as you or I (or Mark or Kim for that matter). Perhaps the only people in Africa who might be considered to be similar (in terms of worldview) would be the !Kung, and even then the differences would be startling!
Eric, just re-reading that first statement of yours I think that we need to be very cautious about instituting compulsory programs designed to sensitise people to what is going on here in the NT. For one thing there is no guarantee that there is an objective reality that will be apprehended by all people in the same way (I am sure there are many GBMs who go back to their places of origin with their prejudices confirmed). However secondly and more importantly going and working in Indigenous communities needs to be thought of as a privilege rather than a right. People who go need to be invited (again requiring a process that involves sitting down and talking with the relevant people locally), and they need to understand what they are going there to do in terms of what people want. I think that compulsory programs undercut the notion of respectful engagement that is the key to ensuring mutually beneficial outcomes
It is one of the truly terrible failings of this Government that it continues the punitive racist measures that the “intervention” espouse. That macklin continues to spruik this racist regime under the guise of “assistance” is so deeply offensive and to that end we now apparently encourage young Australians to travel abroad to help people who are disadvantaged when it is more than bloody obvious that they would be far better used to help the disadvantaged of this country.
I’m so bloody tired of the bloody do gooders of this country who refuse to look at the disadvantage being suffered by indigenous communities but would rather prance around in a foreign country for the kudos they receive.
I have seen a lot of good and dedicated people work for years trying to improve the lives of Aborigines. Also seen quite a few young idealists come to Aboriginal communities and give up over time and go and do something where they think they can actually achieve something.
There are parts of the world where people are desperate for education and other services that can be provided by volunteers from places like Australia.
However, remote Aboriginal communities don’t fit this pattern. By and large the people in those communities are ambivalent about what we have to offer. So kids don’t go to school. Those in the right relationship to push kids to go to school don’t push the kids because they see little benefit in the education we think is so important and so on. There may be some lip service but the commitment is not there.
Their position on education is not completely illogical. The education only really makes sense if the child is going to grow up and leave the community. For a culture that still puts enormous value on family preparing the kids to leave is not going to be attractive.
I have had nothing to do with Aboriginal communities since intervention so it is hard to comment. However, my impression is that there are a lot of women who are strong supporters because it means they are sure of at least some money for food and they feel safer. Equally there are others who are opposed because they don’t like being pushed around or have lost power they used to have.
To me there is a dilemma. Do we tolerate the pre-intervention thinking that set different standards for the treatment of Aboriginal children than non-Aborigines? (Think school attendance and the point at which children were taken into care.) Or do we tolerate Aborigines being pushed around in a way that we would never consider for non-Aborigines – even if they were behaving in much the same way as the Aborigines that intervention was targeted at?
To my mind the basis of any successful policy must involve convincing Aborigines that they, and only they have the power to change things. In terms of education I think educating the parents has to be part of the process. Educating the parents so that they are better equiped to deal with us foreigners. Educating them so that they are changing with their children instead of being set up to lose them.
This is partly why I can’t see myself ever voting for the ALP again. The poorest & most vulnerable people in society are these days just pawns in Labor’s game to out-right the Libs as they role out welfare quarantining across the country.
Jenny Macklin’s press release at the time:
http://www.alp.org.au/federal-government/news/tony-abbott-announces-copycat-policy-on-welfare-re/
Just as a counterpoint to retronymical@8, there are many good people who are working in both policy development and service delivery in Government – some people have invested their lives in this work. But they have to work to Governments with a short (electoral) attention span, which doesn’t lend itself to the sort of in depth research, policy analysis and solutions we are talking about here. And the media only ever wants to see results.
retro @ 8 “I think that we need to be very cautious about instituting compulsory programs designed to sensitise people to what is going on here in the NT” and “People who go need to be invited”. I agree completely. I was not suggesting that any scheme would be carried out without respect and due care and attention. Student teachers have to do a lot that is compulsory already, so the actual process of consultation you describe and the subjective nature of the perceptions you point out are, for me, the whole point in a way…..although I am also shooting at the moon and well aware of it….
This vexed debate must constantly be brought back to first principles. The intervention policies breach fundamental rights of Aboriginal citizens. This is a very grave error for Australian democracy and is liable to have long standing repercussions.
However, in 2008 Marcia Langton had this to say about the intervention:
AS @ 8 Yes one of the troubles with working for government is their electoral cycles and the fact that they need to do things that get them elected. At the federal level this means that a large part of Indigenous policy is determined by how it will go down in the marginal seats of the Eastern seaboard (call me cynical!). At the territory level it is all about the northern suburbs of Darwin. Of course there are many good people trying to do the right things- I know many of them myself- however they are constrained by the systems they work within. What is more is that the differences in how people conceive “doing good work together” often mitigates against government (or other) people being able to be effective, even if their hearts are in the right place
Eric @13 I did not mean it to sound as if you were proposing to ride roughshod over the wishes of the communities in which people might do some of their training and I am glad we agree. As you suggest the process of working these things out becomes the archetype of what comes next…
Thought it was a bad idea for indiginous persons originally. Stll a bad idea for any welfare recepients. Tptb wil be wanting tattooes next. Marginalising people does’t/won’t work
So, to recap, Eva Cox, Michael Brull (who is “involved in Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney”; certainly sounds like a completely objective judge with no pre-existing strong views that might get in the way of evidence-based thinking) and others say certain things. Jenny Macklin, Bess Price and some others say some different things. A post on LP, although rabbiting about “evidence-based policy” in its introduction, comes down on one side of the argument – guess which? – because it deems the other “methodologically sloppy and ideologically laden”, without actually producing any of this mythological independent evidence-base for the choice at all.
Quelle surprise.
I am not going to take sides, though Brull’s background and his sneering put-down of Bess Price are not encouraging. Indeed, I doubt that in such a complex and gut-wrenching situation “sides” are relevant; much of the problem, as with this post, is that sides are taken where they should not be, on the basis essentially of ideology. Both sides of politics too often to a greater or lesser degree make indigenous policy – and more to the point, indigenous communities – hostage to political tribalism.
Having said that, the greater offender imho is the modern-day left, focusing its views through an inner city prism increasingly at odds with, well, practically any other perspective.
But what gets most up my nose is the attempt to suggest that the concern is actually “evidence-based policy”. Most people on LP, and certainly on this thread, seem to define “evidence-based” as no more and no less than a narrative that confirms their pre-existing views
Wozza,
I find it highly offensive that unless you agree with kicking the shit out of the poorest & most vulnerable in society you are somehow looking through an “inner city prism” when I think it’s quite obvious the “inner city prism” types are the ones driving garbage like this.
Professional politicians that don’t know shit from clay and need focus groups to tell them what side of the bed to get out of. Jenny Macklin and the morally & ethically bankrupt ALP should be ashamed of themselves.
Here’s a taste of what things are like for Aboriginal people under welfare quarantining, sorry “income management”:
http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/09/20/business-as-usual-under-labor%e2%80%99s-new-income-management/
Eva Cox asks “Whatever happened to evidence-based policy making?”
http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/02/10/whatever-happened-to-evidence-based-policy-making/
Pat Anderson co-author of the ‘Little Children Are Sacred Report’
“Pat Anderson: intervention neither well-intentioned nor well-evidenced”
http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/05/05/pat-anderson-intervention-neither-well-intentioned-nor-well-evidenced/
“The intervention is dead, long live the intervention”
by Jon Altman, a professor at ANU’s Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research
Have a read Wozza:
Also:
http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/11/01/the-intervention-is-dead-long-live-the-intervention/
On a positive note, this article was in the Weekend Australian and shows how private enterprise and government can bring about change:
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/education/the-saving-grace-of-a-good-education/story-fn59nlz9-1226199492325
I was talking with someone who works for Oxfam over the weekend, and when I assumed that Oxfam Australia works primarily with indigenous Australians she initially thought I was being sarcastic.
One of the problems with addressing some of these issues is that a lot of the incentives are non-obvious and some are just insane, making it hard for outsiders to understand why some behaviour happens. The “kids who go to school leave” issue is a good example (and one I’ve seen in real life). The problem is that there are few jobs and even fewer careers in those communities.
There’s also history, a lot of people in those communities have been through cycles of nonsense like “it’s not enough to live on your land, you have to live in an authentically aboriginal way as judged by whitey or your right to live there will be taken away”. Plus the irritation of short-term policies that change every couple of years, often in incompatible ways. So the survivors tend to be cautious about making significant changes until they see evidence that the new demands have staying power.
Ten years ago the WA policy that teachers were moved on every two years was still being dismantled. That policy was designed to prevent white people building up ties to the community they worked in. It was effective. But then you ask why the community doesn’t feel engaged with the school… the answer is that there are government policies designed to stop that happening. Fixing those contradictions would go a long way towards stopping the problems.
Jaques de Molay
You give four links in your effort to show me “evidence” for taking a particular stance on the intervention, and all to Crikey? For heaven’s sake, it is the most partisan, agenda-driven source of – well, I’m not sure what the appropriate collective noun for Crikey’s product is; let’s for now just call it “words” – in Australia, at least of sources with pretensions of influence. I am tempted just to say “QED” and end; anyone using “Crikey” and “evidence-based” in the same sentence has shot his argument in both feet right there.
But I did read them. By far the most impressive is Eva Cox’s. But even it largely consists of a (well-argued) account of the absence of proper evidence: the open questions and difficulties in answering them, and rejection (not so well argued) of the relevance of evidence from similar overseas programs. But even if one gives her the last point, she at best shoots down some of the allegations made by the government about current evidence for the intervention’s efficacy. Absence of evidence for A is not evidence for B.
How then does Brull come up with his “the mountain of evidence of the failures of the NT intervention defies summary here”? Answer: he confuses, deliberately or because he is simply muddle-headed about the difference, evidence with what he prefers to believe.
Look, I meant what I said about not taking sides on this particular issue I certainly don’t dispute that there is considerable evidence, if not specifically from the intervention, that if this government can fuck up designing and delivering practically any program, it probably will. My problem is with the Brullian waving around of “evidence-based” as no more than a sort of mantra de jour which he hopes will provide cover for enunciating his pre-conceived views, and the similar thinking that too often prevails round here.
Whats happen to the mind, in what twisted world does dis empowering people help then gain anything, if a culture is based on respect and all they see is under handedness who with half a brain would get involved, still trying to treat them like cattle, if they didnt enforce a blanket band (because all are the same) and employed local people we might see some.changes, to many on the gravytrain, un-employment would sky rocket if they stopped aboriginal funding and if wouldnt effect aboriginals at all, racist always bring up bess price, someone who benefits with power in her community from giving support, she is not subject to any draconian measures and is used by the media and racist, find someone other then a government advisour payed for their imput, two people always come up but they are payed overone hundred thousand dollar a year for support, aboriginals call them coconuts, I wouldnt waist my time and energy ethier trying to please a government and a people who only want aboriginals at the bottom of society, I cant fault the way aboriginals have played the cards their dealt. Australia need to deal with historical issue that impact the fabric of our nation before aboriginal issue START to heal, we are on step 10 when we havnt taken step 1, but how embarresing for our nation, history will shame us all, find me an aboriginal not payed by government that supports it, only bess price and that government advisor from cape york, sick of two voces speaking for 50,000 people
The Sam above is not me.
Sorry sam, I will change it to sp
How easy to say sorry