The Inadequacy of Service Delivery to Remote Communities: A Thirty Year Perspective on the Power of Language Will Sanders, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research Research School of Social Sciences College of Arts and Social Sciences

Outline  Introduction – The Service Delivery Project 1981  Alternative Languages for Government/ Aboriginal Community Relationships  Access  Internal Decolonisation and Political Economy  Governance  Competing Principles (Replacement for Rounded Debate Seminar in February)

Service Delivery Project 1981 – Gently critical conceptual approach of Loveday  Services based on ‘need’ sound so simple & deliverable  But administration ‘goes wrong’, often due to ‘other people’  Could be ‘got right’ – ‘optimistic’, ‘managerial’ literature/ view  More realist, political view – No service or administrative structure so simple, no clientele so accepting or individualised  Always differences of perspective between parts of delivery systems – both within government and outside it (NGOs)  Clients see themselves as ‘constituents’ of government, even citizens, or as social groups wanting ‘recognition’ of identity, culture or history  Apparent simplicity is product of the language – ‘instrumental’

Language of ‘Access to Services: Some social and political complications’  Access to ‘services’, but also to ‘ resources’  To ‘opportunities’ for ‘development’, with various adjectives,  Moves away a bit from the idea/ language of the meeting ‘needs’ - particularly externally defined needs  Wholistic view – impatient with administrative divisions  Bottom-up view, more than top-down  More accepting of political dimension – differences of perspective by group  More sceptical of administrative neutrality and instrumentality  Loveday ‘principle’ that in each place would be a ‘local community power struggle’ in which ‘access to’ or ‘control over’ services would be among the ‘most important prizes’ (Gerritsen papers in particular) ‘Aboriginalisation’ not just ‘someone with a black skin to do white things’ Perspectives of those in different parts of administrative structures also important and powerful, meaning both reasoned and authoritative Remoteness in eye of beholder (following Penny)

Other Contributions to Project – 3 or 4 types  Stanley on banking and royalty payments  Young on Aboriginal community stores – also Bagshaw  McLeod on courts  Wade- Marshall on women’s views – alongside Gerritsen  Self on social security – also Peterson ‘economic watershed’  Snowdon, W on education in a ‘colonial’ context  Walker on water – technology, standards, nitrates and 4 types of need  Snowdon, G on ‘new federalism’ in AA and regionalism  Heatley on long history of regional admin in Kimberley – but limits  Hamilton on alcohol in Mt Isa – long-term strategies to lessen consumption  Official government perspectives – named and anonymous – open to criticism, but defending reasonableness of existing & planned approaches

Own work ( rest of 1980s)– Access to  Social Security payments – 1959/1966 on Most significant recurrent income flows In a highly, individualised rule-bound bureaucratic system Adaptations? - Split cheques, ALOs, delivery via intermediaries – who? Alternatives? - CDEP instead of UB Careers?  Housing – 1968 on Development of Commonwealth Indigenous Housing Sector Program competition for funds (mainly capital) between Indigenous Community Housing and State/ Territory Public Housing Definitions of ‘need’ – comparative big backlog measures vs alternative developmental agendas ( mainly remote areas) Mainly about Administrative Rationalities and Bureaucratic Politics

Larger Sociological, More Structural Work  Internal Decolonisation Idea – Post ww11 value shift reaching settler majority societies Geographic Remote/ Sparsely Settled Area Dimension – more significant Indigenous demographic presence Still very tricky to work out what decolonisation could be when national independence not an option More Analogy to Stimulate Imaginative, Creative Thinking  Gerritsen - political economy of northern Australia also  Style of work is very important, but also has its limits  Come back to less structural languages, allowing agency

Governance language added to service delivery – late 1990s early 2000s  Understand dispersal, to different organisations and levels of government  Understand tendency towards localism in Indigenous organisations  Understand local government with strong Indigenous presence  Understand push for regionalism, but caution/ temper push  Think of Indigenous orgs as ‘order’ of Australian govt (2001) Building on Rowse’s language of Indigenous sector Covering local, regional and national Indigenous orgs Blown away by demise of ATSIC as main sponsor/ funder Generational Revolution in IA – failure and major change analysis from 2004 on, building from 2000 in retrospect

Competing Principles Language since 2006  Resisting the Good/ Bad, Evidence/ Ideology language  Evidence of what’s good not obvious, needs construction and interpretation  Ideology not bad, a matter of perspective, a way of making sense, a framework, virtually inevitable & necessary, even good!  2009 CAEPR DP 289, Australian Journal of Social Issues 2010  Three competing principles in Indigenous affairs  Always being balanced  But also being moved between over time  A dispersed intergovernmental, inter-societal policy arena

Fig 1: Indigenous Affairs Policy Space: Competing Principles and Dominant Debates PRINCIPLES Socioeconomic --- Opportunity --- Legal Equality Guardianship Choice DOMINANT DEBATES 1930s 1960s 1970s- 1990s 2000s + Difference & Diversity -

Fig 2: Indigenous Affairs Policy Space: Competing Principles and Dominant Debates 1930s-1960s Equality of Opportunity Autonomy/Choice + Group Difference & Diversity - Guardianship Socioeconomic Equality Individual Legal Equality 1930s 1960s DOMINANT DEBATES

Fig 3: Indigenous Affairs Policy Space: Competing Principles and Dominant Debates 1970s-1990s Equality of Opportunity Autonomy/Choice + Group Difference & Diversity - Guardianship Socioeconomic Equality Individual Legal Equality 1960s 1970s- 1990s DOMINANT DEBATES

Fig 4: Indigenous Affairs Policy Space: Competing Principles and Dominant Debates 2000s Equality of Opportunity Autonomy/Choice + Group Difference & Diversity - Guardianship Socioeconomic Equality Individual Legal Equality 2000s DOMINANT DEBATES

Fig 5: Indigenous Affairs Policy Space: A Rounded Debate Equality of Opportunity Autonomy/Choice + Group Difference & Diversity - Guardianship Socioeconomic Equality Individual Legal Equality

Conclusion: The Inadequacy Service Delivery  A powerful, instrumental language which must be engaged with  But which ultimately represents relationships between governments and communities of people in terms that are far too simple  Other languages are required to draw out the more complex, political social and economic dimensions of those relationships  No one single language recommended – several tried  Just a general awareness of the ‘power of language’ to construct, constitute and represent social and political reality in quite different ways  Timely – as recent tendency to revert to ‘remote service delivery’ as the dominant, neutral, instrumental language