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| home | news lTranscript of the Prime MinisterThe Hon John Howard MP 15 April 2004 PRIME MINISTER: Ladies and gentlemen, Senator Vanstone and I have called this news conference to announce the results of Cabinet·s examination of the report into ATSIC and related matters which we commissioned last year, conducted by the former Senator Bob Collins, Jackie Huggins and the former New South Wales Attorney General John Hannaford. As a result of examination of that report and also a very extensive examination of indigenous affairs policy, we can announce that when Parliament resumes in May, we will introduce legislation to abolish ATSIC. ATSIC itself will be abolished with immediate effect from the passage of the legislation. The regional councils will be abolished by the 30th of June 2005. Our goals in relation to indigenous affairs are to improve the outcomes and opportunities and hopes of indigenous people in areas of health, education and employment. We believe very strongly that the experiment in separate representation, elected representation, for indigenous people has been a failure. We will not replace ATSIC with an alternative body. We will appoint a group of distinguished indigenous people to advise the Government on a purely advisory basis in relation to aboriginal affairs. Programmes will be mainstreamed, but arrangements will be established to ensure that there is a major policy role for the Minister for Indigenous Affairs. This will not result in less money for indigenous affairs. It will in fact result in more resources being focused on challenging areas of indigenous need. We will raise the whole issue of service delivery and coordination at a grassroots level at the next COAG meeting. The COAG trials in this area have been encouraging and have taught us a number of lessons, and I look forward to close cooperation with the states. This is an area where surely we can put aside political differences. The regional councils will have a role in the interim as we establish different mechanisms at a local level through consultation with communities and with local government and with state governments. But as part of the announcement and as part of the legislation, they will disappear by the 30th of June 2005. That of course does not in any way preclude processes whereby indigenous people themselves will in different areas, according to their own priorities, elect bodies and people to represent them, and the Government will in the course of consulting different sections of the community, be very keen to consult any bodies that may emerge from that process. We have had reservations, and I·ve expressed them on a number of occasions on behalf of the Government, about the operation of ATSIC. We wanted however to allow the Collins, Hannaford, Huggins· examination to go forward and to give ourselves appropriate and adequate time to examine it. But as a result of it, we·ve come to a very firm conclusion that ATSIC should be abolished and that it should not be replaced, and that programmes should be mainstreamed and that we should renew our commitment to the challenges of improving outcomes for indigenous people in so many of those key areas. JOURNALIST: Why do you think ATSIC failed? PRIME MINISTER: I think there are a combination of reasons for that. I don·t think there is a lot of purpose in going into it. I do believe that it has become too preoccupied with what might loosely be called symbolic issues and too little concern with delivering real outcomes for indigenous people. That is not to say there is not room for debate on symbolic issues. They are important. Different people have different views on them, and I respect those differences. But we are all surely agreed that our greatest obligation is to give indigenous people a greater opportunity to share in the wealth and success and the bounty of this country, and plainly the arrangements that have existed in the past do not deliver that. JOURNALIST: (inaudible) mainstreaming programmes. PRIME MINISTER: I mean, for example, a la health. Health has gone to the Health Department. It follows from that that something like the CDE programme would go to the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations. There are a whole list of functions, and what I will do after having made this announcement and instructions having been given for the preparation of the legislation, Senator Vanstone and I and others will sit down and go through all the details. But it·s important that we put in place, which we will, an arrangement whereby there is effective coordination between Ministers. There will be a ministerial task group which will be chaired by Senator Vanstone, which will bring together all of the Ministers that have an interest. There will be arrangements designed so that the policy leadership role of the Minister in this area can be fully developed and fully adhered to and respected, and there will be arrangements to ensure that the resources which are, as a result of this decision, transferred to line departments, that those resources are quarantined for future funding of indigenous programmes. We·re not going to have a situation where money is transferred say into the Department of Workplace Relations and it just goes into the general pool and is dissipated on general programmes. They will continue to be quarantined. And you will see when the Budget comes out that there will be no diminution of resources for indigenous affairs. JOURNALIST: Does this mean you·ll have a separate Minister for Aboriginal Affairs? PRIME MINISTER: Oh yes. JOURNALIST: And when will this take effect from? You·ve mentioned the regional councils 2005. PRIME MINISTER: Well ATSIC·s abolition will take effect as soon as the legislation has been passed. From an administrative point of view, we will be taking all action we can to anticipate that change. JOURNALIST: Do you see a role for Geoff Clark in this new advisory body and how will you·? PRIME MINISTER: I·m not going to talk about· JOURNALIST: · on it. PRIME MINISTER: I·m sorry. I interrupted you. I am sorry. JOURNALIST: Do you see a role for Geoff Clark in advising the Government in any capacity and how will you decide who will be on this advisory board? PRIME MINISTER: Well the Government will decide. Obviously the Minister will play the major role and we·ll talk about it and we·ll decide who·s on the body. So far as Mr Clark is concerned, I·m not going to say anything about Mr Clark given that there are certain legal matters under way. JOURNALIST: Presumably the move to dismiss him doesn·t matter now because you·re sacking them all. PRIME MINISTER: Look, I am not going to say anything about Mr Clark. ……… JOURNALIST: Just back on ATSIC Prime Minister, what assurances can you give indigenous Australians that the new structures you put in place will be democratic or as democratic as the existing structure in which they do get a direct vote in their elected representatives. It doesn·t appear based on the information we·ve had that they·ll scope, I·m talking about rank and file, if you like, will have scope to elect any of these new bodies. VANSTONE: Well, if you have a look at the report the Prime Minister referred to you·ll see a conclusion drawn that many people on the ground in indigenous communities felt an absolute disconnect between themselves and ATSIC. ATSIC was not serving them well, that·s the whole point, indigenous Australians haven·t been getting value for the money we·ve been spending and the whole purpose and priority of this Government in terms of indigenous affairs is to deliver better services on the ground. Now that·s more important to me and to members of the Government than arguing about who represents who and bureaucratic indigenous structures or bureaucratic government structures. We·ll be judged on whether we deliver better outcomes to indigenous Australians, whether they get better value. JOURNALIST: · more resources will be channelled into indigenous affairs? MINISTER VANSTONE: Well less resources are clearly going to be wasted and we·re not looking at any savings, so it follows that more resources will get through to the ground. JOURNALIST: Does that mean that all of the administration funds for ATSIC will be channelled into services? MINISTER VANSTONE: The money over, all the services will be transferred over. JOURNALIST: What about the administration funds of ATSIC? Will they be redirected into services? MINISTER VANSTONE: Well when you transfer services, some in the administration funds attached to those services have to go, I mean that·s· PRIME MINISTER: It still has to be delivered. MINISTER VANSTONE: It·s like the person, the staff follow the·function. JOURNALIST: You said there were no budgetary savings in the decision. MINISTER VANSTONE: We·re not looking for savings. JOURNALIST: · Aboriginal legal service and Commonwealth funding for Aboriginal legal services around Australia, mainstreaming programmes? PRIME MINISTER: Well that·s in the, as I understand there are some legal services that are administered through Ruddock·s department. MINISTER VANSTONE: There are some and there·s some done through ATSIS which are about to be, were about to be tendered out rather than given to individual bureaucratic organisations on the basis that they were indigenous, but rather given out on the basis of who could deliver better services. Now the task of that will then be transferred to the Attorney General·s department. JOURNALIST: How is this news going to be taken by the Aboriginal people given that ATSIC won·t be replaced by something equivalent? MINISTER VANSTONE: Well I think it·ll actually be taken very well because if you mean individual indigenous people on the ground because they·re the ones who feel that they haven·t been getting value for money. Now as to the indigenous politics of it, that·s another issue, people talking about who·s going to get a job, who·s going to have the opportunity to say this or that, that·s another issue, put indigenous politics aside. What I·m concerned about, what the Government·s concerned about, is delivering better services to indigenous Australians, giving them a better chance to share in our prosperity which the current arrangements simply have not done. Source: Prime Minister's Office Pearson condemns Howard's Indigenous planTRANSCRIPT
I spoke to Noel Pearson in Cairns a short time ago. Noel Pearson, will you be shedding any tears for ATSIC after the Prime Minister's announcement today? NOEL PEARSON, CAPE YORK PARTNERSHIPS: Maxine, this is one necessary step backwards but instead of plotting two new steps forward, the Prime Minister has indicated that, in fact, we're going to take two steps backwards and return to the old mainstreaming disaster in Aboriginal affairs. MAXINE MCKEW: Why do you say they are a step backwards? As you know, ATSIC by many has been seen as a dysfunctional body. NOEL PEARSON: The problem with ATSIC was that the election procedure that was provided for in the 1989 legislation did not attract the best Indigenous people to stand for office. So for the last 14 years, many good Indigenous people failed to stand as leaders in that structure and what we needed was a new solution that would immediately attract the best Indigenous talent to take up positions of responsibility in ATSIC and that didn't happen and what we needed now was a two steps forward that would articulate a way forward for Indigenous people to take responsibility for our problems. MAXINE McKEW: But instead what we're going to see, of course, is most of the programs, the Indigenous programs that ATSIC looked after, they will go back into the various Federal departments. The money is to be quarantined, we're told. What's wrong with that? What worries you about that? NOEL PEARSON: This is complete folly. We had mainstreaming long before ATSIC. ATSIC was started up in 1990. The 20 years prior to that, mainstreaming was the way in which services were delivered to Indigenous people and that produced failure. The main, the two biggest programs, in fact, that effect the livelihood of Indigenous people are health and education. Education has always been a mainstream Government responsibility. ATSIC has never had charge of education. And health, Indigenous health has been a mainstream department of the health responsibility since the Keating government removed health from ATSIC in 1995. So, those two grievous examples, health and education, have been mainstream responsibilities for the last 10 years. MAXINE McKEW: So what are your worries now about the consequences of this decision? NOEL PEARSON: Well, there's no positive program that's been articulated other than this vague prejudice against special Indigenous structures. I think the Prime Minister is completely wrong when he assumes that mainstreaming is the solution. We are going to return to, in fact, a big government, service delivery, welfare delivery paradigm in Indigenous affairs and at least in Cape York Peninsula, that's what we've been trying to get away from. We've been trying to get away from the notion that government has all of the answers, that government responsibility is the key to Indigenous uplift. The key to Indigenous uplift is welfare reform. It's Aboriginal people taking responsibility for their own affairs and it's about intolerance of substance abuse. All of these messages have struck a lot of resonance with the Prime Minister and other members of his Cabinet. MAXINE McKEW: Yet the point that the Prime Minister has made today is there is to be no further elected body to consider these things you are talking about but an advisory body appointed by Government? NOEL PEARSON: We've had many kitchen cabinets in Indigenous affairs over the last 30 years and the idea that we're going to make some progress with an advisory body, I think, is entirely incorrect. What we need is, in fact, Indigenous leaders, competent, talented people, to take up responsibility for these problems. Not be shunted sideways and made into token advisers to the government. You know, when I talked about passive welfare four years ago, I did not just mean that money for nothing was the passive welfare problem, I also identified that Government services were part of the problem. That is, where Government took complete responsibility for trying to uplift Indigenous people, Government was going to get nowhere. They were contributing to a welfare problem. What is needed is for Aboriginal people to take charge of their own problems. MAXINE McKEW: Just a final point, if I could, Noel Pearson. On a day like this, do you feel that ATSIC's last days, the collapse of ATSIC, is always going to be associated as well, unfortunately, with Geoff Clark's failed leadership? NOEL PEARSON: Well, I think that there's a need for us to reflect on why it is that we have failed to recruit good Indigenous people. You know, such as John Ah Kit. We have to ask ourselves questions like that. Why did not John Ah Kit ever become a national leader of ATSIC and what would we needed to have done to recruited people with talent, with administrative competence, with policy capacity and with real leadership. Why didn't we attract them into the leadership? And what do we need to do in the future in order for people such as that to take responsibility for these problems? MAXINE McKEW: For that, Noel Pearson, thank you very much indeed. NOEL PEARSON: Thank you, Maxine. Statement on ATSIC
16 April 2004 - The announcement by the federal Government that it intends to abolish the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) scapegoats it for the failures of successive Australian governments. The government’s announcement reveal no plans for addressing the crisis in Indigenous communities and will further disempower Indigenous peoples, while further reducing the level of scrutiny of the government’s performance on Indigenous issues from the eyes of the nation The government’s announcement amounts to a further entrenchment of its failing ‘practical reconciliation’ approach. It seeks to ensure that the government will only have to deal with Indigenous peoples on its own terms and without any reference to the aspirations and goals of Indigenous peoples. The government has stated that its goal is ‘to improve the outcomes and opportunities and hopes of Indigenous peoples in areas of health, education and employment’ and that ‘the experiment in separate representation… for indigenous people has been a failure’. It is disingenuous to draw a connection between these issues. There are two critical problems with the government’s reasoning. First, as the ATSIC Review Team state in their final report, ‘ATSIC was intended to be a supplementary funding body and was never intended, or funded, to be the provider of all programs and services to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people… The hopes pinned on the organisation - that it could and would effect instant change were not realistic’. The vast majority of ATSIC’s funding has been quarantined for particular programme responsibilities, with limited ability to address a range of key issues facing Indigenous peoples. ATSIC is now being blamed for lack of progress by government in addressing issues for which it has no programme responsibility. Health, for example, has been a mainstream government responsibility since 1995. During that time we have seen chronic under-funding of Indigenous health services, estimated to total approximately $350 million per year, and a worsening in key indicators of health status and only marginal improvements in others. Mainstream approaches to health service delivery have not been working for the last decade. The story is the same with education and employment programmes – both are mainstream government responsibilities (with the exception of the CDEP scheme which ATSIC and now ATSIS runs). There has been very little progress in reducing the inequality gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in these areas over the past five years. The critical problem facing Indigenous people is the lack of a rigorous monitoring framework to hold the government accountable for its commitments and for mainstream service delivery. It is the failure of government accountability that ATSIC is being made a scapegoat for. The second critical problem is that the government has shown an intolerance to advice or analysis that is critical of their own approach. The government has progressively distanced itself from the policy advice provided by ATSIC and acted contrary to their proposals for addressing Indigenous issues. This failure dates back to the rejection by the government in 1996 of the Social Justice Package proposal by ATSIC. They have similarly failed to act in accordance with the advice of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation and have failed to respond, yet alone implement, the findings and recommendations of the annual Social Justice Reports to Parliament by the Social Justice Commissioner. This does not reveal a failure of representative Indigenous structures. It reveals a deep antipathy on the part of the government towards engaging with Indigenous peoples and acknowledging the legitimacy of the aspirations and goals expressed by Indigenous peoples. Replacing ATSIC with an appointed board of advisors will entrench this problem further, by ensuring that the government only has to talk to select Indigenous people when it chooses to and only on issues that it wishes to engage. The latest Social Justice Report to the federal Parliament identifies the current situation faced by Indigenous peoples as a crisis one. It reveals a government approach that is failing. And it identifies an agenda for change to turn this situation around. This agenda identifies increased Indigenous participation and control as a central feature of improved government service delivery and to move Indigenous people from dependency on government services. It also identifies the need to reform ATSIC to ensure that it is capable of interacting with governments while also being representative of and accountable back to Indigenous communities and people. Abolishing ATSIC and ensuring that Indigenous people have no place at the negotiating table is not the answer. It will simply silence Indigenous people at the national level while the deeply entrenched crisis in Indigenous communities continues unabated. Source:Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
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15 April, 2004 - MAXINE McKEW: As the former head of the Cape York Land Council and a leading voice for reform in Indigenous affairs, Noel Pearson has in recent years been a strong critic of centralised bureaucratic control.
Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
