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Government's whitewash of black affairs

20 January 2005 - The Howard government’s brand new black bureaucracy - launched in June last year amid attempts to abolish ATSIC - is managed almost exclusively by white bureaucrats, NIT inquiries have revealed.

The revelations are a slap in the face to more than 20 years of convention in Aboriginal Affairs - increasingly, Indigenous workers have staffed and run Indigenous bureaucracies.

But under the Howard government, black affairs have become decidedly more ‘white’.

In its heyday, 65 percent of ATSIC’s senior managers were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders.

But today, the Office of Indigenous Policy Coordination (OIPC) - the Howard government’s replacement body for ATSIC - sports just one black senior manager.

In mid-2002, 17 of the 29 senior bureaucrats listed within the ATSIC administrative structure were Indigenous.

NIT is also aware of at least five additional senior Indigenous managers who don’t appear on the 2002 chart (they had either been seconded to other departments or were redesignated into other positions) taking the figure to at least 22 black senior managers, from a possible 34.

But in November 2004, the corresponding chart for the Office of Indigenous Policy Coordination (OIPC) - ATSIC’s replacement body - showed 20 senior positions, with only one filled by an Indigenous worker.

NIT understands the original structure of the OIPC did not contain any Indigenous staff - the sole black senior manager (Executive Coordinator Kerrie Tim) was going to be moved to another government department, but was retained by the OIPC at the last minute.

The latest revelations follow damaging figures released by the Australian Public Service Commissioner, Andrew Podger late last year which revealed the number of Indigenous people employed across the entire federal public service had dived to record lows.

Mr Podger, in his annual State of the Service Report, described the drop as a “major concern”.

It came despite a promise in February 2003 by the head of the public service - Cabinet secretary Dr Peter Shergold - that he would oversee an increase in the participation of Indigenous employees in the APS.

Instead, during Dr Shergold’s two-year reign the total number of Indigenous employees - in both real and percentage terms - has dropped to their lowest levels in at least 10 years.

In Dr Shergold’s first full year as cabinet secretary, the number of Indigenous ‘separations’ from the APS leapt to 4.9, compared to 3.1 in 2001-02 (meaning that during 2004, one in every 20 workers who left the APS were black, despite black workers making up only around one in 50 workers).

Dr Shergold has also overseen more than a halving of the number of Indigenous trainees entering the APS, with the intake figure the lowest in 10 years.

But even worse for Dr Shergold and the Howard government is that the figures for 2003-04 don’t take into account the abolition of ATSIC, which occurred after the compilation of the State of the Service report.

The true levels of Indigenous separation from the APS as they sit today are in fact much worse, but won’t be revealed until the 2004-05 State of the Service Report is released in November.

Dr Shergold did not respond to requests from NIT for comment for this story, or for the original story we published in December.

The Office of Indigenous Policy Coordination, however, did respond.

A spokesperson for the OIPC prefaced the provision of staffing figures to NIT with the following comment:

“We aren’t able to provide detailed data because all personnel staff are tied up ensuring a smooth transition from the ATSIS personnel system to the DIMIA pay system, to provide certainty that all staff will be paid at the time of transfer.

“However we offer the following comments stressing that the figures given are approximate.

1. OIPC is not a successor to ATSIC/ATSIS. [In an April, 2004 federal cabinet briefing paper, government ministers were told on numerous occasions that OIPC would replace ATSIC/ATSIS - Ed.]

2. All staff from ATSIC/ATSIS were transferred with their functions to mainstream departments.

3. As more Indigenous staff were employed in the ATSIC/ATSIS network [the regional offices - Ed] on program business they therefore moved to agencies with major program responsibilities - ie. not OIPC (DIMIA) which is mainly a policy advising and coordinating agency.

4. OIPC has less than 500 paid staff of whom over a third are Indigenous. This compares with about 45 percent in ATSIC/ATSIS and an overall average in the APS of around 3 percent.

5. In regards to Senior Executive Staff (SES level) some seven Indigenous staff belong to OIPC-DIMIA as their home department, but some are on various forms of leave or are working elsewhere.

6. With regard to the Indigenous Coordination Centres, seven of the 30 managers are Indigenous.

7. The number of [Indigenous] Executive Level staff is estimated to be between 30 and 40.

NIT understands that there is around three Indigenous SES staff members actively working within OIPC (not “some seven” as OIPC claims).

By comparison, the Department of Education, Science and Training, for example, employs two Indigenous SES staff members and 22 EL staff.

OIPC’s staffing claims are expected to be tested by the federal Opposition in parliament next month, during the Senate estimates process.

The questions we asked OIPC:

1. What is the total number of ongoing and non-ongoing staff within the OIPC today? (ie. How many staff, equivalent to full-time positions does OIPC have?)

2. What was the total number of ongoing and non-ongoing staff within ATSIC/ATSIS on June 30, 2004?

3. Of this number, what percentage of these staff were Indigenous?

4. How many Indigenous staff now currently work in the OIPC?

5. How many Indigenous staff within OIPC are graded at Executive Level (EL)?

6. How many Indigenous staff within OIPC are graded at Senior Executive Staff (SES) level?

7. Of the 30 Indigenous Co-ordination Centres, how many of those centres have, as their most senior manager, an Indigenous person? (ie. how many black ICC managers does OIPC have?)

Source:National Indigenous Times

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