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Social Justice Report 2006: Information Sheet 2: The challenge of equal access to mainstream services

Social Justice Report 2006

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  • Information Sheet 2:
    The challenge of equal access to mainstream services

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    Background

    New arrangements for the administration of Indigenous
    affairs (introduced as of 1 July 2004) transferred responsibility for the
    administration of Indigenous specific programs to mainstream government
    departments. The new arrangements aim to remove, or at least reduce, the
    barriers that prevent Indigenous peoples from accessing existing mainstream
    services on an equitable basis. This objective has been called ‘harnessing
    the mainstream’.



    Indigenous
    disadvantage and human rights


    International
    human rights standards provide a guide for government service delivery aimed at
    reducing the significant disadvantage faced by Indigenous peoples in Australia.
    Service delivery should occur within a deliberate, concrete and targeted strategy that includes specific, time-bound and verifiable benchmarks and
    indicators
    to ensure that people’s enjoyment of their human rights
    improves over time.



    In Australia,
    international human rights standards require an integrated and purposeful
    approach to the improvement in Indigenous living standards which should include:

    • Improved access to mainstream services;
    • Indigenous specific programs to respond to particular
      circumstances; and
    • flexibility and sensibility to the cultural and social
      norms and aspirations of Indigenous
      peoples.

    The challenge of
    improving Indigenous access to mainstream services

    Currently, most expenditure by Australian governments
    for the provision of services to Indigenous peoples is made through mainstream
    services generally available to all citizens. Indigenous Australians are not
    accessing these mainstream services on an equitable
    basis.

    There is a tendency to substitute rather than to complement and supplement programs within portfolios – so that the burden may be left to the Indigenous-specific
    programs, and the mainstream programs step back from the
    task.



    There is a particular challenge to
    improve mainstream access in urban locations. This is particularly given that
    the federal Government has made remote Indigenous communities its priority for
    Indigenous-specific funding under the new arrangements.



    It is clear that the government is yet to
    bed down its policy direction for Indigenous affairs. This is not only
    destabilising and confusing for Indigenous Australians, it is diverting valuable
    resources from producing changes on the ground that will improve the daily lives
    of Indigenous peoples.

    Progress in ‘harnessing the mainstream’
    under the new arrangements

    The new arrangements for Indigenous affairs have a
    number of key elements that could contribute, or do contribute more effectively
    to ‘harnessing the mainstream’ and delivering improved access to
    services for Indigenous Australians.

    The Social Justice Report has the following
    findings about the current approach being adopted:

    • Regionally focussed service delivery: Indigenous
      Coordination Centres (ICCs) are designed to be the focal point of the new
      relationship that government is forging with Indigenous communities. The
      potential of these is not being fully met at present. There is a disconnect
      between ICCs and the communities that they are meant to be serving.
    • Solution brokers: Solution brokers are staff
      from different government departments, usually located in ICCs or state
      offices/departments. The role of a solution broker is potentially
      valuable, however there are concerns that the recruitment practices for these
      positions do not sufficiently recognise that the ability to communicate
      effectively with Indigenous people is an essential skill and an integral
      component of all merit-based selection processes.
    • Shared Responsibility Agreements (SRAs): Despite
      being allocated only a relatively small share of total Indigenous program
      funding, SRAs have come to embody the government’s commitment to
      partnership, local agreement-making and mutual obligation. A year further
      into the new arrangements and it appears that the majority of SRA funding
      continues to come from Indigenous specific expenditure and not mainstream
      programs – they are yet to become an effective tool to ‘harness the
      mainstream’.
    • Regional planning processes and agreements: There is an intention to move towards ‘comprehensive’ or
      ‘holistic’ SRAs - this seems sensible and timely. Along with
      Regional Partnership Agreements (RPAs) these more comprehensive agreements could
      be used to contribute to a regional needs-analysis approach in order to map
      mainstream and Indigenous-specific services together. The challenge is to
      balance the directness and immediacy of a bottom-up family or community-based
      approach, through small one or two-issue SRAs, with the efficiencies and
      effectiveness of coordinated planning and service delivery on a wider community
      or regional basis.
    • Issues concerning engagement with Indigenous
      communities:
      There is a compelling need to support authentic and credible
      regional representative structures and processes for Indigenous communities that
      allows them to: engage with governments; be consulted; and where appropriate,
      provide informed consent. The absence of such structures remains the fundamental
      flaw of the new arrangements.
    • Monitoring and evaluation mechanisms –
      ensuring accountability for the new arrangements:
      There is a danger that an
      ‘accountability gap’ could develop between the rhetoric of
      improved outcomes through mainstreaming on a ‘whole-of-government’
      basis, and the reality of actual outcomes for Indigenous peoples and
      communities on the ground. There is a need for rigorous monitoring of the
      implementation of the new arrangements to ensure government accountability.
      There have been some positive steps forward in this regard. Overall the range of
      information on accessing mainstream government services is patchy at best. There
      appears to be no overarching framework of benchmarks and indicators specific to
      issues of improving access to mainstream services. This amounts to a major
      evaluation gap in the new arrangements for the administration of Indigenous
      affairs given the centrality of this objective in reducing Indigenous
      disadvantage.