Observations on policy for services to remote communities

Our research is generating some insights and observations on policy for services to remote communities. They are summarised here:

The role of services

Services have a purpose. Analysing service effectiveness is most useful when it begins with the outcomes that the service is designed to achieve. This is where theory and practice in sustainable livelihoods has been beneficial to the DKCRC and its core partners. In order to achieve a service mix that results in long-term livelihood outcomes for remote communities, discourse needs to begin with a thorough understanding of the outcomes. These outcomes can include, greater safety and security, better management of natural resources, and/or more young people living and working locally. Services then become part of the overall development process for particular communities as well as clusters or regions.

Conceptual thinking about services

Policy development in other sectors in Australia, such as welfare reform, has moved forwards in recent years embracing the concepts of rights and responsibilities and ‘conditional transfer’ models for welfare payments. However, there has been little or no progress in the policy on services, although work at some COAG trial sites did link conditional transfers to services. The subject remains firmly stuck in the mode of emphasising rights and entitlements.

By focusing mainly on better ways for services to be delivered, or in other words: on the supply-side, policy often understates the role of remote settlements’ residents as consumers who express a need and an aggregated demand for a particular set of services. This is a key point of strategic departure. If we shift our thinking in this direction, then the government’s role can be envisaged as a facilitator of certain services within an economy that has a development trajectory of its own.

Investment in services

Service reform could make a difference if it focused on specific investments that support long-term community aims, particularly economic ones. There is also a growing recognition, internationally, that embedding enterprise skills early in a child’s learning leads to a stronger entrepreneurial society over time. Transport and communication services also play a part. Policy needs to move beyond seeing services as another way of solving Aboriginal peoples’ problems in the bush, to seeing them more as a key factor in remote region development.

The research of DKCRC so far has demonstrated that better service outcomes are achieved when the policy environment is stable, when the quality of services are resilient to changes of personnel (i.e. when services are system-dependent rather than person-dependent) and a long-term view of local development exists. Workforce development needs to be adapted to meet the unique needs of services in remote settlements, ensuring that access to services can rely on better systems into which skilled people fit, rather than the other way around.

The specifics of governance

The importance of building better capacity in governance is undeniable, but it needs to translate to specifics in policy and practice. A critical concern is how Aboriginal people can best influence the character of services from planning through to delivery and use. In short, how do they become active participants and long-term planners of the future of their communities and regions. In the absence of functioning markets, the movement of people into larger settlements, (should that happen) could become just another way of delivering services within a welfare mindset while potentially losing the dynamism that some homeland and outstation communities have achieved.

In this context, governance is the process of effectively allocating resources for particular and competing purposes. Service planning then distinguishes between the levels and scales at which different services are best delivered, including those in which people have little interest beyond access and reliability (e.g. telephones). The critical issue is how people can best influence the services that enable them to achieve the outcomes they are seeking, whether economic, social, cultural or environmental. Ultimately, these may be long-term processes involving staged development of services and diversifying economic activity beyond the standard options of mining and pastoral employment.

Culture and service planning

People take a cultural perspective on services. They have a cultural understanding of where their home physically begins and where it ends, and what the priority uses of their house should be. Although the influence of culture should not be overstated either, shifting the policy discourse towards the outcomes end of services equation provides a better understanding of the service mix that is most demand-responsive, the best mode of access, and the most effective configuration of services.  

Ultimately, improving access to services requires an understanding of the complexities of culture and its role in social and economic development. This includes understanding what people already do for themselves, which is often undervalued. A DKCRC study of the economy of Engawala, NT (shortly to be published) sheds some light on this subject.

Community engagement

This is about much more than interpretation across languages. At a fundamental level, it is about service providers engaging with Aboriginal people, instead of just communicating. Engagement means understanding how people mediate the use of services through their own culture. Insisting on service standards may be counter-productive in this environment. For example, FAHCSIA has undertaken work on risk management frameworks for water supply in the bush with the aim of improving service outcomes. There are many effective techniques for participatory planning, some have been used successfully by partners of the DKCRC.

Improved functioning of communities

A long-term plan for the settlement is a foundation for a community to function effectively. At a fundamental level, this includes the community’s commitment to the changes that they wish to see and how services support these aims.

This point leads us towards notions of settlement viability, a subject that has recently come to the surface again in policy discourse. Of course, this is not an issue for Aboriginal people alone; there are a number of ‘unviable’ towns in the WA Wheatbelt, for example. Our experience to date in research at Ali Curung and Djarra, for instance, is that investment in services needs to be aimed at achieving viability, rather than patching up problems. 

The creation of fully resourced small towns with a range of basic educational and social services comparable with those in mainstream regional communities is a questionable aim as it implies duplication of the service delivery that we see in near-coastal areas.  We need to look at different solutions that change the perspective of viability to one that is more suited to the demands of small remote settlements.