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

Social Justice Report 2006

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.