Pre-Christmas COAG meeting

Kevin Rudd has added indigenous affairs to this week’s first Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting since he was elected Prime Minister. COAG meets in Melbourne on Thursday. The meeting is shaping up to be a busy one with both the federal government and their state counterparts queuing up to set the agenda. Some have called this pre-Christmas event an example of “Kevin 24/7”.

The COAG meeting will also discuss issues of education, health, infrastructure, business deregulation, housing, water and climate change. But it was Monday's announcement that federal cabinet had decided to add indigenous affairs to that list that caused most media interest. The request to add it to the agenda came from Queensland Premier Anna Bligh following the worldwide media attention about the case of a 10-year-old girl who had sex with nine young males in the Cape York community of Aurukun. Bligh said she did not expect any "miracle cures" would come out of the meeting but she hoped to achieve progress on several matters.

COAG is the peak intergovernmental forum in Australia and meets on an adhoc basis. It comprises the Prime Minister, State Premiers, Territory Chief Ministers and the President of the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA). Established by Paul Keating in 1992, its role is to initiate, develop, and monitor nationally significant policy reforms which require cooperative action. Examples include water reform, counter-terrorism arrangements, and environmental regulation.

This is the first COAG meeting in the era of so-called “wall to wall” Labor administrations. COAG’s last meeting in April discussed a range of issues including water reform. The meeting was most notable for Victoria’s refusal http://www.thewest.com.au/aapstory.aspx?StoryName=372475 to sign up for the national water reform agenda which had at its heart the $10 billion plan to save the Murray-Darling Basin. But while this disagreement captured public attention, the meeting itself made progress on a range of unsexy issues including national rail safety legislation, trade measurement. occupational health and safety standards, and state variations in building codes and business numbers.

The various administrations have different ideas what is the top priority for this week’s meeting. Although Queensland Premier Anna Bligh was the one to put Aboriginal issues on the agenda, she said says Australia’s problematic health systems should take centre stage. "Number one on my agenda will be the health system…and it'll be followed very closely by water, infrastructure and more difficult social issues such as the problems confronting Indigenous communities," she said. "What I hope is that we see out of our first COAG with the new Prime Minister that we see the beginning of a new era in Commonwealth-state relations.”

But Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma says Indigenous affairs shuld be the top priority. He said it was important that it becomes a high priority agenda item to be discussed on an ongoing basis rather than just the standing agenda item. He said COAG should ask the Ministerial Council for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs to prepare a comprehensive report on the state of indigenous affairs. Without this high level attention, he said “it ultimately results in a lack of sustained attention to the issues”.

The fate of the River Murray is also likely to be a high-profile item for discussion. Victoria was the only state to oppose the $10 billion federal takeover of the Murray-Darling Basin under the Howard administration. South Australia wants to bring the issue up in these talks but the Rudd government is refusing to say if the matter will be resolved this time round.

Others, including The Age have suggested less pressing items (though perhaps more electorally sensitive) such as surgery waiting lists are top of the agenda. They quoted PM Rudd saying that Health Minister Nicola Roxon had hoped to have a plan ready to discuss quickly cut elective surgery waiting lists with her state and territory counterparts.

But Rudd knows it is the Aboriginal issue that is the most sensitive. He has ruled out forcing a Northern Territory-style intervention in Queensland until the effectiveness of the Howard government initiative can be measured. He will look at a Queensland Government initiative to make payments to Aboriginal communities conditional on good behaviour. "I'm looking forward to a very broad-ranging conversation with the premiers and chief ministers on what further actions can profitably, productively and co-operatively be undertaken,” he said. “Let's face it, there are huge challenges out there.” On that point, Rudd has few gainsayers.

Wadeye in the storm

The ALP’s spokesman on Indigenous affairs, Senator Chris Evans, has criticised a failure of governance to deliver services to an Aboriginal township. In a speech to the National Press Club, Senator Evans said the trial in Wadeye in the NT has cost three years' worth of wasted resources. The trial model of administration was an initiative of the Council of Australian Government (COAG) which has replaced ATSIC (Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Commission) which was abolished by the Howard government in 2005.

A senate estimates committee heard on 2 November that the COAG trial had exactly the opposite affect as was intended and where as previously Wadeye had to deal with 60 government agencies for funding, it now must deal with 90. The damning conclusion that the trial was failing was reached by Bill Gray who did an independent evaluation. His report has not yet been officially released but has been leaked to prominent politicians including Senator Evans and the Government Senator Bill Heffernan.

Wadeye, a town of 2,200 people, suffered major riots between rival gangs earlier this year and Senator Heffernan has blamed the riots on the facts that the youths of Wadeye were “bored shitless”. Heffernan concluded that the agreement between the three parties involved (the federal government, the NT government and the local Thamarrurr council) had failed to deliver the services it promised. Heffernan In April and May this year, the Wadeye community suffered through weeks of tension and violence in which 53 people were arrested and more police were stationed in the area. Heffernan believes more police are required but also points the finger at education.

The only school in Wadeye is a Catholic school, the Our Lady of the Sacred Heart. There are 600 primary school age children in Wadeye but only room for 300 at the school. There is no secondary school in the town at all. Average Attendance rate at school is under 50 % and only 13% of those aged 12 attend. Only 2% of the adult population have attained year 12. The school co-principal Tobias Ngambe met with Sydney Cardinal George Pell in the last few days to seek additional funding for the disadvantaged school. Pell does not have responsibility for the NT, which is under the jurisdiction of Darwin Bishop Ted Collins, but he gave the delegation a sympathetic hearing.

Wadeye is almost completely cut-off except by air during the wet season. The road into town is impassable for about six months of each year. The town is approximately 420 kilometres south-west of Darwin, at the mouth of the Fitzmaurice River, near the coast of the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf. It is the sixth largest town, by population, in the Northern Territory with the largest Aboriginal community. There are seven different language groupings of which the most common language is Murrin Patha, although this may be the second or third language of many residents. English is not widely spoken.

Wadeye (pronounced wad-air or wad-ay-yah) was home to an Aboriginal population for thousands of years prior to European settlement. Locals traded sea slugs with Macassans from the Sulawesi (Celebes) island of Indonesia. In 1935, the local government invited a Western Australian priest, Father Richard Docherty from the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, to establish a mission in Port Keats. In 1941 some nuns arrived to start the school. Although Father Docherty eventually retired to Perth, when he died in 1979 he was buried in Wadeye.

The area was governed by the Kardu Numida Council which collapsed in 1994. The new council was renamed Thamarrurr in 2003. The word described a regional forum that pre-dated European incursion whereby senior people of the clan groups in the region would meet periodically to preside over issues of ceremony, use of natural resources, economic transactions and minor law and justice matters. As well as the education crisis, the council has to deal with serious shortfalls in housing, employment and health. Aboriginal death rates in Wadeye are 4 times higher than for non-Aboriginals in the NT. The median age at death is between 45 and 54 years, compared to 78 years for non-Aboriginal people in Australia.