Introduction by Croakey: Communities in Far North Queensland are using inclusive decision-making processes to shift the power back into Indigenous hands through Joint Decision Making.
This involves panels of community members convening to provide on-the-ground input to government on funding decisions. This is a transition away from inflexible, business-as-usual supply-driven approaches, where funding decisions are made by far off government employees.
This approach offers important lessons for governments more widely, especially at a time when governments have a responsibility to step up for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, according to Professor Bronwyn Fredericks and Eden Bywater from the University of Queensland.
“Communities need bureaucrats to transition from grant managers and funders to enablers of Indigenous-led approaches,” they write in the article below.
Bronwyn Fredericks and Eden Bywater write:
A common theme in the debate around the Voice referendum, despite the evidence otherwise, was that the gap has already been closed and that Indigenous groups do not need the dollars that are funnelled into communities each year.
Whilst there has been some progress towards Closing the Gap around Australia, statistics demonstrate significant disparities in rural and remote communities, and in some urban and regional communities, key indicators, such as incarceration, detention, child protection, and suicide rates, have gotten worse.
Professor Megan Davis, the architect of the Uluru Statement from the Heart, is concerned about the future of Closing the Gap.
She explained that many Aboriginal people were … “making complaints about not being at the table, and really key policy decisions that are made about our communities, tells us that that the status quo isn’t working”.
Falling short
The Queensland Productivity Commission (QPC) Inquiry on Service Delivery in Remote and Discrete Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities was published in 2017 after the Queensland Productivity Commission was asked to examine how the resources devoted to service delivery in remote and discrete Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander can best meet the needs of communities.
After months of community consultation, the report found that government expenditures are not meeting expectations towards closing the gap across various outcomes.
One of the major findings of the QPC report was that communities did not have enough say over service delivery. The key problem, as they identified it, has to do with a lack of power-sharing.
Seven years later, the 2024 Review of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap reported the same.
The review report states: “The Commission heard a clear message from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people during the course of this review: persistent barriers to progressing the Agreement’s Priority Reforms are the lack of power-sharing needed for joint decision-making, and the failure of governments to acknowledge and act on the reality that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people know what is best for their communities.”
The review’s top recommendation, power-sharing, echoes longstanding calls from Indigenous-led groups and organisations to decentralise power and encourage Indigenous self-determination.
Although some governments have evaluated existing partnerships, including in Queensland, the evaluation process was not publicly available, nor was it evident that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander partners participated in the assessment.
Although the 2017 QPC report and 2024 Closing the Gap review demonstrate some political will and interest in making change, not enough recommendations have been implemented to enact meaningful reform.
Indigenous communities are often blamed for the lack of outcomes of funding and programs, which is frustrating for communities, considering they don’t have much say over where these funds go in the first place.
A community member from Cape York emphasised that communities want to be responsible for the outcomes of programs, but government needs to grant them the responsibility and leadership in the first place.
Towards Indigenous agency
We know that programs are more successful when communities are given a say about what services and service providers are funded.
Some communities have initiated their own processes to enhance approaches within their communities.
For instance, Yarrabah established the Yarrabah Leaders Forum in 2013 to unify strategies among local organisations and foster a more consultative approach. They now also collaborate to identify and pursue opportunities for their community.
Pama Futures in Cape York has also seen more successful outcomes when communities are given a say. They have sought to build more inclusive decision-making processes to shift the power back into Indigenous hands through Joint Decision Making.
Joint Decision Making involves panels of community members convening to provide on the ground input to government on funding decisions. This is a transition away from the business-as-usual supply-driven approach, where funding decisions are made by far off government employees.
Importantly, Joint Decision-Making panels draw in representation from a broad pool of people in the region. Panels are chosen by communities on a case-by-case basis – there is no fixed panel.
This requires more flexibility than what governments might typically expect or demand – but that is precisely the point. Communities need bureaucrats to transition from grant managers and funders to enablers of Indigenous-led approaches.
The excessive managerialism that Aboriginal community leaders, public servants and non-Aboriginal NGOs have all identified needs to be reduced in favour of community voices. This is the only way we will move beyond high-level policy support to tangible change on the ground.
The high-level policy support and intent is already there, but the trouble is getting government support to build Indigenous agency and on-the-ground action.
If Voice-like options are currently off the table, along with Treaty, Truth-Telling and Healing in Queensland, governments must pivot to a reform agenda.
They should start taking the suggestions and demands of Indigenous communities, along with the recommendations from multiple reports, the data, including their own data, and research far more seriously and act.
We should not continue to hear, and read, ‘we’re trying to do more’ from governments. We need action, which is why we ourselves have changed our way of doing business so that communities are now leading our decision making.
Author details
Professor Bronwyn Fredericks is Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous Engagement) and the Centre for Indigenous Futures, The University of Queensland. While working with the QPC, Professor Fredericks flew, and drove all over the Cape, Torres, western and central Qld, and Gulf country.
Eden Bywater is Research Officer in the Indigenous Engagement Division, The University of Queensland.
See Croakey’s archive of articles on the Voice and health
