Beyond Closing the Gap and Neoliberal Models of Success and Well-being

1 Beyond Closing the Gap and Neoliberal Models of Success and Well-being Dr Deirdre Howard-Wagner Department of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Sydney Keywords: Indigenous social policy, neoliberalism, Closing the Gap Abstract The paper reflects on the theoretical and empirical considerations underpinning a study that will provide an in-depth place-based study of an Aboriginal community s success in developing a range of services, infrastructure and programs to overcome Aboriginal disadvantage and promote well-being. The theoretical and empirical aims of the study are to advance knowledge about the relationship between Aboriginal societies, selfgovernance and well-being, talking back to policy on Aboriginal service delivery and programs across a range of Council of Australian Governments (COAG) priority building blocks identified for Closing the Gap between Aboriginal and non-aboriginal Australians. The present paper takes the first step in this project giving consideration to the meaning of Aboriginal success and Aboriginal well-being in contemporary federal Indigenous policy contexts. Introduction The propensity for neoliberal policy metrics to be applied to Aboriginal communities and organisations has been evident since 1996 when the Howard government came into power and has underpinned the federal governance of Aboriginal affairs in Australia since. Arguably too, over the last 16 years, as Finlayson (2007: 2) notes that, There is too much emphasis on failure in the reporting of Indigenous circumstances. Finlayson (2007: 2) goes on to note that: This has three significant adverse effects: continuous reference to failure masks important successes; reiteration of failure is dispiriting to Aboriginal people; and, the persistent reporting of failure reinforces stereotypical views of Indigenous people in the general population. Alongside this, there has been an increasing obsession with practical outcomes and success stories at the federal level. Like the associated rhetoric, contemporary federal Aboriginal laws and policies, like many of their historical predecessors, are imposing a neoliberal orthodoxy with an associated set of policy prescriptions on say notions of Aboriginal success and Aboriginal well-being. Examples of such policies include the Northern Territory National Emergency Response, recently reconfigured and now known as Stronger Futures, and Closing the Gap. The federal government s policy of Closing the Gap is aimed at facilitating success in changing statistical indicators across seven building blocks of overcoming disadvantage

2 and promoting well-being, for example. This neoliberal vision leaves limited scope for the acknowledgement or support by governments of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples aspirations for governance and economic development, which often differs from the mainstream, and is actually constraining in many cases Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people s interests in developing their customary economy (Hunt and Smith 2006: x). The purpose of the paper is to engage in a critique of and problematise core neoliberal concepts embedded within contemporary federal Aboriginal policy discourse. Its aim is to demonstrate how, as other scholars have commented, success [and well-being] can mean quite different things to Indigenous and non-indigenous people (Finlayson 2007: 2). In providing this critique, the intent is to show how in the context of contemporary federal Aboriginal policy, such as Stronger Futures and Closing the Gap, success and well-being operate to render such policies as colonising apparatuses of a dominant assimilating whiteness, rather than empowering Aboriginal people and promoting collective agency. In making this statement, this does not mean that Aboriginal agency does not exist. Despite a thirty-year history of failed federal policy and a far longer history of failed state policies, there are many stories of Aboriginal organisations and communities in Australia having achieved significant inroads in areas from addressing disadvantage through to reviving Aboriginal languages. In keeping with my body of work to date, the complementary dimensions of a governmentality approach, Foucault s toolkit, settler colonial studies, and critical whiteness studies shape the theoretical analysis provided. I have found the governmentality literature particularly useful in considering neoliberalism in the context of the federal governance of Aboriginal affairs in Australia (Brown 2003, Rodgers 2006, Jessop 2007 & Lemke 2007). Also, while not discussed in the paper, the adopted method involved a sociological discourse analysis of federal policy speeches and documents. It is the analysis of this data that led me to make the claims made here. Neo-liberalism, Closing the Gap and the logic of development The challenge ahead of us is significant. Addressing the failures of the past requires taking stock of the true extent of inequalities between Indigenous and non-indigenous Australia. These gaps are most visible in the key areas of life expectancy, infant and child mortality, early childhood education, literacy and numeracy skills, school completion rates, and employment outcomes (Australian Federal Government, 2009). Aboriginal empowerment is a national challenge for Australia. This is about enabling Aboriginal peoples and their community s to build their own economic, social and cultural capacity while demonstrating a political commitment to and social ethic of Aboriginal empowerment. Arguably though, in the present policy climate, this is increasingly difficult to achieve. This can in large part be attributed to the current climate in federal Aboriginal affairs and the dominant social inclusion policy paradigm

3 underpinning federal Aboriginal policy. While contemporary federal Aboriginal policy may appear to mainstream Australians as innocuous, well intentioned and to be an Aboriginal-centred policy, two current Australian federal policies the Northern Territory National Emergency Response recently rebadged as Stronger Futures, and commonly referred to as the Northern Territory Intervention, and the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) National Indigenous Reform Agreement Closing the Gap, commonly referred to as Closing the Gap are proving to be just as problematic as their predecessors. That is, broad in their definition and wide in their application, as all-encompassing policies, policies of social inclusion such as Closing the Gap and the Northern Territory Intervention apply a topdown agenda to addressing Aboriginal disadvantage and promoting Aboriginal wellbeing. In reflecting on the policies of social inclusion, Martin (2005: 125) points out that an all encompassing policy framework is inappropriate if it does not recognise the diversity of worldviews, aspirations and circumstances of Aboriginal people across Australia. For this very reason, Closing the Gap and the Northern Territory Intervention can be considered problematic. Secondly, and in a related way, Closing the Gap and the Northern Territory Intervention remain disconnected from Aboriginal knowledge systems and what Grieves (2009: 1) refers to as the wholistic philosophical basis of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture. Closing the Gap is pre-occupied with metrics in terms of overcoming statistical differences between Indigenous and non-indigenous Australians across a number of indicators and in terms of full participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the mainstream economy. For example, Closing the Gap involves the adoption of a comprehensive and integrated approach across seven strategic platforms or what the document refers to as Building Blocks. The seven Building Blocks are: early childhood, schooling, health, economic participation, healthy homes, safe communities and governance and leadership. Closing the Gap also expounds the belief that: An Improvement in the area of one Building Block is heavily reliant on improvements made on other Building Blocks. The broader policies and objectives of the strategy are the same for all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander societies and urban, regional and remote communities. Closing the Gap in urban and regional Aboriginal communities focuses on: Boosting Indigenous demand for and take-up of services, strengthening Indigenous leadership and family and community well-being, individual capacity and responsibility for decision-making about their own lives, together with changes to health, education, housing, early childhood development and employment (Closing the Gap 2009: B-60). Parallels can easily be drawn between the assimilating white apparatuses of welfarism established in the Northern Territory in the 1950s under the Northern Territory Welfare Ordinance 1953 and contemporary federal Aboriginal affairs policy. One of the key similarities between past social welfare policy approaches and present social inclusion policy approaches is that their starting point is deficit and disadvantage, and they remain

4 preoccupied with statistical indicators measuring everything from Aboriginal poverty to school attendance and completion. Secondly, they involve governments and bureaucrats prescribing initiatives, programs and services for Aboriginal people and communities to overcome disadvantage and promote well-being and economic development. While a comparison between social welfarism and social inclusion are worthy of further consideration, this paper focuses on the neoliberal values implicit in Aboriginal policy, specifically the terminology of success and well-being. Success and well-being have very different meanings from a neoliberal standpoint and Aboriginal standpoints (Greer & Patel 2000: 307). For example, in its submission to the Senate Committee Inquiry into the Stronger Futures legislation, the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council, for example, defined well-being as the following: Central to the well-being of Indigenous people in remote communities is the active adherence to law and culture, and that by providing the means to those who live on country to maintain social obligation and responsibilities, independent child rearing practices, sorry and ceremonial business, and a myriad of complex social responsibilities which were traditionally controlled through a range of measured physical and non-physical forms which are based in Aboriginal practices indeed practices which stem from eastern traditions. Conversely, neo-liberal conceptualisations of well-being, as Harvey (2005: 2) notes, posit that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterised by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade. More specifically, human well-being as defined in neoliberal terms refers to a basic needs approach and utility maximisation (Fukuda-Parr 2003: 304). As Fukuda-Parr (2003: 304) notes: The basic needs approach places people at the center of development, but the emphasis on specifying basic needs in terms of supplying services and commodities points to a commodities basis rather than a capabilities basis in defining human well-being. In the context of the Northern Territory Intervention, it is the so-called liberating of Aboriginal freedoms in the context of liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and maximisation of individual utility in the context of a basic needs approach, for example, that is having dire effect on Aboriginal communities based in townships, town camps and homelands on Aboriginal land under the Northern Territory Intervention. Aboriginal people are being alienated from Aboriginal communal tenure in the neoliberal pursuit of creating efficiently functioning market based economic and social systems established, for example, via leasehold agreements and encouraging individual home ownership and individual entrepreneurial initiatives (see Howard-Wagner 2010a & b, 2011 and 2012). In contemporary federal policy contexts, Aboriginal success has neoliberal connotations. Success is associated with Aboriginal entrepreneurship, corporate governance and Aboriginal economic development in ways that reduces statistical differences between Aboriginal and non-aboriginal Australians across a range of statistical indicators. The

5 focus on corporate governance in terms of transparency, etc., is extremely limited. The risk of going down this path is that federal governments and bureaucrats will become preoccupied with developing criteria and indicators for Aboriginal program, organisational and community success, so that other Aboriginal programs, organisations and communities can replicate these approaches. In both policy contexts, we see an increasing obsession with practical outcomes and success stories and, in countering failure, market-based solutions being applied to social problems (Boven, Hart and Peters 2001: 7). Success, for example, is measured in terms of closing the gap in statistical differences between Indigenous and non-indigenous Australians across seven building blocks or a range of metrics and focuses on improving metrical indicators in terms of those differences. Furthermore, the argument presented here is that the measuring of failure and success according to statistical outcomes, as well as policy projections aimed at closing statistical differences, is commensurate with a neoliberal agenda. Here success and failure operate as a binary neoliberal logic in the measurement of the Aboriginal population. This warrants further consideration being given to the disjuncture between notions of success and well-being in federal policy initiatives, programs and service delivery and Aboriginal peoples expectations and understandings of success and well-being. One pertinent question that needs to be asked here is Why do governments keep reinventing the wheel?. If we return to the very report that the Northern Territory Intervention was premised on Little Children Are Sacred, then the message that was constantly repeated throughout that report was empowerment. Why do Closing the Gap and Stronger Futures stand as a binary opposite to Aboriginal empowerment, rather than empowerment being central to closing the gap? Aboriginal empowerment also underpinned recommendations in the Report of the Inquiry in Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, the Bringing Them Home Report and various other reports generated from inquiries since the 1980s. This too ignores the body of literature on practice stories in the United States, Canada and New Zealand, such as the work by Stephen Cornell and Joseph Kalt. The Indigenous Community Governance Project conducted by Janet Hunt and Di Smith explores the nature of Aboriginal community governance in diverse context and locations across Australia (Hunt & Smith 2006). What the work being conducted in the United States and Australia demonstrates is that indigenous governance is a central feature of Aboriginal community and organisational success stories in Australia and native Indian community and organisational success stories in the United States. Hunt and Smith (2006: x) note that governance capacity is a fundamental factor in generating sustained economic development and social outcomes. The sharing of indigenous stories and knowledge is proving to be a powerful way of developing new practices for indigenous economic, social and cultural development in the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia (Cornell 2006).

6 When given consideration in federal Aboriginal policy contexts, the Harvard Project and the Indigenous Governance Project get turned into prescriptive models and programs on governance and transparency training. They get translated into prescriptive neoliberal models of good corporate governance, rather than strengthening Aboriginal social and cultural capital and empowering Aboriginal organisations and communities to reinvigorate or develop their own governance structures. What occurs by developing such prescriptive policy approaches is that models are inscribed on Aboriginal communities and organisations. Governments aim for a particular type of organisation or community via say Northern Territory National Emergency Response or Closing the Gap and simply addressing particular statistical outcomes and targets, as well as imposing particular models of governance on Aboriginal organisations and communities, like ATSIC and Aboriginal land councils such as the Northern Territory Land Councils. So, why is it that governments are not focusing on the histories and practice stories of positive Aboriginal initiatives, organisations and communities and looking at these in terms of considering how to overcome Aboriginal disadvantage and promote Aboriginal well-being? If we focus on entrepreneurship do we loose sight of those Aboriginal initiatives that are not about economics or social metrics but about cultural issues, such as language programs, which are central to Aboriginal well-being, as indicated in the above quote? Furthermore, federal policy is disconnected from the growing body of Australian and international scholarship both theoretical and empirical on indigenous capacity building and the broader arguments about development (e.g. de Soto 2000; Pearson 2005; Hunt 2005 & 2007; Henry 2007; Langton 2007; Behrendt 2007 & 2010; Sen 2008). The literature, for example, is contributing limited knowledge to our understandings about developing indigenous peoples capacity to address disadvantage and promote well-being. How developing indigenous peoples capacity is related to developing economic and social capital in indigenous communities from an indigenous standpoint. As well as, how relationship between governments and indigenous communities evolve in the process of developing indigenous capacity from an indigenous standpoint. More importantly, rather than empowering Aboriginal people, neoliberal notions of success and well-being operate as mechanisms of disempowerment, dispossession and subjectivisation and thus work to undermine Aboriginal agency and further the practices of colonisation in contemporary context (Gibson 2000: 291; Neu 2000: 268). One basic way neo-liberal notions of success and well-being operate as mechanisms of disempowerment, for example, is by virtue of the fact that they limit both Aboriginal peoples access to their own symbolic, social, cultural, economic and political capital, as well as their ability to identify and address their own problems in accordance with their own epistemological and ontological notions of success and well-being. In delivering services in accordance with its own neoliberal notions of success and well-being, the benevolent state remains in a position where it determines the parametres of Aboriginal community development, organisational operations and service delivery. In adopting this neoliberal approach, the measurement of success and well-being is limited to the individual Aboriginal citizen s ability to attain an education, have good health, own their own home and obtain employment that propels them into the role of consumer within the market economy. As I note elsewhere, the privileging of neoliberal beliefs, practices and

7 epistemologies perpetuates deep and longstanding settler colonial practices of superiority, intervention, control and management over Aboriginal people (Howard-Wagner and Kelly 2011). The colonising effects of neoliberal beliefs and practices need to be exposed. While Aboriginal people resist the imposition of such models, speaking back to and presenting their own definitions of well-being and success as evidenced in the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council submission to the Parliamentary Inquiry into the Stronger Futures legislation, this is not solely an Aboriginal problem. Sociologists have an imperative to critique and speak back to Closing the Gap and the Northern Territory Intervention, as well as the federal governance of Aboriginal affairs more generally. This can be part of our endeavours to engage in a critical analysis of neoliberal governmentality; whiteness, power relations, Aboriginal agency and resistance; settler colonialism; and/or, evidenced-based policy approaches. Conclusion Arguably then, the federal government s reference to concepts such as success and wellbeing have an underlying neoliberal meaning and intent as a liberating individual entrepreneurial agenda. Therefore, a more fruitful exercise would be to try to understand the neoliberal meaning of success and well-being and how measuring success and wellbeing according to neo-liberal indicators re-constitute Aboriginal service delivery in Australia. As well as, the social and cultural implications of such a significant re-shaping of measurements of success and well-being. It is not about placing responsibility for success and well-being on Aboriginal individuals or the community but rather the redefinition of success and well-being in accordance with the precepts of neo-liberalism that is problematic. Aboriginal wellbeing is advanced by liberating the individual Aboriginal citizen s entrepreneurial freedoms, for example (Harvey 2005). Thus, my critique is not of the principle of Closing the Gap. I critique the immediate and long-term harm that defining and measuring the gap as well as success and well-being in this way may have on Aboriginal beliefs and perceptions of success and well-being. Defining success and well-being in this way could be re-shaping Aboriginal programs and governance in such a way that both ignores the ontological dimensions of Aboriginal success and Aboriginal well-being as defined by Aboriginal people and undermines Aboriginal institutions, authority and empowerment. It is thus the socio-cultural, socio-political and socio-economic implications of Closing the Gap as a neo-liberal policy that warrants further investigation by sociologists. By all accounts, neoliberalism changes the rules of the game in the context of Aboriginal community success and Aboriginal well-being. Rather than Aboriginal autonomy and empowerment being measures of success, reduced gaps in statistical differences between Aboriginal and non-aboriginal peoples in areas such as health, housing, education and employment become representative of success. Does pursuing

8 Aboriginal service delivery in line with Closing the Gap undermine the very features of Aboriginal organisations that made them the success that they have been in overcoming Aboriginal disadvantage and promoting well-being prior to such policy shifts? How has Closing the Gap re-shaped the practice and programs of Aboriginal organisations? How does Closing the Gap reconstitute Aboriginal people into successful neo-liberal subjects? Is Closing the Gap creating new types of Aboriginal subjectivities? How are Aboriginal people being urged to regard themselves as neo-liberal subjects and particular types of actors? Having set out some of the existing limitations within current Aboriginal social policy, such as Closing the Gap and critiqued associated exhortations, the next step is to begin a study of Aboriginal community success in overcoming disadvantage and promoting wellbeing. This paper is the starting point of this research. In expanding the scope to consider such issues, this research aims to contribute to the research-policy nexus and challenge paradigmatic perceptions in relation to contemporary policy understandings of Aboriginal success and well-being, as well as further our knowledge about Aboriginal selfdetermination and capacity-building in Australia. These studies could speak to policy through evidence-based empirically and theoretically rich research, providing new knowledge about building economic, social and cultural capacity in Aboriginal communities while maintaining a political commitment to and social ethic of Aboriginal empowerment via a case study of a local Aboriginal community s success in addressing Aboriginal disadvantage and promoting well-being. There are many case studies of Aboriginal community success that are not aimed at closing the gap in the statistical difference between Aboriginal and non-aboriginal people or a neoliberal model of well-being, but rather Aboriginal well-being, Aboriginal empowerment, and/or respecting Aboriginal culture which lead to improvements in Aboriginal well-being and works toward overcoming Aboriginal disadvantage. Such international and national programs include: Hollow Water Community Holistic Circle Healing Program in the Canadian Hollow Water Aboriginal community; the Circle Sentencing program in New South Wales; the Cherbourg Critical Incident Group in the Wakka Wakka nation in Queensland; the Purnululu Aboriginal Community Independent School in Purnululu; the Family well-being programs started by members of the Stolen Generation in Adelaide and adopted to meet local needs in a number of Aboriginal communities around Australia; and, the various Aboriginal Health and Medical Services established by local Aboriginal communities around Australia. In the case of these examples, Aboriginal communities or groups from within Aboriginal communities work with government departments and organisations and non-government organisations to achieve the outcomes that they wish to achieve, such as reducing the incidence of child abuse, reducing the incidence of recidivism, educating and sharing knowledge and culture in Aboriginal communities, and addressing Aboriginal health issues, for example. Space restricts me here from focusing on some of the ways in which governments have worked with Indigenous populations to create policy, which are grounded in shared values and understandings of success and discussing the process of consultation and negotiation from a comparative politics perspective to create an even starker contrast

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