About 5000 Aboriginal organisations have been under attack by the federal Coalition government and the establishment media for being given too much money and for the "misuse" of funds. Many of these organisations, like regional councils in the bush, provide basic services — water, health and housing — with around $5 million per year from ATSIC funds.
The Community Development Employment Program (CDEP) scheme operates by communities pooling their Social Security entitlements and work for the dole. The benefit is that that community receives $300,000 on top of the pooled DSS payments per year. This money is supposed to pay the wages of the mainly non-Aboriginal service providers — bookkeepers and store managers for example — in the community. In practice, however, the CDEP money goes towards providing community infrastructure such as housing because this sort of funding does not come from any other source. The ATSIC Act maintains that CDEP cannot be used for these basic rights.
The new minister for Aboriginal affairs, Senator John Herron, has publicly said that he was not aware that ATSIC has its own auditing system. Aboriginal organisations may be seen as a threat to government, developers and mining companies because they have political strength as collectives and potentially as governing bodies. And, of course, another part of their role is to demand title to their land. A solution to that threat is to destroy them through funding cuts.
DARRYL CRONIN is a research assistant with the North Australia Research Unit, Australian National University, based in Darwin. He is currently involved in the Review of the Aboriginal Councils and Associations Act 1976. This act enabled Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and groups to form their own organisations, which are recognised under non-Aboriginal law. He talked to Green Left Weekly's SALLY MITCHELL in Darwin about the federal Coalition's attack on ATSIC and how Aboriginal organisations could be defended.
In my opinion its really not ATSIC that's being singled out. The real target is Aboriginal organisations which provide services and which represent Aboriginal people at various different levels. The strength of Aboriginal people lies in their organisations, and at the moment these organisations are seen as threats. The government don't really want to do much to ATSIC. They want to make some minor changes to the legislation.
Question: What kind of services are Aboriginal organisations providing?
They provide services which state, territory and local governments won't or are unable to because they can't do it in a culturally appropriate way. Medical services are an example. There is an argument that Aboriginal people can use mainstream services like the hospital or local GP. But a lot of Aboriginal people are more comfortable with and prefer their own services.
We have been working with Aboriginal organisations in the Kimberley region in Western Australia. For example, the Aboriginal resource agency provides a whole range of services to people from bookkeeping, community infrastructure and housing, power and water, right down to really basic things like helping with letter writing to comply with orders under the Aboriginal Councils Association Act.
Tangentyere Council in Alice Springs provides a whole range of services, but primarily municipal services to Aboriginal living areas in and around the town. If the government cuts the funding to that, is the Alice Springs town council going to pick up that responsibility? I doubt it very much.
Question: Why aren't shire councils providing municipal services that non-Aboriginal people are entitled to like garbage collection, road maintenance and community development?
In the Kimberleys the shire councils use the excuse that Aboriginal people don't pay rates. The land is unrateable, so they don't get the services. But as I understand it, money for Aboriginal services is allocated to these governments because they take into account the high cost of providing services to Aboriginal people.
A lot of Aboriginal leaders have been saying, instead of looking at ATSIC, look at the books of the state and territory governments, because they get grants for Aboriginal people but these grants are untied. This means they can spend that money any way they like. It could be spent on a brand new round-about in Darwin instead of fixing up roads in the community.
Question: How will a special ATSIC auditor affect these organisations?
ATSIC already has a system of auditing. Under the Aboriginal Councils and Associations Act, the organisations have to send their audit to the registrar of Aboriginal Corporations in Canberra, explain any qualifications on the audit and provide a satisfactory answer.
The special auditor is going to have the power to look at the financial statements of Aboriginal organisations and decide whether they're fit and proper bodies to receive government funding. Grants will not be given to Aboriginal organisations which have qualifications on their audits.
Potentially, over 70% of organisations do generally have qualifications on their audited statements. Most of these qualifications are technical. There will be a big backlog of special audits to be done, which means grants and services won't be delivered to Aboriginal people.
Question: Can you give some examples of the qualifications being referred to?
One example may be whether people are receiving their Community Development Employment Program (CDEP) wage. The organisation's financial statements don't confirm that people are actually receiving their payment because they haven't been getting people to sign for it. They've just been handing out packets of money.
Another is that because of the remote location of assets and the high cost of travel — that is, the auditor doesn't go out to the community — it can't be verified that assets have been purchased through their ATSIC funds. That's not the community's fault.
I've seen letters where the registrar of Aboriginal Corporations had asked the organisation why their Toyota was not insured, because it was purchased through ATSIC funding and one of the grant conditions was that it had to be insured.
Aboriginal people are also going to run into a lot of problems because of the funding, which is on a year to year basis. You don't get funding guaranteed for a three year period. Every year you've got to go back and ask for more money. Therefore Aboriginal organisations are not able to plan properly. People can be in breach of their grants because they move some money out of one budget item into another because there was a need to.
Question: Is the Commonwealth government's overall level of funding to ATSIC adequate?
The National Aboriginal Health Strategy estimated that it was going to cost about $2.5 billion to meet the housing and infrastructure needs of Aboriginal people. There are many Aboriginal organisations that do assist people with their housing and infrastructure needs, and in terms of housing needs the backlog is huge.
There is a perception that Aboriginal people are getting too much. But really there are a whole range of needs that you can't actually see straightaway. People are having to rebuild their societies again. Like Pat Dodson [chairperson of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation] said, the money that goes to Aboriginal people doesn't just go into some big indigenous vault. This money gets spent in the wider economy. Who really benefits in the end is the white business man, the bloke who sells the building products, or the plumber.
Question: What sort of role do you see ATSIC playing?
Aboriginal organisations have been around for a lot longer that ATSIC. They began when the Aboriginal Council Association Act came into operation in 1978 and were community initiatives. ATSIC was thought up by the Labor government and imposed on Aboriginal people.
ATSIC is only a funding body with two representative arms: the commissioners and the regional councils structure. But I question whether you actually need those two appendages. Aboriginal people have always had a system of representation, and they've done that through their organisations. We don't need governments to tell us that we should represent ourselves with four regional councils.
I think the ATSIC Act should really be saying that we will recognise the system of representation that you develop in your region. From there, if people want to have a national form of representation, there could be a system developed from those community organisations.
You can see the results of ATSIC. You can see that money has got out into the community, compared to when the Department of Aboriginal Affairs was around, although I don't know if these results have been due to the success of ATSIC or to Aboriginal people asserting their rights or the Labor government at the time.
In many respects the Labor government was very paternalistic towards Aboriginal people, but it did talk to them through ATSIC and other Aboriginal organisations. But within a few weeks the Coalition government have chucked all that out the window. They're not getting any advice from any Aboriginal people, not even ATSIC.
Question: How do you think Aboriginal groups will campaign against these attacks to funding and service provision?
I think a lot of Aboriginal organisations were lulled into a false sense of security under Labor. Now people are going to have to change quickly if it means having to defend something. It means that people might be going back and doing what they did in the '70s — protesting on the streets again.
I can't see ATSIC trying to defend Aboriginal organisations, because at the moment the government wants to change the ATSIC Act and ATSIC has gone into self-preservation mode. They are now saying that they agree to the appointment of a special auditor but they don't agree to the legislative changes to ATSIC.
If the ATSIC system really worked, whereby the commissioners represented all those regional council members, I think ATSIC would have put up a bigger fight against the special auditor. But all the commissioners have agreed to it now. I wonder if they went back and spoke to their constituents and got advice from them in the first place.
Aboriginal organisations have got to get together and work with other organisations with resources, like the land councils, which have been more independent from government. They've really got to know what the issues are about, to be able to get advice and to come up with an adequate response. I don't think people are getting that sort of information. Another way of getting support is being part of a campaign, working with the unions and other community-based movements.
We need to come to a point where the government should be saying: "We're really glad we've got all of you [organisations]. You need to be recognised and be funded properly. You're providing a service to Aboriginal people that we can't."
Sure there are some organisations that need to be more accountable. But just because one or two are not, doesn't mean that all Aboriginal organisations are the same. Unfortunately that is the view that has been coming from the government and is being carried by the media.