Governments must act faster and listen to Productivity Commission recommendations to Close the Gap and tackle Aboriginal homelessness
The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Association Media Release
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander homelessness crisis will continue to deteriorate should Australian governments maintain their “business-as-usual” approach to progressing the National Agreement on Closing the Gap priority reforms.
The Aboriginal Housing and Homelessness Forum and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing Association (NATSIHA) are calling for a separate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Housing and Homelessness plan to address the housing emergency faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People and communities.
The Productivity Commission’s Final Report on the Agreement, released February 7 2024, underscores critical themes that demand immediate attention and robust action to rectify the ongoing challenges faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across Australia.
The Close the Gap agreement, signed under the Morrison Government, necessitates continual bi-partisan support to ensure accountability in addressing enduring disparities. This commitment demands consistent policy implementation, resource allocation, and scrutiny, avoiding symbolic gestures and guaranteeing sustained efforts for tangible and lasting change.
In Victoria alone, the number of Aboriginal women accessing specialist homelessness services increased 20 per cent over the last five years, compared to a nearly 14 per cent decrease over the same period for non- Aboriginal women in the state. Addressing these devastating discrepancies will require good faith bipartisanship.
Governments must take immediate and tangible steps to strengthen accountability mechanisms for housing solutions. This requires a radical shift in behaviour and mindset within governments and institutions.
Rob Macfarlane, CEO of NATSIHA, says, “We have brought the call for a separate First Nations Housing and Homelessness Plan to the government and are in conversations about the development of a specific schedule for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals, communities, and organisations. But are yet to see any real commitment.
“It is time for governments to move beyond rhetoric and embrace true power-sharing. The First Nations Housing sector, with its long-term experience and innovative approaches, holds a unique and essential power in driving sustainable solutions. Our communities have demonstrated expertise, cultural understanding, and local knowledge necessary to lead decisions impacting their lives. The gap will widen for our people if attention is not given to addressing the housing emergency faced by our people.”
Aboriginal Housing and Homelessness Forum Secretariat Lead and Aboriginal Housing Victoria Director of Strategy and Performance Lisa Briggs said the Report showed the need for a greater focus on housing and home ownership because safe and secure housing is central to closing the gap in all areas of Aboriginal disadvantage.
“Secure housing is the missing policy piece. It is fundamental to human safety, economic participation, psychological resilience, and physical health – all the areas in which governments are falling behind,” she said.
“The data shows us that in Victoria, by 2036, the number of Aboriginal households will more than double. To maintain existing levels of social housing in line with population growth, we will need an additional 5000 social housing units just so existing, catastrophic levels of homelessness do not escalate.”
When all Australian governments and the Coalition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peak Organisations signed the Agreement in 2020, they committed to mobilising “all avenues available to them” to overcome the entrenched inequality faced by Aboriginal people.
Of the 17 socioeconomic targets included in the Agreement, only four are on track to be met.
“They need to do better, for our children, our Elders and our communities. The Report reinforces the need for the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement to include a specific schedule for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander individuals, communities and organisations,” Ms Briggs said.
“It shows us how desperately we need a specific National Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Housing and Homelessness Plan.
“Now is the right time to expand on the existing Closing the Gap housing targets to include an Aboriginal homelessness target to respond to the rapid increases in homelessness experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across the country.”
Rob Macfarlane, CEO of NATSIHA said a robust response is needed.
“The Productivity Commission’s report is a wake-up call for all levels of government. We cannot afford to let Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander homelessness continue to rise. The governments must prioritise and implement the necessary measures to address this crisis.”
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16 comments
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Brad
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Terence Mills
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New England Cocky
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GL
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Terence Mills
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Clakka
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New England Cocky
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Lambchop Simnel
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Clakka
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Frank Sterle Jr.
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Canguro
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Caz
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andyfiftysix
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B Sullivan
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andyfiftysix
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Bob
Return to home pagePeople are easier to control if they are forced into begging for shelter.
Look at how both Labor and the LNP approach anything housing.
They don’t care, their first instinct is to protect their investment portfolios.
‘Not sure what this article is saying but, as I understand it, land ownership in Aboriginal communities since the colonial era has maintained the approach whereby all land and housing is held and owned by Land Councils preventing first nation’s people from owning their own land and forcing them into being perpetual tenants.
I am aware that there have been various attempts to break down this restrictive system but vested interests seem to want to perpetuate the discrimination.
Could the authors comment on this situation and why it is that an Aboriginal person cannot own freehold land within his/her own community.
@ Terence Mills: The Howard COALition government unsuccessfully attempted to break the ”community title” enforced by Aboriginal Land Councils so that the voracious foreign owned multinational corporations interested in exploiting Australian fossil fuel & mining resources without paying any taxation (legally) could access Aboriginal lands for exploration and subsequent exploitation.
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These self-serving foreign entities have little interest in Aboriginal or Australian best interests.
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Aboriginal land ”ownership” is known and preserved orally between generations. It is more complex that European Torren Title ownership that is restricted to the top three inches (75mm) of land surface with any underlying mineral deposits remaining with the government of that European government jurisdiction.
Governments and acting fast is a wee bit of an oxymoron. Unless you are the LNP and your corporate maatteess and paymasters bark.
Cocky
You say “Aboriginal land ”ownership” is known and preserved orally between generations.”
That may be true of the Torres Strait where Mabo traced patterns of land ownership going down through the generations and individual garden and residential blocks but it’s not the case on the mainland.The fact is that in most aboriginal communities whitefella law dictates that blackfellas cannot own or have individual title in their land ; Pretending that this is some sort of mythical dreamtime practice is not assisting the Aboriginal people to move on.
Whilst I’m not Aboriginal we do have first peoples within the extended family and I can tell you that they want precisely what we want – they want their own home on their own block of land and not to be tenants of a colonial master based on outdated interpretations of collective ownership formulated by whitefella laws.
It’s not easy but we have to move on and focus on the priorities of education, healthcare, housing and meaningful employment opportunities.
@TM & NEC
Extremely important issues. And a mind-blowing can-o-worms, with seeds in devious ‘white’ land grabs, even more devious paternalistic machinations, denial of facts of 1000s of years First Nations’ land management and successful land law administration, and the vicious divide and conquer m.o. of pastoralists, miners and multi-national carpetbaggers. It is all based on the antediluvian myth of First Nations folk being ‘uncivilised’, intellectually inferior, and incapable of self-determination.
There is no question that post-colonial history reveals not only war and massacre, but ongoing deliberate disenfranchising of First Nations folk, by laws seeking to manufacture cover for theft, and an alternative class of citizen constrained by processes of forced ‘assimilation’.
My understanding is that these devices persist through both Native Title and for missions / reserves, whereby a First Nations individual or family is unable to convert any part (even though they may dwell on it) to freehold title in their name. An injustice in and of itself, but also giving rise to the breakdown of traditional First Nations law, inter-clan rivalries and power imbalances through dominant family groups, and denying rights of hereditament. All grist for the mill of the carpetbaggers.
The fix may not be simple, but it must be done. This is just one significant example of injustice and inequity that the Voice would have been ideal in assisting in the remedying of. But that a vast majority of ‘NO’ voters wouldn’t have a clue about.
Since the failure of the Voice referendum, I have noticed an upturn in the promulgation of First Nations’ matters. And am glad to see the Productivity Commission’s involvement in ‘Closing the Gap’ issues. But it is horrendous, yet unsurprising, that the LNP are deviously and divisively going around the country seeking to smash all treaty and any other reconciliation processes extant or in development. It has been underway covertly mostly at a local level for quite some time, but now, probably emboldened by the ‘NO’ vote is starting to rear its ugly head mainstream.
@ Terence Mills: Fair comment. Your myth is just that; a myth. The earliest European map that I have seen shows the ”regions” of the Australian mainland occupied by about 600 Aboriginal clans dates to 1832.
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I agree that the oral claims to land ownership by Aboriginal communities are a little spurious in some cases. Here in Armidale NSW in 1957 the Armidale City Council authorised an Aboriginal ”village” on the now former Armidale Tip site, now Narwan Village. The original state government provided corrugated iron clads sheds/”houses” were replaced during the late 70s by the late Bill McCarthy (ALP) & his mate ALP Premier Neville Wran as a NSW LABOR initiative with three bedroom brick veneer housing to then Housing Commission standards.
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The Aborigines occupying this village came from Bellbrook west of Kempsey NSW. Presently we are told there are about 22 ”Aboriginal clans” in Armidale Regional Council area that do not speak to each other.
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I totally accept your priorities.
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The difficulty for government which is well recognised by the judiciary is that Torrens Title was imposed by the English rather than accepted by the Indigenous Aborigines of that time (about 1820). This probably means that ALL non-Aboriginal land title is possibly invalid under English legal precedent.
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Regardless, the present ”community title” of Aboriginal lands has served Aboriginals well ….. except where local Aboriginal Land Councils have chosen to accept what appears to be a handsome price, say $1,000,000.00) to sell their land to residential developers who then capitalise their residential development (at >$100,000,000.00), as happened in the Port Stephens (NSW) region.
@ Clakka: Excellent comment, thank you.
Interesting listening to Fels, he targets the abuse of the current system by bandit capitalism.
He is no Trot. He examines the current system and failures and suggest a raft of cures, most which will be ignored because they deal with real issues.
Too much bait and switch from the corporations, now they have us trapped electronically..
At a VERY quick glance: NEC, perhaps THE core issue amongst many and you wonder if Gaza is not a modern day example of Terra Nullius land grabs and dispossessions.
Of course, we all should be well aware of the roots of the despicable ignorant and racist laws of convenience, originating with the ancient Greeks (and later Romans) against the Scythians, deeming they were primitive and ignorant (living by nature) and not capable of knowing or understanding land ownership (the test later being whether there were defined borders and land cultivation). Thus they were mere fauna (to be owned by the Crown), and the land Terra Nullius. In the 1400s this was universally cast to (western) law via papal bulls of pope Alexander VI (the Doctrine of Dominion), which started the rush of competitive colonial adventures and flag planting. And further reinforced by the Doctrine of Reception whereby the flag-planters maintained the right to impose the laws under their flag, usurping and superseding all / any others.
So, in Oz, regardless of orders of the Crown to establish a penal colony and pay the natives for the land, the moment the flag was planted, and after the lies and deceptions of Governor Bourke, the Crown was convinced that the land was Terra Nullius and the whole lot became the property of the Crown – ‘Crown Land’, subject only to Crown grants, including the operations of the marauding process of Selection by ‘citizens’ (not at the time ‘natives’) under the Crown. To this very day, whilst rightly the Mabo decision gave rise to Native Title, and the Wik decision ratified that Native Title could co-exist with the likes of pastoral leases, the dominion and ownership of the land remains with the Crown all the way to heaven and hell and any occupation / ownership / use of the land is only by the grace of the Crown. An absolute antediluvian rort – no wonder the Crown is known as the ‘firm’. We should not forget their agents, The East India Company and the like.
In that regard, in Oz, but for Native Title (yet even then), via the laws of the Crown, First Nations folk under Native Title or on missions or reserves or otherwise occupying Crown land, when it comes to landed property, are a separate class of citizen, effectively still treated as fauna. Of course all landed property in Oz is only ‘owned’, dwelt upon, or extracted from at the whim and grace of the Crown.
Would Oz as a republic do any better? Hard to know, but at least in the recasting of the laws, hope springs eternal, and we should have a go. If for no other reason, to rid ourselves of the Crown and its lineage, and devise our Constitution and writs without religious hocus-pocus, and in consideration of modern science and in consideration of the UN and international law. And perhaps opt for an inquisitorial rather than adversarial judicial process.
Otherwise our system remains full of rorts and ruses, and the brutality of the British imperium. As across the globe do most other post-colonial systems remain beholden to their various colonial imperiums. All mostly about state control by theft and oppression.
Human beings can actually be consciously or subconsciously perceived and treated as though they are disposable and, by extension, their suffering and death are somehow less worthy of external concern, sometimes even by otherwise democratic and relatively civilized nations.
In Canada’s atrocious case, it includes many indigenous children buried in unmarked and even officially unrecorded grave sites. [Many American indigenous people learned this the hardest way via Indian Boarding Schools.] Clearly it was a serious attempt at annihilating native culture.
Obviously no one should ever be treated like garbage, yet indigenous women literally were when their bodily remains were dumped in a Winnipeg landfill. Oh the inhumanity!
re. Clakka’s comments on Crown rights and papal edicts, what an amazing con! That a theatrically clothed religious gobblegabbler or frocked-up regent clad in ermine robes and capped by a ridiculous ornamented metal ring atop his scone can be granted absolute power to proclaim anything as doable – steal others’ territories, exterminate ‘lesser’ races and appropriate their possessions and assets, decide whether one lives or dies by virtue of which way his thumb is pointing, proclaim a continent as uninhabited and thus duly available to be added to the imperium and so on… it just beggars the imagination that these criminal acts were not only sanctioned but encouraged, cheered on by the usual gaggle of court and legal sycophants too gutless to act according to any ethical or moral sense of right behaviour.
What a dark and miserable period in humanity’s history. If the slate was able to be wiped – albeit it isn’t – would we behave any differently today? Somehow, I doubt it. The sinister impulses that dwell within the deeper recesses of the psyche when given opportunity to rise to surface and into action are evidently still at play… witness Israeli behaviour as one example among many.
Frank Sterle Jr.’s comments condemn Canada and demonstrate its barbarism. Similar observations apply to its southern neighbour, and further south, the Central and Southern Americas are awash with scores of historical acts of uncivilsed savagery, the consequences of which are still ringing centuries later. Africa ditto, South-east Asia also, along with this ‘Lucky Country’… lucky for some but not for all.
A more recent crime against Aboriginal people was the dismantling of the Darkinjung People’s attempt to invest the $41 m in housing , a funeral fund and property, by the former NSW Labor Government , Milton Orkopoulos and his « mate » the administrator who replaced the council. The shoddy treatment meted out to the council members caused marriages to break down, good people treated as criminals and their barrister barred from having contact with his clients. When the government was eventually thrown out of office there was an apology in Parliament to a particular member of the Council who had been hounded and branded a criminal. No journalist has ever investigated why te council was not permitted to hold the funds in a trust, which the government said they could not do. God knows what happened to all that money. When the council was reinstalled with compliant unquestioning black fellas, the amount of money wasted on administration was buried. The evidence and all records are in the possession of a person who planned to write a book. One day it might happen.
in the face of crippling house prices, this article is a cry for help. It only took 50yrs to create the shit storm we have, asking governments to make quick decisions is wishful thinking. We need MAJOR AND RADICAL action to stem the bleed for everyone. We as a collective have voted to keep the system as it is over a long period of time.
Quick decisions will become political poison, just as the Voice was weaponised, this would become an insurmountable obstacle.
The priority needs to be cultural change so the party with no policy apart from No becomes totally discredited and disappears up its own clakka. Only then can an elected government design a radical agenda for the times.
But you know , 30% are born stupid so good luck with that project.
There is an undercurrent of good will, thats why labor gets elected occasionally but the populace as a whole just cant seem to connect the dots…….the libs will fuck you over and labor is too timid to fix things properly. For example, Pensions, the liberals so culturally injected dole bludgers and welfare cheats into our vocabulary, increasing pensions was seen as a job for mr scrooge. Keatings Super is a disaster. It has too many masters and too many sponging off it. would have been fairer and socially cheaper to increase the pension. Too fucking clever by half.
Two party politics was never meant to be so obstructionist to good ideas……but here we are. Fraudband is still stuck in my throat, #$%ts
Smoke and mirrors. The trick is to turn a social issue that affects anyone and everyone into a restricted racial issue that demands special attention for only some but not all, even though everyone belongs to the same race. Homelessness is the issue to be addressed here, not the insignificant differences between our near identical genetic makeup. The government could provide homes for everyone who needs one at an affordable price using that wonderfully effective and proven tool ‘socialism’ to finance the building of said homes, and the costs would be recouped from the reasonable rents that would flow into the public purse instead of the private pockets of parasitical landlords who control the market and its exorbitant prices through the market’s reliance on private capitalist finance.
Of the course the government is not going to use its public resources to undercut the private sector’s oppressive rents. Instead it will pretend that it is dealing with a hopelessly insolvable racial problem. Even though there is no such thing as races in our species. As everybody should know by now.
The government should deal with a fixable issue, even if it antagonises the private real estate sector. It is the just and right thing to do. Provide homes for the homeless and their needs will be addressed no matter what race they think they belong to.
B Sullivan, on the money here. That was my first idea on reading this article…..we are all screwed, indigenous are no exception here.
andy56 & B S, true that. All of our so-called social problems have been deliberately created by one party of govt or the other, and then inherited by the next incoming govt, and then either ignored or half-heartedly tinkered with, eg. Stage 3 tax breaks. I’d back Labor but as andy56 notes, they’re ‘too timid’. Labor, and forget about the LNP, have no real plan as to how to tackle the tax system and the ‘giveaway to the wealthy’ mentality that underpins it.
Riding the govt into the dirt, not that pollies mind taking the economy to the cleaners as they’re well paid for their treachery, are the real shapers and movers – the media, the banks and a range of special interest parasites.
The media run such a well-resourced 24/7 psy-op I have to admit I’m impressed by their level of deception & manipulation. Want to keep the worst aspects of the tax system, too easy, shout down the PM of the day, 24/7.
The banks, where to start? They create credit out of thin air, then get borrowers to expend 20+ years of their energy to repay a ‘thin-air credit’ that was created in a day. That this scam is so well hidden is a tribute to all those involved – the current national Federal Reserve banks, local commercial banks, Bank of International Settlements, the BAR etc, all the way back to one of the founding fathers of this entire fraud – Edward Mandell House.
It is the average person who pays the price, but really we are all the poorer for it. So much energy wasted to profit the few, while the rest get to reap a world based on expanding debt to its limit of implosion. Are we there yet?
As for ‘close the gap’, why is it still getting wider? Labor spent $400M to convince the public it was interested in helping. Yet the day after the referendum, what did they do? From memory they walked away from a request for a royal commission into child sexual abuse in Indigenous communities, calls for program audits and calls for practical policy ideas to help close the gap. How church-like of them.