Nova Peris (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I rise to speak to the Finance and Public Administration References Committee's inquiry into the Indigenous Advancement Strategy Tendering Process report. In the 2014-15 budget, the government announced that from 1 July 2014, over 150 programs, grants and activities for Indigenous Australians, which were delivered across a range of government portfolios, would be rationalised and streamlined into five broad programs under the new Indigenous Advancement Strategy (IAS), which would be administered by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C).

There has been $4.8 billion allocated to fund the IAS for the four years from 2014-15 through to 2018-19. The stated objective of the IAS is to improve the lives of Indigenous Australians and also to make the grants process more efficient and effective for applicants. In July 2014, PM&C released the IAS guidelines to advise potential applicants, which explained that the strategy has been designed to reduce red tape and duplication for grant funding recipients, increase flexibility, and more efficiently provide evidence based grant funding to make sure that resources hit the ground and deliver results for Indigenous people.

On 8 September 2014, PM&C announced there would be a six-week open competitive grant tender funding round under the IAS. After a delay in the assessment process, the announcement of funding outcomes was made on 4 March 2015. There was $860 million worth of funding allocated to 964 organisations to deliver 1, 297 projects.

During this inquiry, the Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee examined the program design and delivery framework of the IAS, as well as the conduct of the first round of competitive funding. Submitters and witnesses to the inquiry saw the potential benefit of streamlining 150 programs into five priority areas through the IAS process. It was seen that this change could offer greater flexibility and scope to develop on the ground, targeted responses to issues in communities. It was also seen as an opportunity to cut red tape and reduce bureaucracy.

However, the reality was that a shift of this magnitude was too ambitious. There was little to no consultation or engagement with communities and organisations on this fundamental change to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programs and no input sought at the start of this process. In addition to implementing a completely new and untested way of doing business, the process was further complicated by the machinery-of-government changes and budget cuts. As Mr John Paterson from the Aboriginal Medical Services Alliance of the Northern Territory and Aboriginal Peak Organisations Northern Territory stated:

Overall, … our members found the Indigenous Advancement Strategy application process to be stressful and frustrating, exacerbated by the lack of consultation and clarification of concerns from the department. We were also frustrated by the limited information made publicly available regarding the number of successful organisations that were granted funding and the breakdown of that funding.

While PM&C was able to identify the analysis done by the Australian National Audit Office and the Department of Finance as the evidence for such a dramatic policy change, it did not articulate the evidence base for the development of the IAS as the means by which to address earlier policy failings in this area.

The shift to a competitive tendering model appeared to disadvantage Indigenous organisations. The IAS processes especially disadvantaged smaller Indigenous organisations with less experience in applying for competitive funding and those who lacked the resources to hire such expertise, compared with the large non-government organisations. More than $1.7 million was spent on engaging external organisations to assist with administration processes and probity advice. Despite all this assistance, the administration issues were significant, and there was an unreasonable timetable for applicants. There was a clear lack of reliable information for applicants and a lack of clarity around incorporation requirements, and the advice and feedback to successful and unsuccessful applicants was often unclear and generic.

Changes to the process were underway including the funding extension and the gap-filling processes. It appeared that the IAS was being adapted on the run, which to many stakeholders meant the new process lacked transparency and was not a level playing field. Witnesses to the inquiry said that communication throughout the tender application process was poor and confusing. It was clear that the process was not well understood, as evidenced by almost half of the applications being noncompliant.

For all the upheaval and chaos created, the outcome appears to be that organisations funded previously have, by and large, been funded to do the same activities with less money. Of particular concern is that the funding uncertainty across the sector has led to respected and experienced staff being lost. It is profoundly disappointing that, eight months after acknowledging the shortcomings, the situation does not appear to have improved. Many organisations are in the same position they were in last year of having funding running out on 30 June 2016 and not knowing what the next steps are. This is despite the minister's reassurance that the new process would result in longer term funding contracts. On top of this, the revised guidelines to apply for funding that will need to start from 1 July have been delayed, which will result again in a very short time frame to lodge applications. Again, this has created further uncertainty for service providers and their staff.

I am very concerned that this loss of expertise and relationship has led to a disconnect between the people on the ground and their local needs and the decision-making process undertaken here in Canberra. While the idea of the IAS was initially welcomed, I believe the price paid by the Indigenous communities for implementing the unreasonable time line was far too high. This would appear to be a case of the goodwill being hard to gain and easy to lose. I agree 100 percent with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Mr Mick Gooda, who said: 'To have confidence in the outcomes, we have got to have confidence in the process.'

The Auditor-General is currently conducting an audit of the establishment and implementation of the IAS. I strongly support this audit because we all need to see the evidence of how the process has improved. We will continue to monitor the future of the IAS process through estimates hearings.

The committee has made nine recommendations as a result of its inquiry. Those recommendations include recommendations in relation to future rounds of the IAS grant funding. I will conclude here because I know that Senator Siewert wants to make a contribution. I would just like to put on record that I would like to thank all those who made submissions to the inquiry and who provided evidence at the public hearings. I commend the report to the chamber, and I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to the discussion on this report, Commonwealth Indigenous Advancement Strategy tendering processes. I initiated it—and it was with the support of the chamber, of course, that this committee inquiry was undertaken—because of the enormous feedback that we got from the community about how disruptive the IAS process was. The inquiry has established that in fact it was enormously disruptive to the process. We had a final hearing in Canberra, but the one just before that, in late February, was in Darwin. There, even 12 months down the track, organisations are still feeling the effects of the disruption from this process. The committee inquiry overwhelmingly confirmed that sense of disruption and confusion and how disheartened people were by this process.

I build on the comments that Senator Peris made, because she has also described what we found during the inquiry. I too would like to quote from Mr Gooda, who is quoted in the report. He said:

Respectful engagement with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples regarding these significant changes was conspicuous by its absence; there was little or no input from Indigenous peoples, their leaders or their respective organisations into the design or the implementation of the tendering processes.

Mr Rod Little, the Director of the National Congress of Australia's First Peoples, also reported that they had not been consulted at the beginning of the process and suggested that there should have been greater involvement of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the design and delivery of the IAS. Those comments were reiterated and reiterated by witnesses and in the large number of submissions that we received.

So what did the government do after that? The government said, 'Okay, we'd better go and find out afterwards what people think, what they thought of the process.' So they did some consultation after the fact, but then they gave short notice to people to attend those meetings. They developed a new set of guidelines—which, as Senator Peris outlined, seem to have been delayed again—but there is going to be no consultation on those guidelines. Those guidelines are coming out as the final guidelines. Once again, we are seeing a top-down approach to the way the IAS is rolled out.

One of the recommendations that Senator Peris outlined—there are nine recommendations in the majority report, and the Greens have two more in our additional comments, and I will come to those in a moment—was:

The committee recommends that the Government release the revised funding guidelines as a draft for consultation with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and their organisations.

And I really encourage the government to listen to this process, because when this announcement was made, gaps were immediately identified in the funding process. Youth services in Central Australia were just not funded. Up in the Kimberley, the domestic violence and women's shelter was not funded. You could go around Australia and find service after service not funded. If you look at the government's additional comments to this report, you see that they talk about the disruption and they say:

Government senators acknowledge that this process has been disruptive for organisations and some organisations have missed out on funding.

Yes, it has been disruptive and organisations have argued very strongly to us that that disruption was not worth it, because it has not delivered better outcomes.

The government then went on to quote Mr Tongue, from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, saying:

However the government is determined to ensure that money is serving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities best, therefore it should be provided to organisations which are achieving positive outcomes.

The fact is that the government did not do an audit of what services were available and who was doing a good job. So that is a nonsense. Government senators also go on to talk about the need for increased transparency. This process has not increased transparency. It is extremely hard to find the information on who was funded and who was not. We still do not definitively know which organisations were not funded. The committee also recommended that 'future tender rounds are not blanket competitive processes' because—and this is really important—that process undermines Aboriginal organisation, and that those processes should be 'underpinned by robust service planning and needs mapping'.

The committee talks about the guidelines—and this is particularly important—and recommends that the 'selection criteria and funding guidelines should give weighting to the contribution and effectiveness of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations to provide to their community beyond the service they are directly contracted to provide'. We also talk about the need to support Aboriginal organisations to participate in the processes, because we found that larger organisations were basically able to out-compete smaller organisations because they could take on consultants.

I know that a number of people want to contribute to debates this afternoon, so I am going to wind up very shortly. The Greens put in two additional recommendations. We urged the government to reinstate the funding to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programs. As Senator Peris clearly pointed out, so much money was taken out of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programs during the 2014-15 budget. That should be reinstated. We also need to particularly look at the funding gap that has been identified for legal services in the Barkly region.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will try to keep my contribution on this report short, even though, with the amount of anger I have in me, it could take me a while. One of the frustrations is that we are here today talking about this grant process and five months ago we were in the same place talking about the DSS grant process and covering nearly all the same allegations about poor planning, lack of communication, lack of knowledge of client group and lack of care for either the community or the people they are serving. All those recommendations and statements we made in our Senate Community Affairs inquiry into DSS grants were replicated in our inquiry on the Indigenous Advancement Strategy.

The actual aim of the program was positive and there was no confusion, concern or distress in the community about what the overall aim of the program was, which was to contract the large number of grants that are in a certain area into a smaller number and allow for competitive tendering—an issue which I know is very worrying—to ensure that there was the best possible service for the community while respecting the professionalism of the providers. That is all well and good, but the process that was put in place—as Senator Peris and Senator Siewert have both identified—not only did not provide a result that met those requirement; it did worse than that. It took us back and it caused immediate—and I am hoping not permanent—damage to the relationship of trust, which is absolutely essential, between the government and the people who provide services on the ground to the community.

That lack of trust was identified earlier in a Productivity Commission report about service delivery in areas, and there was a clear understanding about the program and the process that should be in place when you are doing government service delivery. Key to that is an effective communication model. Again, one of the core aspects of this particular program was that there was no effective communication model. Community organisations that had been working in the field for many years were completely unclear of the expectations that were upon them to provide submissions to government, what sort of program availability there was and what kind of money was available in the program. People did not know what they were applying for. They were used to the circumstances under which they were operating and they were used to their own geographic areas, but the terms of the contracts did not match anything. In fact, there was a strategy to make sure that everybody applied. I can remember that, in the processes we heard about, particularly in these grants, there was an encouragement for everyone to apply—to be innovative, to be creative. What no-one was told was that the actual pot of money at the end of this great creativity exercise had been significantly reduced.

We have spoken to the minister in this place time and time again and have asked him to identify exactly the available funding and what cuts had been made, and he stood here in the chamber and told all of us that there would be no cuts to on-the-ground services. Senator Peris asked questions and Senator Siewert questions. We asked him to identify to us what the cuts were going to be to on-the-ground services, and the minister told us that there were going to be none. Unfortunately, he also said that to the community, and that was exposed consistently to be untrue. As we have heard, key services in areas such as domestic violence, child care, and alcohol and drug support have remained underfunded or non-funded as a result of this round of 'innovative', 'creative' government programs.

This is the kind of program which damages communities, and that was never the intent of the department nor of the minister. I put that on record. There was no intent to cause harm, but they should now identify that it has caused harm. Our inquiry has identified evidence of places and people who have put on record the impact this round of grants has had on their local communities, and now that information is publicly available to the department, to the minister and also to the Audit Office. I am going to end very quickly because there is a queue, but when we get the government response to this report—and I hope that sometime between now and death we will get it. We got a response to the report from community affairs about the DSS grants. One of our core recommendations from that inquiry was that there needed to be an independent audit of what had gone on so that we could see where these programs had failed and where they could be improved.

We now have the basis of a model for future funding rounds. We know what has gone wrong. We need to know what can work and what can work into the future. When we received the government response to that particular recommendation about the need for an independent audit inquiry, that response was: 'We will work with an audit.' That was it. It did not say, 'We identify that there is a need for an audit,' and at no stage did it give an apology to the people who had been damaged. I would hope that maybe PM&C could go a step further and actually say that—acknowledge that pain was caused. But we would like to see more than 'we will work with an audit' because if there is an audit then the department has no option to say they will work with it or not, because it is part of their job to work with it.

I applaud the people who came to talk to us. Some of them were still scarred; some of them were worried that if they came to see us they might not get any funding into the future; some of them were concerned about their client groups, which may or may not get the services they deserve into the future either; but they did have the integrity and the courage to come and see us. We have now put forward the report. This report is now available for the minister, who told us there was no problem. We can now tell him: 'Minister, there were problems.' Now it is up to the minister to make sure that that is looked at and not completed in the future. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.