|
|
AT LARGE: A collapsing house of cards
Issue 189 - 29 Oct 2009
ISSUE 189, October 29, 2009: Labor may be in charge of Parliament House, but it is far from in control of Indigenous housing, writes CHRIS GRAHAM*
Often, when I start to feel the grind, I find myself scanning the online pages of the Northern Territory News.
It helps to remind me of why I do what I do, and why I don't do what I don't do.
The paper is famed for its coverage of crocodiles. My first ever trip to the Territory (in 2001) was met by an edition with three quarters of the front page devoted to promoting a competition: 'Win a crocodile for a year'.
Apparently, you had the chance to raise a baby croc until it got too big, and too dangerous. Then you had to give it back.
I'm up in the Territory as I write this column, researching a few stories. But there is no croc on the front page this time. Nothing on page three either. Or five, which told story, "Man flees from fight into path of hit-run".
"A man killed when he was hit by a car in Darwin's northern suburbs this week was running away from a fight in fear of his life.
"Witnesses have told the Northern Territory News the man had managed to escape a biff outside the Airport Hotel and that he was being chased by his attackers when he ran across McMillans Rd and was struck...."
A biff? I think that might be the technical term for a fight in the Territory? Or perhaps it's the name of the person chasing the deceased, and the sub-editor missed the capitalisation?
Either way, I had to go all the way to page seven to find a story about a crocodile.
"Croc goes to school: Junior saltie captured 4km from water" the NT News reported.
Apparently, a one-metre long baby croc was found near a school, and excited students had gathered around for a gander. They kept their distance until teacher Paul O'Hallohan "stepped up to the plate" to confront the "titchy... wily beast".
With the monster removed, and "after a round of cheering" it was "back to business as usual for the day".
Cliches, journalese, ocker slang. It had it all.
I'm not actually bagging the NT News. I'm just pointing out that it knows what it is, and it doesn't try hard to be something it's not.
Sometimes you wish it did - a few pages on from baby croc was a feature on Wayne Carey's liaison with the wife of a friend in a toilet a few years back. But buying the NT News is like shopping at McDonalds - you always know what you're going to get.
Now back to the grind that is the mainstream media's reporting of Indigenous affairs, in particular its reporting of the Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program (SIHIP), which has dominated the news of late.
I came across a piece published by the ABC over the weekend headlined, "Aboriginal housing plan 'ahead of schedule'".
"A senior federal bureaucrat says the target for Indigenous housing in the Northern Territory will be exceeded next year and 200 houses will be built.
Earlier this year, the Federal Government announced a revamp of the $670 million Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure program (SIHIP), when it was revealed that no houses had been built.
The head of the federal Families and Housing Department, Jeff Harmer, has told a Senate committee that 150 houses were due to be built next year.
"We do expect, given the changes we've made to the arrangements following the review, that we will exceed the original target and we will have 200 houses by the end of 2010."
He says the Indigenous Affairs Minister, Jenny Macklin, is watching the scheme carefully to ensure there is progress.
"We are much more heavily involved than we would have expected to be under the classic national partnership," he said.
"And I can assure you we're in there working with them.
"And my Minister, who's very insistent these targets are met and that we achieve this, because she knows how critical it is to put, as you put it, roofs over the heads of people if we are going to close the gap."
The federal government's NT intervention housing program still hasn't built a single house after more than two years, despite the declaration of a national emergency, but the head of FaHCSIA says it's "ahead of schedule".
Can you imagine what a government program 'behind schedule' might look like?
Except, the SIHIP program has actually built some houses. Apparently.
Here's the Sydney Morning Herald's take (courtesy of AAP) on the very same Senate Estimates hearing staged last week.
"The federal government department that oversees an Indigenous housing project in the Northern Territory has defended the rate at which new dwellings are being constructed to address chronic overcrowding.
Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs secretary Jeff Harmer says the program is on track to reach the target.
"So far 102 houses have been built under the Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program (SIHIP)," he told a Senate estimates hearing in Canberra.
A further 50 new houses and 180 rebuilds or refurbishments would be completed by the end of the year."
At the time of writing this column, the transcripts for the Senate Estimates were still not available on the parliamentary website. So I can't confirm if the ABC or AAP is right. It's possible both are.
But if Harmer did state that SIHIP has built 102 houses, then he has lied to parliament.
SIHIP has built no houses. Not one.
Macklin, of course, was warned last year by NSW Senator Ursula Stephens that precisely that would occur.
In a memo leaked to NIT, Stephens warned that it would be unlikely that houses would be built before 2011; that the cost of building them would skyrocket under the SIHIP model; that Aboriginal employment targets wouldn't be met; and that the whole process lent itself to massive corruption, the same sort which sparked a Royal Commission in the late 1980s.
Macklin went ahead and signed off on the SIHIP program despite the warnings. But if you're holding out for any hope Macklin might pull it off, I hate to be the bearer of bad news.
Meet Rob Knight, the hapless Northern Territory minister for housing. Knight works at the pointy end of the program - it's his job to deliver it on the ground.
Last fortnight in parliament it was revealed that Knight was sacked from an Aboriginal organisation several years ago for gross neglect of his duties. It's a charge Knight denied, sort of.
After claiming that he wasn't sacked, Knight broke the golden rule of politics - if you're in a hole, stop digging - by adding that the letter of dismissal tabled by the Opposition wasn't the correct one.
"That's not it," Knight smirked.
So Rob, even though you weren't sacked, which letter of dismissal is the correct one?
During the same session of parliament, Knight managed to also expose his government's abject failure on SIHIP.
On June 10 this year, Knight told parliament that under SIHIP, 100 houses would be built and 700 refurbishments would be completed this year. Two weeks ago, Knight told parliament the houses will be delivered by the end of next year.
But they won't even be done by then.
There are so many problems with SIHIP it's hard to know where to begin.
About a dozen homes in Santa Teresa that were marked as economically unviable for upgrade (ie. it's cheaper in the long-term to build new homes rather than renovate) by the NT government will now be upgraded by the SIHIP program.
Other houses marked 'economically unviable' won't be upgraded. People will instead be left to live in them.
Tennant Creek town camps have gone from 20 new homes and a multitude of upgrades to no new homes, and all upgrades. And they had to sign over their land for 40 years to get it. How a lick of paint and air-conditioning is going to relieve massive over-crowding is anyone's guess.
More generally, SIHIP went from 750 new houses down to about 300, then back up to 750 after Member for Macdonnell Alison Anderson and The Australian newspaper blew the whistle on the massive bureaucratic and administration fees.
And how did they get the numbers back up? By cooking the books and scaling back construction plans. They're now going to build more one and two-bedroom units (instead of three and four bedroom homes). It boosts the numbers, although obviously it doesn't meet the need.
The upshot is that this program was signed off by an ignorant federal minister who refuses to accept advice she doesn't want to hear, and it's being implemented by an incompetent territory minister who wouldn't know an Indigenous house if he woke up in one.
The phrase 'blind leading the blind' was developed for just such an occasion. The only reason we're not seeing the NT government try and hang the federal government out to dry and vice-versa is because they're both Labor.
'We're all in this together' is the prevailing political approach to the ongoing scandal. But the fact is, Indigenous housing under Labor is rotten to the core.
SIHIP is a disastrous, panicked train wreck of a program. Its architect - Jenny Macklin - should be sacked from her portfolio, busted to the backbench for what remains of her terminal career and then sent out to actually live in the one of the houses her idiot program will deliver.
Rob Knight should simply be sacked... sooner rather than later. Both government should halt proceedings before tens of millions more of taxpayer funds is wasted.
The Country Liberals have called for a Royal Commission into Aboriginal housing in the Northern Territory.
It would be a bloody good start.
atlarge@nit.com.au
* Chris Graham is the founding editor of NIT, currently serving as the editor-at-large on a semi-sabbatical. He filed this story from Central Australia.
|
|