Housing plan for Indigenous areas in WA will be 'visionary', says minister
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Version 0 of 1. A plan that will determine which of Western Australia’s remote Indigenous communities survive funding cuts will be “bold and visionary” and released “very soon”, according to the state’s Aboriginal affairs minister Peter Collier. Speaking to the ABC about a leaked report from the WA department of housing that recommended 128 remote Aboriginal communities communities receive little or no government funding in the future, Collier said the government had worked “forensically” on the issue for 18 months – starting before the federal government announced it was pulling funding. “We have got to get it right,” Collier said. “This is a unique opportunity in Western Australia to change and to shift the way in which we deliver services in remote Aboriginal communities to ensure the sustainability of those communities and to ensure the positive outcome for the people in those communities, particularly the children. “I’m very, very pleased with where we are landing, and I’m very, very confident that what we will deliver will be bold, it will be visionary, it will lead to better outcomes for Aboriginal people.” Collier said a 2014 discussion paper produced by the department which assessed 223 of WA’s remote Indigenous communities and ranked them in five categories based on the amount of funding it thought they should receive would be a “contributing factor” to the final framework. The report is marked cabinet in confidence and has not been released. The ABC reports that a draft copy of the discussion paper, which it has seen, ranked the communities according to a 15-point risk matrix but the actual results seem closely aligned with the size of the community. It says the discussion paper lumped 75 seasonal communities in category five, marked for no further government investment. Communities of more than 200 people and at least 40 houses were put in category one as a “major focus of government investment,” and communities of 100 to 200 people were put in category two for “moderate to significant government investment”. Those of between 30 to 100 people were deemed worthy of “moderate” government investment, depending on risk, and communities of fewer than 30 people or fewer than five houses were recommended to receive “very little” government investment with a focus on self-reliance. However, Guardian Australia has been told that many small or semi-permanent communities are already entirely self-sufficient, meaning that while they would not be affected by those recommendations being adopted, it also wouldn’t present a budget saving. It comes three days after the ABC published details of another report, produced by the federal government in 2010, which said as many as 192 communities were not sustainable. Collier dismissed that report, saying it had no influence on the state government’s deliberations. The Western Australian premier, Colin Barnett, announced in November that up to 150 remote communities faced closure because of a deal that would see federal funding for municipal and essential services dry up by June 2016. Kimberley Land Council chairman Anthony Watson told Guardian Australia that he had not seen anything to demonstrate that the Barnett government’s plans for improving Aboriginal communities were any different than the proposals of previous governments, stretching back decades. In fact, Watson said he had not seen anything from the government at all. “It would be nice if they could share it with us,” he said. “We don’t know what they are intending to do but their actions have been devastating in the past. “If it’s another plan to not consult with us then it’s going to be a poor plan.” Collier said there would an “extraordinary consultation” with Indigenous communities. Labor’s Aboriginal affairs spokesman, Ben Wyatt, said this week that he was “terribly worried” about the direction the discussion around remote communities had taken, and that the government’s relationship with Indigenous people had “broken down irretrievably”. “The term consultation has been redefined to mean we will tell you when we have made our decisions,” Wyatt said. |