The real ‘real’ economy in remote Australia[1]
Table of Contents
The Productivity Commission’s recent report Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage, notes that the vision behind the report is that Indigenous people will one day enjoy the same overall standard of living as other Australians (SCRGSP 2005: 1.2). This admirable goal is a reflection of the Howard Government’s commitment to practical reconciliation; that is, to equality in health, housing, employment and education outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The futuristic reference to ‘one day’ suggests that the goal may indeed be more visionary than policy realistic.
Such a commitment by government is not new and was first articulated by the Aboriginal Employment Development Policy of 1987 (Australian Government 1987). Altman and Allen (1992: 147–8) noted before the 1994 NATSIS that while government policy aims to provide employment and income equality for all Indigenous Australians, it ignores the contributions made by ‘the informal economy’, or what we refer to here as the customary sector.
This chapter focuses on a different livelihood vision—one that seeks a sustainable future for Indigenous people residing in remote and very remote Australia, and one that accords with the culturally-informed aspirations of many. Our view is that measured equality, based on mainstream notions of development, will be impossible to deliver in many remote and very remote parts of Australia where Indigenous Australians reside, often on Indigenous-owned and managed lands. Rather than envisioning Indigenous futures that are limited to mainstream notions of development in either of the private (market) or public (state employment and welfare) sectors, we focus here on an economy that includes a third—customary or non-market or Indigenous—sector.
This framework has been termed the hybrid (three-sector) economy (Altman 2005b), but it has other nomenclatures. For example, Gibson-Graham (2005) refers to the diverse or community economy. And the feminist literature identifies a somewhat different three-sector economy that has crucial resonance with the model used here (Cameron & Gibson-Graham 2003; Ironmonger 1996). The Canadian Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (1996) used the term ‘traditional-mixed economy’.
Altman (2003b) contends that the real economy in many remote Indigenous contexts is the hybrid economy. The term ‘real’ economy has come to some prominence in the influential writings of Noel Pearson (2000, 2005), although he uses the term to mainly refer to the market economy. Thus, the term can have very different meanings and has been the subject of considerable debate within feminist discourse (e.g. Gibson-Graham 1996), as well as in policy debates on achievable Indigenous economic development (Altman 2003b, 2005b; Canadian Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples 1996). Both approaches seek to embed economic representation within a broader and more inclusive frame. For example, within feminist discourse it has been argued that the real economy has to include the contributions made by unpaid productive activities, predominantly performed by females. From this feminist perspective, economist Duncan Ironmonger (1996) looks to quantify the market and household sectors of the economy and thereby ‘feminise the economy’. In a similar way, we seek to include and quantify a predominantly unpaid and unrecognised Indigenous component in the economy—we ‘Indigenise’ the economy, at least in remote and very remote Australia, regions for which some data are available.
One important reason for conducting the 2002 NATSISS was to gather information that is distinctly Indigenous. In the search for the real Indigenous economy in remote and very remote Australia, we are highly reliant on official statistics to move beyond community or small group case studies. In this chapter we explore what can be documented about customary activity in Australia using the 2002 NATSISS. Given that Indigenous Australians now own over 20 per cent of the Australian continent (Pollack 2001), we explore what can be ascertained about their non-market activities on this land in order to inform debates over whether there is development benefit from land rights and native title. This debate, which has some currency, tends to ignore the reality that the market economy is very limited in remote regions and fails to quantify the non-market (see Hughes 2005b; Hughes & Warin 2005).
The paucity of data available on the customary sector marginalises Indigenous productive participation (Altman 2003b, 2004, 2005b), positioning it as ‘other’ to ‘real’ economic activity (see ABS 2005a, where it is reported as ‘social and sporting activity’). Such marginalisation facilitates poorly informed criticism of remote Indigenous communities by those who are opposed to the contemporary reality of a customary sector that is often underwritten by some state income support (e.g. see Hughes 2005b; Sandall 2000). [2] At the most fundamental level, we interrogate the 2002 NATSISS to see if it provides information about the magnitude and significance of the customary sector that can inform academic and policy debate. Gibson-Graham (n.d.: 2) note that what is at stake in conversations about rethinking ‘economy’ is ‘who and what is seen to:
1) constitute the economy, and
2) contribute to economic development’.
How can 2002 NATSISS data help answer such questions?
The term ‘customary sector’ is similar to other widely used terms such as subsistence, non-market, non-monetary, informal, non-mainstream, cultural, and traditional-economy (see, inter alia, Altman & Allen 1992; Canadian Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples 1996; Fairbairn 1985; Fisk 1985; Morgan, Strelein & Weir 2004; Smith & Roach 1996). As outlined by Altman (2005b), the customary sector is made up of a range of productive activities that occur outside the market that are based on cultural continuities and specialities. These include activities such as hunting, fishing and gathering, production of art and crafts, and land, habitat and species management. [3] Although the customary economy is not monetised (or marketed) by definition, a proportion can attract a dollar value, as with the sale of Indigenous art (Altman 2005b). At the core of the hybrid economy model is recognition of the linkages and interdependencies between the market, state and customary sectors, as shown in diagram 12.1 below. Our focus here is on segment 2, but also on segments 4, 6 and 7.
These linkages and interdependencies are often overlooked in Indigenous policy. A recent example of such an oversight can be found in the Productivity Commission’s Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report mentioned above. The chapter ‘Economic participation and development’ recognises fishing, hunting and gathering as ‘important economic activities for some Indigenous people living on Indigenous-owned land’ and that the ‘customary economy could have significant value for Indigenous people’ (SCRGSP 2005: 11.20). However, by limiting its perception of such activity to being ‘an affordable source of fresh and healthy food’ the Productivity Commission focuses only on the direct subsistence benefits of such activity—it ignores culturally-informed interpretations of its significance and wider spin-off benefits that might be generated. Opportunities to recognise and promote economic development on the Indigenous estate through commercialisation of the customary are also overlooked (Altman 2005b).
In much of its report, the Productivity Commission relies heavily on data from the 2002 NATSISS. However, in its discussion of the customary sector, no reference is made to survey results. Similarly, in its main publication about the 2002 NATSISS, the ABS (2004c) similarly fails to report data it collected on hunting and fishing activities. More recently, in Australian Social Trends 2005, the ABS (2005a: 52–57) reports on fishing or hunting, but as a selected social activity rather than economic activity. It is worth asking whether this was because the 2002 NATSISS did not go far enough in assessing customary activity as economic activity. As a first step in exploring this issue, we examine the questions that the 2002 NATSISS asked in relation to the customary sector.