In April 2007, evaluations of the COAG trials were quietly released. Despite some diplomatic language, the reports revealed many problems; although there had been more progress at some sites than others, achievements were relatively limited in light of the significant resources dedicated to the trials. The evaluations identified the importance of building relationships and developing trust for successful partnerships, yet indicated that a number of factors militated against this. The trials had not emphasised enough how governments would need to work differently from how they had worked in the past to address community priorities; clearly insufficient attention had been given to new governance arrangements (Morgan, Disney and Associates 2006b).
The trials showed that an urgent priority is to address the capacity constraints within and between governments engaging with Indigenous communities. There is a need for clear, agreed policy frameworks and a simplification of program and funding arrangements, cultural change and staff development for whole-of-government work in Indigenous communities, as well as realistic expectations. They demonstrated that a successful framework needs to enable Indigenous people to have sustained, properly resourced opportunities to build their governance and participate in planning and decision-making. Building community governance and capacity at local and regional level through community development approaches is seen as a high priority for partnership working—to provide the foundation stone on which effective partnerships and programs can be built.
The COAG experience indicates that the factors that frustrated earlier self-determination policies were equally capable of frustrating positive outcomes from the ‘new arrangements’. In 1991, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (RCIADIC) had recognised that the years of self-determination policy were ‘a cruel hoax’ for Aboriginal people:
They were not really being offered self-determination, just the tantalising hint of it. Instead they were being bequeathed the administrative mess which non-Aboriginal people had left, and were being told to fix it up. It was their mess now (RCIADIC 1991 Vol 4: 27.6.1).
That mess was the multitude of different funding arrangements, the inter-departmental competition, or what amounted to a ‘ludicrously complicated funding super-structure’ (RCIADIC 1991 Vol 4: 27.3.13), which remained the source of many problems; 15 years after the Royal Commission it was still a non-Indigenous responsibility to fix it. Yet governments seemed unable to. Inter-governmental rivalries, arguments about funding levels and responsibilities, and political posturing frequently combined to frustrate improvements. As Dillon and Westbury (2007: 208) argue, ‘[t]here has been a fundamental failure in the governance of governments in relation to Australian Indigenous affairs’.
However, while the mainstreaming approach to service delivery applied across the nation, with the consequent tendency to circumvent, undermine and de-fund Indigenous organisations,[11] there was even greater change to come in the NT, which accounts for some 10 per cent of the national Indigenous population.
[11] The only Indigenous community-controlled sector that remained relatively unscathed was the health sector, although it was challenged to meet the accountability standards and processes associated with new public management approaches, while also meeting the expectations of its Indigenous clients for a more holistic health approach.