Pearls and Irritations

When unpacking the way in which national funds for front line services such as homelessness are handed out, arguably little has changed for modern day Darwin since the garrison town was bombed in 1942.

When Justice Charles Lowe handed down his first report of the Commission of Inquiry into the circumstances connected with the attack on Darwin by the Japanese on 19 February 1942 he noted, amongst other things, an absence of prior planning by Civil Authorities and insufficient anti-aircraft equipment and air defence.

Writing on the 70^th anniversary of the bombing in 2012, in a piece for the Sydney Morning Herald, Malcolm Brown notes that there were insufficient anti-aircraft guns and machineguns, and that “training had been reduced because of ammunition shortages”.

The abovementioned contribution by Brown describes, in his words, “an outpost ill-prepared for attack.”

Fast forward to 2023 and there are good reasons to suggest these observations remain as salient as ever. A tiny jurisdiction with a capital city strategically positioned in Australia’s north and with burgeoning expenditure in its naval, air and sea defence capabilities, the Northern Territory, remote and out of sight for 98.7% of the Australian population remains, at least in certain areas of public policy, an under-resourced and poorly planned outpost.

In this respect, the Territory is both an outlier and frontier. Remoteness, sheer natural beauty, rich Aboriginal culture and a good dash of jumping crocodiles, “Boundless Possible” (sic) and larrikinism drives a sense of bemused intrigue and travel wanderlust for interstaters but doesn’t always serve the needs of many Territorians well, particularly those who have unmet housing need at twelve times the rate of the rest of Australia.

With an estimated resident population of just 250,000, the Northern Territory spans an area of 1.4 million square kilometres. That’s 0.18 persons per square kilometre compared to 3.3 people per square kilometre for Australia as a whole. We’re talking here about small and very small remote and extremely remote communities, often lacking in power and other essential infrastructure. There are often few, if any, locally based services available.

Aboriginal communities fare worst, with the Northern Territory sitting firmly in the dogbox on all social determinants of health.

The Commonwealth and Northern Territory Governments can, with a good deal of justification, point to record levels of investment in remote housing and homelands over recent years. This attempts to rectify, to a modest extent, the abject underinvestment in housing over many decades, noting that Aboriginal people weren’t counted in the Census until 1971 and little was known about the extent of unmet housing need.

Despite the predilection of incumbent Governments to say that they have spent a lot more on housing than the previous lot ever did, the reality is that Governments of the day, both in Canberra and in Darwin, have inherited a mess in respect of the housing portfolios they oversee. Think of housing stock that is generally more than 30 years old, with some assets that predate Cyclone Tracy – stock that is run down through lack of maintenance and repairs, with households of 20 or more putting extreme load on sinks, showers and toilets – you get the picture.

Hundreds of millions of dollars spent on remote housing this millennium has contributed to a 4.5% reduction in the Territory’s estimated homeless population over the last Census period. Does this mean that we are on the right trajectory to end homelessness and overcome Aboriginal housing disadvantage? The short answer is no.

Boosting housing supply through direct builds or head leasing existing property is ultimately the key policy lever for tackling homelessness. But that’s only one side of the coin. Professional services are needed to make tenancies sustainable and link tenants with complex needs to the help they need to prevent further, recurring homelessness. Otherwise, it’s like building schools without providing funding for teachers. We need both. There is a paucity of front-line specialist services, with many large communities and service centres across the Territory having none whatsoever.

Under the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement (NHHA), an intergovernmental partnership agreement between the Commonwealth, State and Territory Governments, the Northern Territory receives 1.3% of total funding allocated each year. This is driven ostensibly by the Territory’s share of population. Sounds reasonable, right?

In fact, as a small sibling in a much bigger family, the Northern Territory receives a very poor deal indeed. Despite off-the-chart levels of unmet housing need (which includes those living in rental stress, rough sleeping or living in severely crowded housing), last year the Territory received $1,587 per person experiencing homelessness. By contrast, Western Australia, with 26% fewer people experiencing homelessness, received $18,300 per person. No other State or Territory received less than $13,400 per person.

What’s not clear is whether State and Territory allocations have historically been settled on a per capita basis according to the interests of the bigger States or whether there were legitimately unforeseen consequences of implementing an overly simplistic distribution method.

Over the past 18 months, two significant reports have recommended that funding to the States and Territories for housing and homelessness should be according to need rather than population share. The Productivity Commission’s review of the NHHA, released last year, was clear on this point. A joint Parliamentary Inquiry into Homelessness, released in 2021, came to the same conclusion.

The Northern Territory’s Minister for Housing and Homelands recently said, on the public record, that “we’re never going to get ahead in the Northern Territory if we continue to be population based-funded; our territory context is unique”.

For some, asking for more from Canberra is portrayed as a sign of weakness and met with derision. We’ve seen the politicisation of this over the years. In truth, asking for more or indeed demanding a fairer share can also be a necessity in order to right the wrongs of the past. Advocates for the Northern Territory are becoming increasingly assertive in their rally for need-based funding and have a limited window of opportunity to get this over the line. If Oliver Twist’s bigger orphan brothers are looking on with scorn and derision at his audacity, then so be it. If we don’t stand up for ourselves and ultimately secure a fairer deal with the States and Commonwealth, we’ll continue to remain but a mere outpost.

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