Senate Finance and Public Administration Legislation Committee, , 4:07:23 to 4:11:25
Senators question the NIAA on the lack of a comprehensive figure for total government spending on Indigenous programs across all portfolios, highlighting difficulties in mapping expenditure outside of targeted budget fact sheets.
Topics: First Nations, Government spending, Closing the Gap
Speakers: Dr Simon Gordon, Nicholas Creagh, Senator Kerrynne Liddle, Unknown Speaker, Senator Karen Grogan
>> That's interesting because complaints to my office have actually gone up as well and um I can tell you they're not there's somebody on the end of the phone when I respond to those phone calls um and letters. Um I just want to go to a question about uh budget estimates in May and a question that you were asked by Senator Najimmer Price um about the spend in indigenous affairs. Uh you took a question on on notice and that was question NIAA012 but you didn't actually provide a complete spend in the answer. Do you know a complete spend across all portfolios? Do you have a figure?
>> Nicholas Craig, chief financial officer. Um, Senator, thank you for the question. Um, NIAA doesn't have the um I guess the capacity to uh seek from the entire Commonwealth the measurement of spend on indigenous Australians. Um what we do uh always strive to do is obviously um give you the best information that we can for the information that we can control. Um it's uh not a I think the last time there was one of those um uh types of exercises undertaken was a productivity commission report um several years ago
>> so when I mean I just find that extraordinary that if we're talking about um several departments that are delivering programs that you can identify are for improving the lives of indigenous peoples um the communities and organizations that we can't get a number on what that spend is. Do we know who's spending it? Do we know what they're spending it on? How can we find that out in a in a collective if we did
Senator, I think that the um uh it's it's probably a question that we would need to um or or you you might need to take up with um central agencies like Department of Finance or or Department of Treasury. Um the uh there's there's obviously a range of of departments across the Commonwealth that are that are funding um funding indigenous programs in a very targeted way. Um but there's obviously then also the broader programs which um touch on uh First Nations people as well. Um so you know like the um welfare payments um and such that cover um the the entire population of the country as well including First
>> Senator I might be able to uh add a little to a bit to Mr. Cra's answer. Um Simon Gordon manager of Strategy Group. Um so each year we also publish a first nations budget fact sheet um which provides visibility of all the first nations expenditure across uh all portfolios. Uh for example the 2627 budget fact sheet which is available on the NIAA website uh outlined um a number of measures totaling 1.2 billion uh to be invested over 5 years. Um other departments also release um fact sheets outlining portfolio specific measures. In addition to that um you're asking how you could map it. You can get the details um in their portfolio budget statements as well uh of those measures and uh Mr. Crave was right around the last um review from the productivity commission which provided a a more kind of comprehensive um look at indigenous expenditure. I think that was around 2017. Um the next productivity commission um review of the national agreement on closing the gap has just commenced and there is uh one line item in their terms of reference which goes to looking um at expenditure on the national agreement which might provide a bit more detail as well once that
>> Thank you very much Senator Little. We'll go to Senator Thorpe.