Why Northern Australia cannot be a repeat of the last 200 years of the Australian experience

When Melbourne was first settled, the Yarra River was home to thousands of brolgas and magpie geese. In this temperate Kakadu here were as yet no introduced birds, foxes or rabbits, and native wildlife flourished, in turn supporting a vibrant Aboriginal culture.

Over the last 200 years the biodiversity and indigenous cultures of southern Australia have been devastated. Its rivers have been damned and polluted, its soils degraded, its forests felled and its fisheries overexploited. To wish the same on Australia's north is a death wish. Australia's north is every bit as fragile as the southern regions, and development must take a different path if catastrophe is to be avoided.

Peopling the north: Forget the Doomsayers

“ Populate or perish” is an old Australian theme. It fell into disfavour for a time, but now deserves revival. In modern form it can help Australia deal better with security, economic and environmental concerns, including through recognition of the opportunities available in Northern Australia. The formula for success in population policy is now available for progressive policy-makers who are willing to provide leadership. This address examines the necessary conditions for such progress.

Relating the North to the rest How is the Australian economy changing, and how does the North fit in?

How is the regional economy of Asia changing, and how does the North fit in? This includes the issue of how the rest of the Australia is changing, how Asia is changing, and how the North is changing. As a result, is the fit between the North and rest getting easier or harder? In this presentation, Dr Edwards will explore the north’s greater proximity to Asia, the greater preponderance of extractive export industries, the development of new transport and communication avenues, and our long development of multiculturalism. In some respects the North is now leading rather than following; in other respects it remains dependent on federal subsidies. Anycase there is clearly something happening and it would be good to put it in a national context and also into the context of the history of the idea of Northern Development. The advantage of this approach is that I have some new material about the changing Australian economy and the changing Asian economy, and so my work is to relate the North to the rest. For the audience there the advantage is that they hear some ideas about how Australia is changing and Asia is changing and how the north relates to these.

• What does a sustainably developed northern Australia look like?
• Is northern Australia a genuine or token player in the 21st Century Asian region?
• Should northern Australia have a population policy?
• How will Indigenous people and the services that support welfare dependency break out of the trap we’re all in?

Housing for Health: A case study in getting policy from the paddock.In 1985 we began work on the problem of the poor living environment and its contribution to Aboriginal ill-health, particularly in remote communities. On the Pitjantjatjara Homelands we undertook a study of the living environment of that population. The work involved:

1. A detailed description of the houses and living areas

2. Defining a set of “healthy living practices” that would be necessary for anyone to undertake in order to keep themselves and their families healthy in these communities

3. Describing the “health hardware”, that is, the things that the living environment needs to provide in order that people can practice healthy living. These particularly focused around the principle of water-in, waste out.

The focus of the work at that time was to assess whether the health hardware could perform its function in that environment. We developed a set of design, construction and building principles that would ensure functioning health hardware was provided.

In subsequent years we have developed a reproducible, standardised methodology for assessing the functioning of health hardware of houses and communities. This methodology has now been applied in a large number of Aboriginal communities. The work adheres to the basic principle, “no survey without fix.” A significant number of problems are fixed at the time of survey and subsequently a scope of works is detailed and then contracted before a further repeat assessment of health hardware functioning in that community is made.

Over time, this work has provided an extensive and detailed database about how Aboriginal houses perform in delivering the health hardware necessary for healthy living. In addition it shows that a systematic process can deliver change against measurable indicators.

The problem of implementation is not one of data, or evidence, process or method. While the language and rhetoric of this work has been widely adopted in housing and health circles over the last decade, there are substantial problems in ensuring that such policy documents actually lead to changing practice by government and relevant agencies. Our presentation will discuss the generic problems in achieving sustainable change in policy implementation.

Northern Territory: Health Impacts and Other Stresses in a Warmer, Mismanaged World

The wide open spaces of the Northern Territory may make the notion of global population pressures and their environmental consequences seem rather distant. However, as humankind increasingly changes, indeed disrupts, many of Earth’s great biophysical and ecological systems, so the actions of humans everywhere will tend to impinge on other humans everywhere. Thus, with global climate change, we ramp up the local emissions of carbon dioxide in Melbourne or Manhattan and the subsequent effects are felt in Darwin and Doha. This paper speaks to what Northern Australians can expect in an attempt to focus our minds on true preventive policies.

What does knowledge have to do with policy?

Making things happen rationally in the north.How much of sustainability is driven by knowledge? What are the cross cutting issues in science, not only in the North, but also in Australia? How might the North target its pillars of strength to develop its clusters while engaging the small and medium sized companies so important to future development?

The Role of Government in major developments in the North

This presentation will provide a brief overview of the Government’s vision for Northern development. It will make the case for strategic Government involvement, both at a state and federal level, in major development projects in Australia's Northern Region which have regional and national significance. The AustralAsia Railway and the Northern Territory's case for bringing Sunrise gas onshore in Darwin will be used as case studies to illustrate the position.

• How should policy makers heed predictions of global climate change for the Territory?
• How can Northern populations adapt to changing patterns of disease?
• When vested interests stand in the way, what are the tricks to translating research into concrete policy actions?
• Does high tech have real relevance to the northern Australian
  economy?

Allison Harris
Events Officer
Northern Territory University
Darwin, Australia
Email:  cdss2003@ntu.edu.au
Phone: (+61 8) 8946 6554