Sustaining tenancies in Australia's indigenous town-camps
Creators: name: Nethercote, Megan
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024

description: Indigenous housing is an enduring policy problem in Australia. Policy failure (both rhetoric and reality) has characterised the history of the design, provision and management of housing welfare for Australia’s Indigenous communities in remote and town-camp locations. While the reasons for this are complex and contested, the consequences are more clear-cut: Indigenous people face much higher levels of disadvantage than non-Indigenous Australians. <br><br>The 2008 reforms mark a significant structural break in government approaches to the Indigenous housing crisis in remote and town-camps communities. Pre-2008, government endorsed a community-housing approach to Indigenous housing provision, advocating for housing policies and programs developed and administered in partnership with Indigenous communities. This policy approach was abandoned with the 2008 government endorsement of a public housing system for the provision and management of Indigenous housing in remote and town-camp communities. Informed by neoliberal views of Indigenous dysfunction, and the individual’s role in this, the government pursues a behavioural change approach to induce tenants to adopt ways of life consistent with western ways of living in a house and managing a tenancy. One important government objective in these reforms is securing sustainable tenancies for Indigenous tenants. Sustainable tenancies not only prevent tenancy failure, but help achieve positive tenancy outcomes (such as stability, security and improved health and well-being). Meeting this objective may provide an important reprieve for Indigenous people from the enduring cycle of policy failure. <br><br>This thesis aims to analyse how the initial implementation of the 2008 Indigenous housing reforms can lead to sustainable tenancies for residents in town-camp communities. Qualitative research methods were employed to study changes to tenants’ ways of living in Indigenous town-camp communities in the Northern Territory and Western Australia as a result of these reforms. Interviews were conducted with Indigenous tenants and a cross-section of Indigenous housing stakeholders involved in the design and implementation of these reforms in both jurisdictions. The investigation was guided by a dual approach to the analysis of the systems of housing welfare provision and of Indigenous tenants’ lived experience of these systems in order to understand the macro- and micro-level contexts for these housing reforms, how tenants’ ways of living were evolving as a result these reforms, and where opportunities might exist to further optimise positive tenancy outcomes. <br><br>The primary contribution of this thesis is to bring together a review of the current systems of housing welfare provision in town-camp communities, with a practice-based analysis of the lived experience of housing welfare in Indigenous town-camps. This thesis develop new understandings of how the sustaining tenancies agenda is met within current Indigenous housing welfare reforms, and especially how the criterion for supportive housing management might be achieved through new dynamics in public housing governance. This thesis identifies a series of issues affecting the implementation of the current Indigenous housing reforms and their capacity to attain sustainable tenancies for Indigenous tenants. It concludes by identifying a potential platform (within the constraints of these housing reforms) to optimise positive tenancy outcomes in Indigenous town-camp communities.