Remote Australia Online

This report describes the effects artificial watering points have on rangeland systems and their biota in Australia. One of the recent concerns regarding the large-scale spread of artificial watering points has been the effect that the increase in grazing pressure surrounding these focal points has on rangeland biodiversity. The loss of biodiversity in these regions has been attributed to the decline in landscape function as a result of human induced disturbances. As grazing pressure increases around these focal points, landscape function declines considerably, with a loss in vegetation cover, an increase in erosion, and a decrease in nutrient cycling. Literature on the effects of grazing pressure surrounding artificial water sources was reviewed according to three main topics of interest. 1) The patterns displayed within the biosphere: These patterns can be highly variable depending on grazing behaviour and forage conditions, the presence of fences, soil type, the salinity of water and climatic variables. A number of monitoring indices have been suggested; however, as there appears to be no universal pattern to the biosphere, researchers have been unable to agree on monitoring systems. 2) The degradation process, including soil compaction and erosion, and the effects on fauna and flora composition: Soil erosion increases significantly within the first 2–3 km from water as a result of heavy traffic and vegetation stripping. A significant loss of functionality in this region alters the vegetation dynamics. This includes a decline in abundance and richness of palatable forage species. Feral herbivore species have increased in abundance, contributing to the pressure exerted within these regions. Native fauna species have mostly suffered declines as a result of increased pressure and habitat alterations. 3) Biodiversity monitoring: This section covers more recent monitoring practices including remote sensing techniques and the use of Bayesian belief network models. These methods can monitor large areas and account for both temporal and spatial variation. Bayesian belief models can incorporate both empirical data and that of expert opinion, and can predict the response of a system to human disturbance. Both these models can be incorporated to produce a powerful monitoring tool.

The Committee shall inquire into and report on the operation of local community stores in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, with a particular focus on: 1. Food supply, quality, cost and competition issues; 2. The effectiveness of the Outback Stores model, and other private, public and community store models; and 3. The impact of these factors on the health and economic outcomes of communities.

The Committee shall inquire into and report on opportunities for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to grow small and medium-size business. This shall include Indigenous controlled enterprises and business in which Indigenous people are joint venture partners. In particular, the Committee will focus on: 1. whether current government, industry and community programs offering specific enterprise support programs and services to Indigenous enterprises are effective, particularly in building sustainable relationships with the broader business sector; 2. identifying areas of Indigenous commercial advantage and strength; 3. the feasibility of adapting the United States minority business/development council model to the Australian context; and 4. whether incentives should be provided to encourage successful businesses to sub contract, do business with or mentor new Indigenous enterprises.

By exploring the socio-political history of a fringe camp in a small Northern Territory town the colonial structures that reinforce separation and marginality are revealed. That this town is surrounded by Aboriginal freehold land and serviced by a predominantly Aboriginal Council speaks of the complex interleaving of Aboriginal and settler interests. These interests have been formed through the violent history of the pastoral frontier in this region. Yet, there is also Indigenous agency in the choice of creek campers to live on the fringes of the town. Indeed, some have been doing so for as long as they can recall and actively state that they have no desire to live in a formal house in the township. Balancing a universal human rights perspective (that considers “conditioned satisfaction”, for instance) with that of a culturally and locally informed agency is a key challenge articulated in this paper.

This compilation of reports brings together almost 3 years work with the Desert Knowledge CRC and the Anmatjere Community Government Council (ACGC). The research was originally sponsored under the “Governance, Management and Leadership” theme and was entitled “Community Governance and Service Delivery in sparsely settled desert areas”. The Desert Knowledge CRC provided funding for field research and community collaboration. The project was also part of a larger ‘Indigenous Community Governance’ project funded by the ARC based at CAEPR (ANU) with Reconciliation Australia as the linkage partner.

The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was endorsed by the Australian government earlier this year, although it had been adopted by the UN almost two years prior. Translating this rights discourse into enabling resources in the area of research is a growing area of attention. There is also a growing recognition that Indigenous knowledge of the environment has something to teach western science. However, creating the space where this knowledge sharing can occur is challenging, not least because there are fundamental differences in these knowledge systems. The seminar will provide an overview of the content of a range of resources, such as the DKCRC ‘Aboriginal Knowledge and Intellectual Property Protocol’ and the ‘Guidelines for Indigenous Ecological Knowledge Management’ in the NT, in which I have been engaged in co-developing. I will then discuss the process of the development of these resources through workshops and focus groups – which were just as important as the final products. The culturally inclusive forums were collaborative, incorporating several kinds of discourse in order to facilitate shared understandings among participants of the specialised language of intellectual property and the international language of rights. Recognition of the history of exploitation and the misappropriation of Indigenous knowledge in research was an important first step in the process, as was the recognition that Indigenous peoples own their knowledge and the right to manage it and gain from its use.

This chapter reflects on the role of research and the constraints on researchers acting as change agents in the context of a project on an Aboriginal governance issue. By examining what has happened to the knowledge produced in the context of this project, with the Anmatjere Community Government Council (ACGC) about a fringe camp within the Ti Tree township in the Northern Territory (NT), the tensions between advocacy and impartiality are explored. This fringe camp is without any basic servicing, although there has been a permanent Aboriginal population there since settlement of the town from the late 1880s. The conundrum raised by this research project was that although we found pathways to change, our suggestions were not pursued either by the ACGC or the NT Government. Considering why this was the case leads to an examination of power relationships between Aboriginal people and the state, as mediated through the council, and an exploration of the impacts of policy in this context. Thus, the challenges of operating as a researcher within this environment suggest that the impact of research is constrained by the limits to collaboration, both by the means through which policy becomes a rationalising tool of the NT Government and the deeper local history of colonialism.

In late 2006 the DKCRC Indigenous Intellectual Property Protocol was subject to a revision exercise. This revision raises a number of critical issues that go to the heart of the nature of collaborative research and ethical practice. The revision process for the Protocol was a collaborative one, in which several different kinds of discourse occurred. These discourses necessitated preliminary preparation, in order to facilitate shared understandings among workshop participants of specialised language and concepts pertaining to intellectual property, and to international legal discourse. This paper will explore some of the challenges and issues in the process of developing these shared understandings.

The Lake Eyre Basin is a huge and truly unique system. Its rivers are the most variable in the world by a large degree, and they are among the last major unregulated dryland rivers on the planet. The Basin itself ranks among the largest internally draining river basins in the world, and supports a unique flora and fauna adapted to extreme patterns of boom and bust tied to cycles of flood and drought. The ephemeral wetlands of the Basin support enormous feeding and breeding opportunities for waterfowl and shorebirds, which are becoming even more important as the wetlands of the Murray Darling Basin disappear.

This paper examines the concept of community based tourism (CBT) to determine its potential in the planning and development of destinations for bird watching. There are two approaches used to describe CBT by tourism researchers. One focuses on community development through tourism and the other on community engagement in the planning and development of tourism. The results from a study of bird watchers attending the 2007 UK Bird fair were used to highlight the importance of providing information about the various segments of the bird watching market to enable a community to make informed decisions regarding tourism. The results suggest that a community must be engaged at all levels of decision making to ensure that development strategies are compatible with community aspirations. The paper concludes that more information about market demands upon a destination is required up front and that communities be empowered with the responsibility of being self directed through the making of informed decisions.

This paper provides a general profile of Nepabunna and its environs. It discusses some of the general features that contribute to sustainability, such as water supply, food, energy and employment. We then focus on the people issues, which seem to be the biggest threat for the sustainability of the region. In particular, suitable employment and education have always been a problem, but the small size of the community is now posing a threat, since there are many unwanted consequences that come from having a small community. We argue that the actual population that supports Nepabunna and that calls it home is much bigger than Census data indicate, and that governments should take that into account when judging whether a small community is too small for essential services.

Fieldwork in two remote Aboriginal communities in arid South Australia found diverse considerations for sustainability. For Nepabunna in the Flinders Ranges, the main resource and environmental concerns were less problematic than social issues such as population mobility and the small number of young people remaining in the community. Pukatja in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) Lands, on the other hand, contends with serious resource and environmental issues. Both communities had sustainability issues for young people that looked similar but which were very different. For Nepabunna, because the number of young people has decreased, there have been flow-on effects of services being threatened, a lack of companionship for those remaining, and concern about future leaders. Pukatja has many young people but without access to better secondary education and employment, boredom is reported to have detrimental effects. All these issues have implications for policy formulation, in particular, the lack of contextualising the evidence for policy has meant that solutions to sustainability issues have not worked. For Nepabunna, policy that is determined by resident population size fails to recognise a larger dependent community, not necessarily resident. Government support for involving relatives and the wider community — who are not necessarily resident in the community — is one possible way to promote community sustainability despite population fluctuations. The real problem, then, is that government laws and policy are typically formulated as general or abstract propositions designed to be implemented in the same way over very diverse contexts. A sustainable, appropriate policy system needs to allow for locally created, managed and implemented policies to ensure rapid and context-driven adaptations to whatever contingencies occur. Our research found that a context driven policy process is more appropriate for diverse, small, remote communities.

There are issues with living in remote regions of Australia that arise from the different forms of social relationships. In this paper we outline three forms of relationships that are useful in teasing out issues when living in remote regions. We then consider several ways that relationship issues might arise in remote communities and some solutions through examining the interactions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, settlers and service providers. We also show how a graphic drawing of relationships from the perspective of remote communities can be utilised to help communities to plan their own solutions.

17 ways that 'community talk' misguides research

This report examines data and issues related to Vocational Education and Training (VET) and Adult and Community Education (ACE) in the desert region of Australia, with a particular focus on Indigenous peoples. It firstly examines the context of training delivery in terms of demography, infrastructure and access to services. Secondly, a summary of VET and ACE data is drawn together from a variety of sources. Finally, some preliminary conclusions are drawn about participation and application of training in the desert, based to a large part on the analysis of the contextual data.

The Australian desert region covers over two-thirds of the land mass of the continent and spans five state and territory jurisdictions. Access to training for the more than 30,000 people who belong to Aboriginal desert communities is inhibited by a number of factors including English language, literacy and numeracy, remoteness, seasonal inaccessibility and high costs associated with service delivery to these areas. Nevertheless, learning in a variety of forms does contribute positively to the livelihoods of those living in the desert region. Research on which this paper is based, funded by the National Centre for Vocational Education and Research (NCVER) and the Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), explores the linkages between these learnings and desert livelihoods. The research comes at a time of considerable change both in the vocational and technical education (VTE) sector within Australia and the direction of policy relating to the Australian Government’s approach to addressing Indigenous wellbeing, particularly in remote communities. The paper reports on the findings of four case studies conducted across the jurisdictions of the desert region and considers the impact of training in four different vocational settings. The focus of the paper will be a cross-cutting analysis of the issues that have arisen from the case studies along with an exploration of ‘what works’. Given the changing nature of policies impacting on Aboriginal communities in the Australian desert (particularly as they affect training, employment and community capacity more generally), this paper will provide an important contribution to the understanding of the dynamics of VTE practice in a fluid policy context.

Worro Downs System Schematic July 2006 Worro Downs System Hazards and Rectifications Worro Downs Water Supply Weekly to Monthly Checks Worro Downs Water Supply Monthly to Yearly Checks Worro Downs Water Supply Special Events and Emergencies List of Contacts When to Replace Parts When Parts Were Fitted Anticipated Replacement Dates Chlorinating your Water Tank

Yappala System Schematic July 2006 Yappala Water Supply Hazards and Rectifications Yappala Water Supply Weekly and Monthly Checks Yappala Water Supply Monthly and Yearly Checks Yappala Water Supply Special Events and Emergencies What to do if you have no water pressure at Yappala Community Chlorinating your Water Tank When Parts were Fitted/Anticipated Replacement Dates Contact Details

This handbook is to help people working with, and living in small remote settlements to develop a water management plan. The focus is on remote settlements that are isolated from major or regional centres and have an Aboriginal population of one hundred or less and up to twenty dwellings. The population may be variable as residents leave the settlement for various reasons, such as fulfilling cultural obligations and accessing mainstream services. The handbook will: - share ideas and practical tips on establishing and maintaining safe water management practices for small water systems - provide guidance in developing small settlement water management plans - supplement information currently available (see Reference list). This handbook is for: - residents and people working with small and remote Aboriginal settlements.

In this report we describe the Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre’s research project: Remote Community Water Management. The two-year project was conducted between 2004 and 2006 in collaboration with the Cooperative Research Centre for Water Quality and Treatment. The Australian Government Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and the Centre for Appropriate Technology were core research partners. We document the project experience of creating locally-driven water management plans in five remote Aboriginal settlements. The 2004 Australian Drinking Water Guidelines’ Framework for the Management of Drinking Water Quality and the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework were guiding principles during the process of designing and implementing the water management plans.

Water management in small Aboriginal settlements in remote Australia is typified by technology-driven approaches where knowledge, decision-making and responsibility reside with organisations and agencies outside the settlement. This conventional approach has been a disincentive to active involvement by residents in managing the hazards and risks of their own water supply, despite the apparent presence of knowledge and skills at the settlement level. This paper outlines lessons from the Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Centre’s Remote Community Water Management Project. The aim of the 2-year project was to identify a replicable model and process for sustainable small scale water supply management in remote Aboriginal settlements. The approach was a practical departure from viewing water quality in isolation from the other water supply issues such as water quantity, affordability, additional resources and aspirations. The risk management model that was developed and utilised is presented and the significant factors that enabled a holistic approach to water supply management are discussed. The dynamic combination of participatory processes and an iterative approach enabled effective project implementation, and created an environment of continual improvement. Critical elements of the project implementation are described, in particular, the sequencing of activities and the identification of incentives and drivers for increasing self reliance. The social capital within the case study settlements is explored as a critical attribute for a sustainable management program or change process. The model developed during the project provides a structure for expanding the approach to, for example, a regional water management strategy. The opportunities for expansion are further enhanced by the practices of developing appropriate and transferable tools. The integration of livelihood aspirations within institutions of policy and water risk management practice is endorsed for effective and sustainable local water management.

This paper introduces the use of market based instruments as policies for biodiversity management in the Australian rangelands. We discuss the potential benefits of using MBIs and some of the key issues that need to be considered in their design and use.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the contribution that expenditure by Aboriginal people, and related institutions and activities, makes to the Central Australian/Alice Springs economy. Expenditures estimated include: those by Aboriginal people in Alice Springs; expenditure in Alice Springs by institutions which deal exclusively or extensively with Aboriginal people; and the expenditures which persons and organisations located in adjacent Aboriginal communities and outstations make within Alice Springs. In addition, the contribution to tourism expenditure of Aboriginal people and culture will be estimated. Sources of data for this study include the ABS 2006 Census, survey results from institutions in Alice Springs and from community organisations that purchase supplies from Alice Springs, and a survey of tourists. Our conclusions are that the Aboriginal proportion of the Alice Springs and Central Australian economy is both core to that economy and has grown slightly in relative measure over the past two decades.

This paper reviews the legislation relating to ownership of feral camels in Australia. We find that, as a general proposition, a feral camel is owned by neither the landowner nor the Government (the Crown), unless State or Territory legislation provides otherwise. This occurs in two limited situations and only for New South Wales and South Australia. Relevant State and Territory legislation can prescribe that feral camels cannot be taken or used without a relevant licence or permit, but only Western Australia and Queensland appear to do this. Lack of legislative certainty about ownership of camels has resulted in a clear market failure whereby there is also little or no private incentive to exercise control. This should be corrected by identifying explicitly that ownership is vested in the Crown. Legal analogues exist with respect to disease control and water management that could form the basis of an appropriate legislative framework.

This paper is about how I and why I came to conduct the research the way I did. As a non-Indigenous person conducting funded research to identify the factors that facilitate, and/or undermine the sustainable development of Indigenous tourism enterprise, there were many issues I confronted in the planning of the research design. This paper discusses those issues, and considers how best to undertake this research given the constraints imposed by the funding bodies. This paper, and all the writing that emerges from this research, is written in plain language because 'technical language' has long excluded many people from gaining knowledge and I believe that everyone who has participated in this research, and not just academics in this field, should be able to read, understand, and use the information contained herein.