[This letter first appeared in The Norfolk Islander and on Norfolk Online News, 5 November 2016]
Dear Editor,
I note the letter that appeared in The Norfolk Islander (15/10/16) over the signature of the Australian Government Minister now responsible for Norfolk Island, Senator the Hon Fiona Nash. In this letter a catalogue was given of the various monies that the Australian Government says it has spent and would be spending on Norfolk Island – on health services, the Central School, Cascade Pier, Medicare, and so on. There is much in the Minister’s letter which appears beneficial for Norfolk Island. For example the Cascade Pier upgrade involves a substantial Commonwealth commitment of money, and if the augmented pier performs as intended it will be a great blessing for the island’s economy.
The Minister’s letter was an informational promotion on behalf of the Commonwealth. Nothing wrong with that, you may say: “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”. But there is an even older horse proverb which says: “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”, referring to the episode of the wooden horse in the sacking of the city of Troy in the twelfth century BC. So how best should we read the Minister’s letter? Because the history of Australian Government’s past conduct on Norfolk Island has been characterised by so much duplicity, Norfolk Islanders would do well to be wary.
We need to ask: Is what has been said fact, or are these numbers just being waved around as a stick with which to beat the island? To what extent do the monies expended address the island’s priorities? Do the expenditures represent an efficient use of Commonwealth funds? Why are they doing what they are doing? In what follows, and for the reason just noted, I give a sceptic’s view. We will consider a selection of the issues.
Age pensions. According to the Minister, 229 people on Norfolk are being provided with age pensions, for around $4 million which it is said is “double the $2 million that was provided under the old system”. However what we don’t know is how many of the 229 are Australians recently come to live on the island, nor how many of them are New Zealanders now being paid under agreements with the Australian Government. Both of which groups should be excluded from current provision when comparing it with what went before.
These matters aside there is still a more fundamental problem with these numbers. The maximum basic rate of the Australian age pension per fortnight is $797.90 for a single person and $1,203.00 for a couple. This means that if the Commonwealth is spending $4m on age pensions – and supposing there are say, 83 single pensioners and 73 couples – then ALL of the pensioners would have to be in receipt of the maximum basic pension and no one getting less than the maximum. This is a nonsense, and the numbers promoted by the Minister cannot be relied upon. And if one cannot rely on these numbers, why should one rely on any of the others?
Medicare. Because of the introduction of Australian Medicare we are told, “residents can now access the local doctors much cheaper [sic], or even entirely paid for by Medicare.” If more people are currently going to the GP, as is contended, that is absolutely fine. However it is not so long ago that Norfolk Islanders were told that all GP visits would be bulk billed (i.e. “entirely paid for by Medicare”). Now this appears to have been withdrawn, and we are told that under some circumstances some visits to a GP may be fully paid by Medicare (and if not then the patient is responsible for the additional cost beyond the Medicare scheduled fee). The situation is only likely to get worse, particularly if as has been proposed, GP services are privatised (1). To claim virtue what needs to be compared here is the projected average annual cost of a family’s health care expenditures and scheme contributions under Medicare (including compulsory private insurance), with their equivalents under the old Norfolk Island Health Scheme. To my knowledge this has not been done.
The Hospital (aka NIHRACS) upgrades. The Minister’s letter states that the Australian Government has “Invested $700,000 on urgent repairs for the NI health service, which we look forward to improving.” Note that this expenditure has been for “urgent repairs”, not planning or administration. Now I can find only one recent Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development (DIRD) tender relating to the hospital repairs, and that is for $466,000 to “upgrade Norfolk Island hospital and school”. Let us suppose that the hospital got half of this figure, $233,000. Then where has the other $467,000 for the hospital’s “urgent repairs” come from, what has it been spent on, and by whom? No one appears to know.
Known repairs carried out at the hospital have included providing fire doors, ramp access, water storage tanks, and upgrading the electrical system. The new concrete disability ramp has been installed to replace an old concrete disability ramp judged to be too steep. Unfortunately the new railings appear dangerously inadequate, and at the top the ramp meets an outward opening door which cannot be manipulated by a wheelchair-bound patient. And then there is the hospital ward which has new windows but none of which are capable of opening. And then there is the hospital kitchen which has been stripped for refurbishment, before the job was declared to have “run out of money”, so that all hospital meals are having to be bought in commercially. All these urgent repairs are visible to any casual visitor to the hospital. Job specifications appear to have been hopelessly less than those required.
Consultations and consultancies. When we try to interpret the money numbers given by the Minister we might want to ask: How much of the expenditures already made on flying the football teams of bureaucrats from Canberra to Norfolk Island for meetings, have been debited to the Island’s account? Concern is redoubled by the fact that in many instances the visitors speak only to a small clique of insiders, to the neglect of many genuine stakeholders. (We may recall the recent occasion on which the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) flew 23 Canberra bureaucrats business class to Paris for a talkfest on how to save money, as reported by Heath Aston in the Sydney Morning Herald, 20 October 2016.)
Again we might ask what fraction of the expenditures has been on flown-in consultants employed to do things that could be done for a lesser cost if they had more effectively used local input? For example SGS Economics and Planning has been paid $69,000 by the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development (DIRD) for producing a 24-page report on an economic development strategy for Norfolk Island which said little that was not already known and was deficient in several respects (2). That’s $2,800 per page. Then again DIRD has paid consultants KPMG an eye-watering $800,000 to develop the island’s multi-purpose health services plan. Truly, the ignoring of local input has its price.
In the face of such Commonwealth largesse, it might appear to the observant Australian taxpayer that there has been on Norfolk Island a lack of control and substantial wastage by the Australian Government. And Norfolk Island itself has a significant interest in these matters, both because efficient spending would free up funds for other projects, and because the island has never ever wanted to be seen merely as the recipient of alms.
What was not said. We also need to examine the Minister’s letter from the point of what it did not say. What the Norfolk Island Regional Council has actually asked the Commonwealth for in recent times – as distinct from what the Commonwealth has decided Norfolk should have – is assistance with: (i) the waiver of the debt from the resealing of the airport runway in 2006; (ii) a reliable and on-going commitment to provide financial support for tourism; (iii) investment in the installation of at least a spur connector to the Hawaiki fibre optic trans-Pacific cable about to be rolled out (minimum cost estimate for the connector of around A$2.6m). None of these requests has been agreed to by the Minister.
And finally…. When we are adding up the “benefits” provided by the Australian Government, we might reflect on the fact that all the assets of land, buildings and equipment of the Norfolk Island Hospital (including the privately donated dental clinic and physiotherapy unit), Police Station, and Central School, built up and maintained by the Norfolk Island community over many years, have been taken over by the Australian Government, without compensation or payment. And that transfer includes all legacies gifted to the Norfolk Island Hospital. Many would call that theft.
In a following letter I will consider a more shocking aspect of the Minister’s letter.
(1) “Norfolk Island health services and the pitfalls of privatisation”, 16 July 2016; (2) “The proposed economic development strategy: good sense, fairy story, and deception”, 5 and 12 December 2015. Earlier letters available at: http://www.norfolkonlinenews.com/chris-nobbs.html________________________
Chris Nobbs
