Report On the NTER Redesign Engagement Strategy and Implementation
6. Reporting
CIRCA reviewed the Government reports from all of the Tier 2 meetings and the Tier 3 meeting, and compared these with the notes taken by CIRCA observers. This was done to assess the accuracy of the meeting records.
Overall, the Government reports of the Tier 2 meetings reflected the content of the consultations. A standard template was used for the Tier 2 meetings, and this template allowed for introductory/overview comments and for additional issues to be documented.
The Tier 2 template followed the questions of the discussion paper. In several meetings we observed, these specific questions were not asked, as there was a general discussion on each measure. In these cases the reports listed the range of comments for each measure.
In most cases the Government reports accurately reflected the content of the Tier 2 consultations. For each section of the report, the range of comments made by community members were listed. In some cases the language used by community members was recorded in the reports, and in other cases a summary of the comment was used.
Reviewing the reports did highlight a few opportunities for improvement:
- It would have been helpful for a description of the meeting to be provided, and for descriptors in terms of level of anger and frustration to be provided. While the language recorded in many cases demonstrated this anger, it would have been helpful if the report clearly indicated this. Similarly, there was no indication in the reports of whether the comments came from a number of community members, or whether they were from a couple of community members (from our observations, a lot of the feedback was gathered from a few key community members). It would also be important to discuss whether the meeting was dominated by men or women, or Indigenous or non-Indigenous people (in a few cases non-Indigenous people dominated the discussion). As well, it would have been beneficial to provide other indicators with regards to whether participants were more/less engaged, and where the conversation was more forced
- A few reports did not clearly indicate the extent of negativity towards income management that CIRCA consultants observed in the meeting. Linked to this, in a few reports, the preference for the opt-out option was implied, whereas our interpretation of the feedback from the meetings is that the decision to be on income management should be left up to individuals
- The signs were an important issue in many communities, especially when the pornography measures was raised, and this was not always clearly recorded in the reports
- The consultations gathered feedback on a number of issues that are not
related to the NTER discussion paper. Below are some of the issues that
were raised consistently in the meetings, but that were not given enough
weight in the reports:
- Housing – many people were frustrated that no (or very little) improvements had been made with housing. Most had been promised (but were yet to realise) house refurbishments, but in almost every consultation we observed community members emphasised their need for more housing
- Pornography – mobile phones and late night TV were identified consistently as a concern
- Having funds available for the show – this was recorded in a few reports, but there were several meetings where this was identified but not reported.
When conducting consultations in the future, it will be important that there is an opportunity to record additional issues that are important, but may be beyond the scope of the consultation. The importance of this was emphasised during the observations, as the facilitators all made it very clear that the Government is interested in hearing from community members, and that the Government will take their comments seriously. This verbal commitment needs to be supported with a clear process for matters to be actioned. One option is for these reports or action items to be directed to the GBM for action.
The Tier 3 report included each question from the discussion paper, as well a section for general comments. This report was very detailed, and in many cases included quotes from the participants. Overall, the report we reviewed reflected the content of the discussions observed.
There are a few areas that could be improved in the future:
- As mentioned earlier, it would be valuable to include a descriptor of the meeting. While the communities represented were listed, in the future it would be helpful to also include information on the gender mix, age profile, level of engagement, and level of emotion expressed in the meeting.
- While there was a section in the report for other comments, it would be valuable to summarise the main issues of concern. For example, in the Katherine workshop there were lots of concerns raised about police, night patrol, the BasicsCard, housing, young people and employment, and these could have been identified and summarised more clearly in the report.
- The summary of the income management section identifies the level of opposition to the two income management options included in the discussion paper. However, the summary identifies the voluntary model with triggers for those not managing their money as the preferred model. We believe this over-simplifies the level of discussion and responses to some extent, as many said income management should be stopped, and the trigger model was acceptable as an alternative solution, rather than the preferred solution.
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