GRANTS COMMISSION

In today's world where truth is often a casualty in the battle for media attention and personal and political agendas, it is refreshing to know there are still some individuals and organisations willing to exercise some degree of quality control in collecting and collating data.
For this reason, there was a good degree of local interest when the Grants Commission came to the island a couple of weeks ago to discuss their preliminary report, and test its findings in an open forum, before presenting its final figures to Canberra. (More open forums of this type, especially with Joint Standing Committees, would have been helpful and helped build more trust.)
The Conference was attended by N.I. Government members and key administration officers, but was also open to any interested member of the public, and several took up the opportunity to have the findings explained, and to give feedback and voice concerns. A couple of DOTARS staff attended also, but the Commissioner Alan Morris stressed that they had no role in the conference.
When given the opportunity to make some opening comments, the Chief Minister voiced the frustration felt by many of us that the process of decision-making in Canberra concerning Norfolk's future is being based on incomplete information and with a lack of regard to social and cultural issues. Recognising that the Grants Commission is restricted to investigating the cost of providing services that are typically provided at a State and Local level in Australia, David pointed out that we already provide all of these services to meet local needs without grants and subsidies, and that here on Norfolk Island, the three levels of government are consolidated into a "seamless and efficient model."
Catherine Hull, from the Grants Commission Office, pointed out that the bottom line is that we would need a $9.7 million Commonwealth subsidy to carry out state and local functions that are provided in a comparative community in Australia. (We should point out that in the absence of a community anything remotely like Norfolk Island, a 'comparable community', for the Commission's purposes, is actually a composite mish-mash of features and aspects of a large range of small, remote or atypical communities all over Australia).
But it should be realised that this shortfall does not imply that our government fails to meet important community needs. It may mean that it meets them and funds them in a different way, and to a certain extent has different priorities because our economy has developed in a totally different way. But even if we were to eventually be forced to accept this subsidy, because some of our other revenue streams would be denied to us, we may still be forced to raise more revenues locally through means currently used by Australian state and local governments, such as land rates and taxes, and payroll taxes (more of that later).
Strangely enough, Norfolk Island already raises more than the Australian average in State type taxes! Confused? It all comes from trying to fit square pegs into round holes.
Commissioner, Alan Morris stressed that the work of the Commission was basically a mechanical exercise, and no value judgements were involved. The data they sought was basically figures, and data about perceptions and levels of satisfaction with the status quo did not really play a part. The Commission is concerned that the information they gather should be accurate, but they do acknowledge the difficulties of having to use data that has, in fact, been collected for other purposes. There is also the problem that Commission's conclusions are based on data collected for the 2004-5 financial year, and that the whole picture and equation tales no account of the effect of imposing Commonwealth legislation (including taxes and welfare regimes) on the Norfolk community and economy.
Facts and figures are neutral in themselves, but can be powerful tools, depending on who makes use of them. That is the scary part.
I have no doubt that the Grants Commission, given their narrow terms of reference, have found it frustrating trying to overlay a typical Australian model over an economy that is very, very different. Equally frustrating was the fact that a large percentage of the concerns raised during the Conference, although listened to with great patience and respect, simply did not come into the Commission's brief, or else they did not substantially affect the findings or the bottom line.
In my next posting, I will try to set out some of the contributions and concerns of those participating in the Conference.