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Increasingly, Australia's agriculturalists are looking to the nation's north to escape the decline in southern Australia's water and soil resources. Booming mineral and gas development is also helping to drive the nation's economic success. At the same time, the south's conservation sector would like to see much of the north preserved as iconic wilderness. Both conservation and resource development interests alike are often at odds with the interests of the north's traditional owners, many of whom remain trapped in welfare dependency and poverty. Indeed, to the ire of north Australians, the past four decades of north Australian history have indeed been characterized by these national-scale conflicts being played out in regional and local communities.This book explores these conflicts as well as the many emerging opportunities facing the development of the north, suggesting that a strong cultural divide between northern and southern Australia exists; one that needs to be reconciled if the nation as a whole is to benefit from northern development. The author first explores where these historical conflicts could take us without a clear forward agenda. A story-based personal narrative from my long and diverse experience in the north gives life to these themes. Finally, the book then draws on these stories to help shape a cohesive agenda for the north's future.

[Extract] Three north Queensland MPs representing just 3% of the state's population will wield huge power in Queensland's parliament, which resumes on Tuesday for the first full sitting week since the January 31 state election. In the weeks since quitting the Labor Party – after Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk advised him to resign – new independent Billy Gordon has said he has been "forming an alliance" with the two Katter's Australian Party (KAP) MPs, Rob Katter and Shane Knuth. Gordon's resignation left the Labor government with just 43 MPs in the 89-seat parliament, up against the Liberal Nationals' 42 – though Palaszczuk can also count on the support of independent Speaker Peter Wellington. That gives Gordon, Katter and Knuth – who represent the neighbouring north Queensland seats of Cook, Mt Isa and Dalrymple – an unprecedented opportunity to trade their votes for a better deal for their regions, on everything from jobs to major infrastructure.

[Extract] What do school chaplains and cassowaries have in common? Both highlight the degree to which federal governments struggle to devolve quality public decision-making to the right level. Our schools and our wildlife both need good governance. But just as the chaplaincy program was slapped down by the High Court as an example of federal government overreach, the Commonwealth also needs to tread carefully to foster better regional and local conservation efforts. Two new federal reforms will give us a chance to debate these issues: the negotiations of agreements with the states on environmental approvals, and the reform of Australia's major Natural Resource Management (NRM) funding programs. Both also present an opportunity to massage our somewhat dysfunctional system of conservation management.

[Extract] Recently, Australia's north has featured front-and-centre in national debates about the country's future; the election campaign will likely see more claims about what the north can do for the country. Some cast it as the frontier saviour, a source of bold new resource and agricultural developments both real and imagined. Others dream of securing the north's expansive landscapes as iconic wilderness. Northern policy has long been a source of conflict. Debates have raged about the success or otherwise of government interventions in indigenous communities. Quick-draw policy responses on complex issues like the live cattle trade have devastated many communities. Additionally, media images of coast-bound refugees keep the north's strategic importance centre-stage, raising unresolved tensions about our Asian-Pacific relationships.

[Extract] From its stunning wetlands in the west, across a dry central spine, to the coastal heathlands and rainforests in the east, Cape York Peninsula is deservedly world-famous for its rugged beauty. For many Australians, memories or dreams of making a "once in a lifetime" trip north to the tip of Cape York evoke deep passions. These passionate responses can range from those seeking greater protection of this biologically-rich region, to those who see only the potential for unlimited development. Unfortunately, too often those deeply divided approaches have meant that the Peninsula's 15,000 people have been overlooked in outsiders' visions for the region. With the Queensland Government set to release its new draft Cape York Regional Plan within the next few weeks, now is a good time to rethink the foundations needed to deliver real progress for the people of the Peninsula, as well as to the benefit of the nation.

Over the last decade, Australia's tropical north has featured front and centre in big national debates about the nation's future. As in the past, the north has again been cast as the nation's frontier saviour through bold new resource and agricultural developments, both real and imagined. Yet others have dreamt of the north's expansive landscapes being secured as an iconic wilderness. Big human rights-centred debates have raged about the success or otherwise of Commonwealth, State and Territory interventions in Indigenous communities. Quick-draw policy responses on complex issues like the live cattle trade have had devastating impacts on the confidence of northern industries and communities. Finally, the daily media images of refugees heading to the coast keep the north's strategic importance on centre-stage, raising unresolved tensions about relationships with our Asian-Pacific neighbours. With some exceptions, these national debates have played out across southern Australia's media, policy-making and academic institutions and think-tanks; a debate largely crafted by, and for, a southern audience. For those of us in the north, it is forgivable to think that the south looks upon northern Australia as one might look upon their own troubled child; a youngster on the precipice between adolescence and adulthood. There seems to be, on one level, that great hope and expectation of a gifted life ahead; the north stepping forth into untold prosperity and longevity. At the same time, there remains a fear that, left to its own devices, the north will spiral into delinquency; a failed state perhaps. While it could be too easy to cast a discussion about the future of northern Australia in simple north-south terms, the south does have the political power, money and population to deliver big changes in the north. Many in the north, however, would argue that, on a daily basis, they experience flaws in the south's contribution to its governance. There is a common perception that major policy decisions are often made in the interest of a southern electorate without real concern for the rights and interests of those in the north. Other concerns relate to programs that are too short term, fragmented and restrictive to make any genuine changes for the better. Without further extending the "troubled youth" analogy, this might just be a sign that the north is maturing and is champing at the bit to be more in control of its own destiny. The north, however, is indeed different to the south. It has a far thinner human and institutional capacity. Its land tenure foundations are largely public or communal versus private. It is primarily an Indigenous domain. Its climate and annual cyclonic risk is beyond the typical experiences of those in the south. Much of the north is closer to populous Asian and Pacific capitals than to Perth, Brisbane or Canberra. As such, northerners, by and large, are looking for different governance models. There is a desire to cast existing models aside and to at least explore, in partnership with State and Federal Governments, innovative new approaches. Northern Australians want people in the south to better understand this unique, majestic land and its importance to the nation. Over recent years, several columnists and academics have had a go at building a narrative about the north, but few have tried to start a genuine dialogue between northern and southern Australia; a dialogue focused on how the nation as a whole might work towards a better future for northern Australia through governance reform. This discussion piece aims to start a national debate about the purpose and direction for such reform. It is not, however, a return to Theodorian-style calls for political separatism. Northern Australia needs southern Australia and vice versa. This means that, at the very least, the nation needs a bolder and united north Australian narrative that takes us from being the post-colonial backwater of three separate governments to a more northern-driven but nationally integrated governance system. It is about Australian and State/Territory Governments radically and collectively reconfiguring their current fragmented and geographically distant approach, to one that negotiates big policy decisions in the north and that manages government policy and programs in radically different ways. With mature economies in the south, fresh opportunities for major national economic, social and environmental advances rest in the north. Southern powers need to explicitly support the emergence of these opportunities from within the north itself for the benefit of the nation as a whole. This could emerge through a stronger northern Australian policy, fiscal and delivery architecture; perhaps one directly integrated into the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) framework. Such an architecture and associated processes, however, must be powerfully engaged with a cohesive and strong pan-tropical alliance of northern Australia's sectoral interests, inclusive of traditional owners, local government, industry, human service, conservation and other sectors. It must also be independently informed by a cohesive and engaged knowledge-based relationship with the north's key research institutions. If this approach recasts the way decisions are made for the north, then there are several big reform agendas that need to be the foundational focus of attention. First, as the foundation for both economic development and rights protection, the north needs real innovation in the efficient resolution of land use and tenure conflicts across the landscape. This requires a long-term, cohesive and regionally-driven approach to planning of the north's strategic land use and infrastructure needs. This contrasts the current approach, driven both by either high profile southern conservation campaigns or major development projects that emerge in bull markets. On the economic front, we also need a more targeted and consistent approach to negotiating major project development in ways that lift investor-confidence while not trashing our crown-jewel environmental and cultural assets; approaches that also can build the long-term foundations for regional community development. Alongside this, we have an opportunity to create the basis for an eco-system services economy specifically designed for, and focussed on, northern Australia; one that delivers land owners/managers real economic reasons for managing landscapes explicitly for their cultural, conservation and wilderness values while also keeping the economic foundations for remote communities intact. At the community-scale, over the past 30 years, the core government model for Indigenous policy and program delivery shifted from assimilation to self-determination, but the policy failures of both have culminated in (the largely top-down) interventions of the last decade and their focus on service normalisation. While addressing critical needs, the new normalisation-based approaches continue to disempower and deliver stop-start progress. The architecture for government delivery largely remains welfare-oriented, inflexible and annualised. Such approaches simply do not build lasting human capacity and often do not work for a region with a rugged landscape, limited human resources and a cruelling wet-dry seasonality. Similarly in that time, local governments across the north have been gradually lumbered with big new policy and delivery responsibilities without linked improvements in revenue. To shift the whole economy from an historically boom-bust cycle, however, the nation must build the foundations for a tropical knowledge-driven economy that both underpins productivity improvements in our existing industries (mining, agriculture, fishing, tourism) and creates real export-oriented engagement. This outward looking engagement needs to be not just into the Asia-Pacific, but right across the globe's tropical latitudes. This will rely on Australia investing in tropical knowledge development (e.g., tropical health, agriculture, environmental and disaster management, tropical design and energy) within the north. These strengths then need to be brokered into the wider tropical region via long-term partnership building, trade and innovation clusters and the strategic attraction of foreign investment. This palette of reforms could deliver a progressive and productive northern Australia with a strong identity and lifestyle values to-die-for. Despite the challenging climate, the north could become a place where a great diversity of people (with a wide skills base) want to live, escaping our reputation as the southern hemisphere's salt mines. The cost of failure would be great: a permanent boom and bust economy with more bust and less boom, whole regions of multi-generational disadvantage and the nation's environmental and cultural jewels degraded. If progressed through the right governance reforms, however, securing these opportunities in the north may hold the keys to the whole nation's future. This paper outlines first why good governance for northern Australia is important to the nation. It details how things actually function in a pan-tropical sense, in northern Western Australia (WA), the Northern Territory (NT) and northern Queensland, and at regional and local scales. It then looks at how the north has been governed through the lens of major conflict themes from our recent history. It also looks at the outcomes that might emerge from a business-as-usual scenario; what happens if the flaws in the governance of the north continue unabated into the future? Finally, it explores (or perhaps dreams) of some of the alternative possibilities for northern governance.

[Extract] Northern Australia, the region of Australia north of the Tropic of Capricorn, is characterized by profound difference and complexity in cultures, worldviews and ways of being. An array of diverse governance responses to the way this complexity and difference manifests itself has been discussed elsewhere (Stephens, 2014). This chapter reflects in particular on the use of Governance Systems Analysis (GSA) in northern Australia in improving governance outcomes in this complex world. GSA is an analytical tool deployed to support deliberative dialogue among those involved in complex governance systems and contexts in the north. To date, its most common use has been in the mobilization of the dominant norms of governmental practice to resolve complex problems at a landscape scale. In the context of multiplicity and incommensurability of different ways of being, this chapter seeks to enhance GSA's ability to engage explicitly and ethically with genuine cultural difference embedded within northern Australian society. It uses Critical Systems Thinking (CST) to revisit, through systems thinking, GSA's structural-functionalist foundations. The chapter's objective is to enhance an approach to complex problem solving that is already used in Northern Australia to support practical policy engagements.

The intended outcomes of governance for the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) are made clear in the Reef Long Term Sustainability Plan (LTSP). At its broadest level, the vision for future outcomes in the GBR under the LTSP is "to ensure the Great Barrier Reef continues to improve on its Outstanding Universal Value every decade between now and 2050 to be a natural wonder for each successive generation to come" (Commonwealth of Australia, 2015). The Plan goes on to outline a range of quite specific water quality and reef health targets that it intends to achieve by 2050. This vision and associated outcomes are broadly agreed across the Australian and Queensland Governments and among key sectors with GBR interests. These outcomes are also implicitly supported internationally through recent decisions regarding the future status of the GBR taken by the United Nations Educations, Sciences and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 2015). This document consists of a number of rapid assessment tables that examine the risk of systemic failure of key governance domains and subdomains that majorly influence outcomes in the GBR. In doing so, we apply the Governance Systems Analysis (GSA) framework tested in Dale et al. (2013). Table 3 provides a description and summary of the results of all the rapid assessments contained in this document. The rapid assessment tables below are organised based on their alignment with the overarching governance themes of Economic Development, Social Development, and Environmental Management. Within all themes, some governance domains are broken down into more distinct subdomains. Most rapid assessment tables in this document describe and assess the governance systems within domains and subdomains in the Environmental Management Theme. Each rapid assessment table consists of a short description of the domain or subdomain, followed by the identification and explanation of the key structural and functional components of each. Based on this, the likelihood and consequences of the each domain's or subdomain's governance system failing are identified. Each table also consequently contains a score for the likelihood of systemic failure and the consequence of systemic failure. Finally, a cumulative risk rating is then derived from the multiplication of each of the aforementioned scores. The rapid assessment tables conclude with the identification of possible or suggested areas for governance reform. The standardised scores described in Table 1 and Table 2 are used throughout this document to indicate the likelihood and consequences of systemic failure of the governance system. The use of standard criteria enables benchmarking of the target governance system over time and repeatability of the assessment/s. The multiplication of the likelihood and consequence scores provides an indication of the risk of failure of the governance system being analysed. Overview References: Commonwealth of Australia. (2015). Reef 2050 long-term sustainability plan. Canberra: Department of the Environment. Retrieved from http://www.environment.gov.au/marine/gbr/long-term-sustainability-plan Dale, A., Vella, K., Pressey, R., Brodie, J., Yorkston, H., & Pott, s. R. (2013). A method for risk analysis across governance systems: a Great Barrier Reef case study. Environmental Research Letters, 8(1), 1-16. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/015037 UNESCO (2015). Decision: 39 COM 7B.7. Great Barrier Reef (Australia) (N 154). Retrieved from http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2015/whc15-39com-19-en.pdf

Most commentators understand that contemporary social, economic and environmental challenges require quality governance from global to local scales. While public scrutiny of governance has increased in recent years, the literature on frameworks and methods for analysis in complex, poly-centric and multi-thematic governance systems remains fragmented; displaying many disciplinary or sectoral biases. This paper establishes a stronger theory-based foundation for the analysis of complex governance systems. It also develops a clear analytical framework applicable across a vast array of differing governance themes, domains and scales (GSA). The key methodological steps and evaluative criteria for the GSA framework are determined and practical guidance for its application in reform is provided.

Internet connectivity is essential for prosperity and development in all societies. This policy-focused report is the culmination of a qualitative study of digital connectivity and telecommunications in rural Far North Queensland (FNQ). In particular, the research investigated the lived experience of digital inclusion – a combination of internet access, affordability of technology, and digital ability - in agricultural households and communities the Northern Gulf region. The Australian Digital Inclusion Index (ADII) shows that North West Queensland (which takes in the Gulf Savannah) is one of Australia's least digitally included regions. The ADII further suggests that farmers and farm managers tend to score more poorly in the Index than others in comparable circumstances, particularly on the digital ability sub-index. This research aimed to unpack how these quantitative insights 'play out' in the context of rural FNQ, thereby shedding light on the nuanced and context-specific factors that impact digital participation of farming households and communities. In 2018, with funding from the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN), James Cook University partnered with Northern Gulf Resource Management Group to complete three week-long data fieldtrips to towns and properties across the Gulf Savannah. The lead researcher, Dr Amber Marshall, attended and presented at rural events, undertook interviews and focus groups, and conducted three case studies of cattle properties. These activities provided real world context for the policy analysis undertaken in this report. This cross-level, cross-sector policy analysis was undertaken to determine the laws and strategies that impact rural and remote internet access, reliability and affordability, along with digital ability and capacity building frameworks. The findings (11 in total) address issues ranging from barriers to connection (such as lack of continuity in the telecommunications network); social factors impacting digital resource allocation and consumption (such as intergenerational and gender-related circumstances); threats to agricultural industry (such as the need to preserve product integrity and to attract/train workers); and consumer-level insights (such as population heterogeneity and expectations of fairness). These comprehensive findings give rise to several recommendations for federal, state and local governments in partnership with community and industry organisations. These include: 1. Improve basic infrastructure and services at local scales, including diversifying service plans to meet specific needs 2. Embrace alternative connectivity infrastructure, whereby state and federal government partners with the regions to collaboratively fill infrastructure and service gaps 3. Redefine affordability at the federal level, to ensure the true cost of being connected in the bush is realised and accommodated 4. Deliver targeted digital capability building programs to address many farmers' thirst for digital skills 5. Develop digital mentors, support brokers and upskill remote workers, to help ensure digital skills programs are relevant and rolled out in situ 6. Empower rural local governments and community organisations to plan and deliver through strategic linkages with the broader national digital inclusion ecosystem 7. Adopt principles for a holistic approach to digital inclusion policy that recognises the critical role of digital capacity building to social and economic development in rural and agricultural Australia. This final recommendation essentially underpins achievement of the preceding recommendations.

[Extract] For over 20 years, Traditional Owners (TOs) from across the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) have been coming together to explore and call for a collective approach to achieving their aspirations for ownership, access to, and involvement in the management of sea country. Over these years, people have made real progress in securing improved recognition of their rights and developing local capacities to govern and manage their sea country. Despite these wins, and good engagement by Commonwealth and State governments on occasions, there has been no lasting, continuously improving GBR-wide approach to engaging TOs. With the future health of the GBR under threat, the current Reef 2050 Long Term Sustainability Plan (Reef 2050) recognises the significance of Traditional Owner rights and interests in the management of sea country and the Marine Park. There are considered and significant Indigenous implementation actions embedded right across Reef 2050. Implementation, however, lies ahead. Given the long history of Traditional Owner attempts to influence sea country management across the GBR, they consider that, without strong partnerships, there could be a real risk of implementation failure. At this point, the mechanisms for cohesive and coordinated implementation of the Reef 2050 do not yet fundamentally engage Traditional Owners as real partners in the long-term management of sea country, consistent with international guidelines for their engagement in protected area management, which emphasise the required for prior informed consent and ongoing equity.