In October, Choice magazine published an article claiming that food in shops in remote Aboriginal settlements was twice as expensive as similar items in capital city supermarkets. The ABC, SBS and several other news outlets published articles making similar claims about the inequality of food prices and the problems faced by the remote settlements.

It is a story which is trotted out with monotonous regularity by well-meaning but lazy journos. The last major outbreak of this story was in 2022 when the federal government produced a report on the same issue (‘Report of food pricing and security in remote indigenous communities’). This was a substantial 126-page report by eight federal MP’s headed by Julian Leeser and assisted by a secretariat of four people. In the report’s introduction, it noted that, ‘this is at least the third (report) to examine these issues in recent years…. Action needs to be taken’.

The fact is that Julian’s two-year-old report has done absolutely nothing to improve the situation and it is worth examining why three government reports have failed to find a solution the problem of the high cost of food in remote Aboriginal settlements.

The cause of the problem is that remote Aboriginal settlements have low populations which are unable to take advantage of economies of scale. There are over a thousand remote settlements and over nine hundred have fewer than a hundred residents and this, coupled with the high transportation costs, means that within the current political framework there is no solution. Had Julian asked me, I could have told him that, thereby enabling him and his committee to turn their lofty minds to other problems.

One question that Julian and the dozens of politicians who have looked at this issue over the decades have failed to address is, why, given the abundance of empty land surrounding remote settlements and given the abundance of available labour, don’t the residents grow their own food? What amazes me about the plethora of government reports and articles about the food problem in remote settlements is that this question is hardly ever addressed.

The PNG government has, for over half a century, employed agricultural development officers whose job is to travel to remote villages where life hasn’t changed in countless millennia. Their work involves assisting the villagers, who are traditionally subsistence agriculturalists, to develope an agricultural surplus which can enable them to enter the cash economy. Why hasn’t anyone developed a similar national program here to encourage food production in remote settlements?

Several years ago, I outlined a plan to develop commercial agricultural projects in remote settlements. I was so convinced by the brilliance of my ideas that I sent them off to various politicians who had previously professed an interest in this issue. Not one replied. Last year, Bob Katter, in a doorstop interview, suggested that market gardens would be a possible solution to remote settlements food problems. So I sent him the same letter that I had previously sent to others which outlined a way to develop market gardens in remote settlements and then to develop a marketing mechanism for any agricultural surplus. Bob’s response was an automatic reply saying, ‘As Bob receives many emails every day; it is not possible for him to respond personally to every email and it may take some time for you to receive a reply from one of his staff’. Recently I sent Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price a similar letter. Dissapointingly, her staff didn’t acknowledge receipt of my email.

There are a few communities already trying to develop commercial market gardening projects but what is really required is not another government inquiry but what I call a ‘whole of nation approach’ in which all governments, the food industry and, above all, the Australian public become involved.

The plan would work as follows;

1. Identify communities with adequate access to water and a willingness to try to change their lifestyles.
2. Provide expert agricultural development officers who can assist with the development of the vegetable gardens and identify crops suitable for the region.
3. Aim for community self-sufficiency in a variety of agricultural products.
4. Once expertise has been transferred to community leaders, the community should aim for a surplus in a variety of vegetables for market.
5. As the produce may not compete on price with established vegetable producers, supermarkets such as Coles and/or Woolies, should establish a section where produce is sold to help a local indigenous community. The public should be encouraged to pay a small premium for the produce in the same way that consumers paid a premium for milk a few years ago to support the dairy farmers. Even though we are constantly being told that we are all racists and indifferent to the plight of ‘first nations people’, I firmly believe that Australians would be willing to support such a scheme.

So is it such a stinker of an idea and, if it wouldn’t succeed, then we must ask why not? Why can’t Aboriginal communities, with an abundance of land, government assistance, expert guidance and support from supermarkets and the nation as a whole, do what the Chinese migrants did in the 1850s? An earlier 2009 report into the problems of food supply and poor nutrition in remote settlements recommended supporting community gardens, traditional foods and farming projects. What became of that recommendation?

Part of the problem is that many remote settlements originated from ration stations which were established because the Aboriginal people no longer had access to their traditional sources of food as farmers and miners took over their lands. The practice of distributing rations did not end until the early 1960s and one of the consequences of this method of food distribution is a sort of learned helplessness largely brought about by the complete destruction of traditional Aboriginal culture.

One can sense, when reading the various government reports on this topic, a reluctance to deeply explore the causes of the inability of the members of remote communities to produce more of their own food. In the end the recommendations always focus on better supply of food from distant food production centres rather than establishing self-sufficiency.

What is required is a whole of nation approach to establishing food production capability in remote Aboriginal settlements. I don’t see it coming. Instead, a decade hence, we will get another government report arguing ‘something should be done as a matter of urgency’.