Hot Mess, an essay by Kieran Wong
2022 was a pretty great year to attend Garma. It was equal parts electric and emotional. To be under the shade of a large tin roof, in view of the Gulf of Carpenteria, whilst the newly appointed PM outlined the referendum questions that would enshrine the Voice in our Constitution… it felt like a moment of sunshine after a long and challenging winter of silence.
I even got to ask a question on Q&A. According to my family it was career highlight, but in truth it wasn’t the question I had hoped to ask. I submitted two questions but the more pressing one wasn’t selected by the show’s producers. Missing from Garma’s forums and Q&A’s panel was any discussion around the impact of rising temperatures on culture and community and the viability of inhabiting Country across the north and at the centre of Australia.
After failing to get traction in my one shot on national television, I have been testing my concerns in smaller forums. Since returning from Garma, I have been talking with John Singer, Executive Director at Nganampa Health Service on the APY Lands. John has described the way in which cultural practice is changing to deal with the increasing heat; ceremonies and activities are either taking place in the evening, reduced in length, or not being done at all.
If the science holds true and the situation worsens, what is the future of cultural practice on Country that is being irreversibly changed as a result of the warming planet? John noted (with irony) our new Government’s acknowledgement of the impact of the climate crisis on our Pacific Island neighbours, without recognising the crisis that’s occurring in our own country – displacement, forced migration, loss of culture, community and the ability to care for Country. He questioned whether the Government would acknowledge that ‘climate refugees’ exist here in Australia right now
The standard definition of the term ‘refugees’ refers to people fleeing across national borders. People displaced inside a nation are generally not considered refugees under international law. If we think of Australia as a place more akin to Europe and made up of numerous nation states, then the movement of people across First Nations borders (with Nations being the critical bit) aligns more closely with the UNHCR definition of a refugee. That is, people moving across national borders as “persons displaced in the context of disasters and climate change.” [i] We need to acknowledge the multitude of nations that make up the continent we now call Australia, and the real and challenging impact of movement across these nation state lines for Indigenous people.
Human comfort is the result of the right mix of factors, in particular temperature and humidity. A critical measurement is known as the ‘wet bulb temperature’ [ii] (shown in degrees Tw ) and indicates the temperature of a thermometer after a wet cloth has passed its surface. With higher levels of humidity, less evaporation occurs to cool the surface. Humans rely on sweating to cool their bodies and wet bulb temperatures of 31.5Tw have been described as the upper limits of human survivability. [iii]
Several places around the world have recently recorded wet bulb temperatures of above 31.5Tw and this includes two sites in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. So far, these temperatures are unprecedented (and brief in occurrence), but most climate experts predict that wet bulb temperatures above 31.5 will occur in more locations and for longer periods as vulnerable regions are increasingly affected by the climate crisis.
So, what is the link to ‘equity’ here? There are many – the first being the inequitable distribution and impact of the climate crisis on poor and vulnerable populations. Think here of the people without insurance in Lismore or displaced farmers in Pakistan flooded by unprecedented monsoonal rains. Our neighbours in the Pacific Islands are experiencing ongoing inundation and coastal erosion as well as the wildfire ravaged rural populations of Europe. Those with the least are being hit the hardest, and this, of course, includes many First Nations communities around the world.
Migration due to the climate crisis is happening across all populations, with many people in wealthier communities and populations around the world participating in what’s known as a ‘managed retreat’. [i] In Australia the search for better climates is often part of a midlife tree or sea-change, made easier by digital connectivity, improved regional infrastructure, the accumulation of wealth as a result of a suite of generous tax incentives focussed on housing.
Our government is acutely aware that many voters view Australia’s housing supply as a wealth creating asset, not as a human right or societal responsibility.
This is especially relevant to First Nations communities, where people have been dispossessed of land, ‘resettled’ into reserves, pushed off Country and had their traditional lands acquired, thereby denying them the means of inter-generational wealth accumulation through land ownership afforded to the settler state. [i]
There is also vast inequity in infrastructure between Australia’s urban towns and cities and our regional and remote communities. Access to clean drinking water, reliable power, adequate telecommunications, safe roads, and appropriate waste removal varies significantly depending on where you live. The divide between remote communities and mainstream Australia is stark and well documented. [ii]
And let us also consider the inequity of mobility. The movement of people due to seasonal, cultural, or social reasons, has always been seen as problematic by governments who like to be able to ‘see’ their subjects at a known fixed address. Tying a citizen to a parcel of land (and thus keeping them sedentary) certainly assists. It is interesting to contrast this problematising of mobility in Indigenous populations by the State, and the subsidisation of mobility in wealthier cohorts, such as holiday house owners through taxation systems and infrastructure investment.
So how can we address this lack of equity – and the combined impacts of a warming climate, poor infrastructure, and the requirement for mobility? And, perhaps more importantly, is there even the desire to do so? The sixth Assessment Report by the IPCC [iii] suggests that we only have a very small window to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, and even then, substantial global warming is inevitable. For people already living on the edges of climate survivability, this has dire consequences, and it is not something we have started to meaningfully address.
For many First Nations communities, the predicted effects of rising temperatures do not need to hit the extremes of probability to make a real difference to the already over-stressed health system and individual vulnerabilities. Community infrastructure has been neglected for decades – power outages or disconnections are commonplace, air-conditioning often doesn’t work, insulation is lacking, buildings offer no shade or thermal control – all amplified by the negative impacts of crowding. It is an ecosystem of policy and delivery failure which demands urgent, system wide reform.
In Indigenous Affairs, reform has been a word rolled out across successive governments, Ministers, and bureaucrats. Despite this reformist zeal, genuine action and meaningful change has been glacial in pace. And thus, communities have become adept and skilled in the art of waiting. A large part of this waiting can be seen in the ‘testimony’ of housing adaptations. It is one of the few areas where agency is seen in the built environment in Indigenous communities. Building ‘hacks’ are commonplace, removal of louvres to install cheap wall air-conditioners, the use of tarpaulins, aluminium foil and shade cloth to protect inhabitants from climatic or privacy pressures, or the re-alignment of living/sleeping spatial norms most houses are designed to construct.
Governments have paid little heed to this testimony. While tenant involvement in Indigenous housing design is often recommended, it seldom takes place in practice. Demand for housing continues to outstrip supply, and in rental situations, it can be difficult for tenants to have much of a say about the design features that would improve their everyday living conditions. Each building hack holds clues that would help architects, planners, builders, and policy makers deliver new housing and refurbishments in harmony with tenant needs. Unfortunately, Indigenous tenants instead occupy the space between ‘take what you can get’ and ‘no money for appropriate designs.’
Despite research and community advocates who repeatedly recommend Indigenous-led housing design processes, Indigenous tenants in social housing are usually represented by organisational brokers, and if consulted directly, will be asked questions about their likely household composition/demographic profiles. These ‘briefing sessions’ reduce people’s agency to a function of bedroom and bathroom allocations. Tenancy Agreements forbid tenants from making any structural changes to their housing and design responses fail to address basic needs.
I was trained in the value of passive design – responding to a site’s climate by seeking opportunities for natural ventilation, effective shading to shield summer sun and welcome winter rays and orientation that assists all the above. Air-conditioning was seen as a design failure, an inability to design sensitively to your context, to ‘touch the earth lightly’. One could think of this approach as a kind of ‘thermal moralism’ – design judgments that believe natural systems are inherently better than mechanical (or man-made) ones. Design responses that took advantage of the site’s natural attributes, buildings that ‘breathe’, ensuring its occupants were in harmony with nature were celebrated as exemplars of the architectural discipline – positioning itself against the mindless housing of the mass market, which was closed and shockingly reliant on air-conditioning to maintain thermal comfort.
What is our design response when the temperature outside becomes lethal? Are we positioned as a profession to care about challenges such as cyclical maintenance, crowding and mobility, dust and corrosion that have left so many architect-designed ‘remote houses’ derelict without the ongoing maintenance support that is needed? Architects have ‘declared’ it’s a crisis, but in what ways are we acting?
And what then about the impending challenge of ‘managing the retreat’ of communities away from Country due to human-induced climate warming. Are we ready for the moral, ethical and logistical requirements to move people off Country, far away from their homelands? Again. Are our regional and peri-urban centres ready for this forced migration; places already feeling the squeeze of the housing crisis and impact of tree/sea changers? And how will we, as a nation, grapple with the shame of forced migration due to climate warming – an ideology of neglect – not only of the planet, but of the First Peoples who are disproportionately affected by it? Can governments and agencies adapt quickly enough to support seasonal or continuous mobility without penalty to tenants?
As always, there are pockets of hope. Places where communities are taking control, driving towards their own localised vision of community infrastructure, appropriate housing, responsive and culturally safe policy. There are innumerable advocates pushing for change – from Tangentyere Council delivering cogent arguments against government energy policy, or rental calculations, to practical demonstrations like Norman Frank Jupurrurla’s practical activism against energy poverty and for improving housing standards.
We need a massive investment in housing upgrades to make them thermally effective, to install air-conditioning, to change the system of power supply in community, and support ongoing planned and cyclical maintenance. We need new housing to be built in a way that is mindful of the impending future, to have climate boundaries drawn on maps not by policy makers seeking to simplify the lives of building certifiers, but in an accurate response to the changing climate. We need better tenancy policy to enable mobility, supporting people to move between regional centres and homelands. These are not issues of equality in housing supply for social housing tenants, and the likely comments sections of news sites calling out perceived unfairness for Indigenous peoples “being given two houses”. These are issues of equity, of justice and the re-distribution of the wealth.
This is complex, messy and challenging terrain. We must be open to this conversation, even as we argue for a Voice, for greater community control, for a handing back of land and assets. This must not be done as a way of retuning places devoid of liveability, the creation of a new form of Terra Nullius – a land nobody can survive in. John Singer and the countless others calling for a response cannot be left waiting any longer. For tens of thousands of generations, culture and community have not just co-existed, but thrived across this continent, nourishing through intimate connection to Country, ceremony and law. We are facing the very real possibility that this could be lost within the next two. The Uluru Statement called for Australians to walk together. I reckon we need to start running.
Footnotes
Oliver Prince Smith (October 26, 1893 – December 25, 1977) was a U.S. Marine four star general and decorated combat veteran of World War II and the Korean War . He is most noted for commanding the 1st Marine Division during the first year of the Korean War, and notably during the Battle of Chosin Reservoir , where he said “Retreat, hell! We’re not retreating, we’re just advancing in a different direction.” [1] He retired at the rank of four-star general, being advanced in rank for having been specially commended for heroism in combat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_P._Smith
[2] https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/climate-change-and-disasters.html
[3] Wet Bulb Temperature: The Temperature of Evaporation
The wet bulb temperature Tw (or tw) or isobaric wet bulb temperature, is the temperature an air parcel would have if adiabatically cooled to saturation at constant pressure by evaporation of water into it, all latent heat being supplied by the parcel.
[4] Wet bulb temperature: The crucial weather concept that actually tells us when heat becomes lethal – https://www.salon.com/2021/07/18/wet-bulb-temperature-climate-change/
Or,
or,
[7] Chris Bowen’s comments as Minister for Climate Change and Energy such as at the Electric Vehicle Summit on 19 Aug 2022: ( https://minister.dcceew.gov.au/bowen/speeches/address-national-ev-summit )
“As we acknowledge our First Peoples, I’d like to acknowledge two truths: Firstly, that there is no inequality that climate change doesn’t make worse. This includes Indigenous disadvantage, whether it be people in sub-standard remote housing or the people of the Torres Strait dealing with the impacts of climate change on their beautiful island homes that I visited recently. And secondly, First Nations people must be partners in charting the way forward. I was pleased that my state and territory Energy Minister colleagues agreed with me last week to the development of a First Nations Clean Energy Strategy that will be co-designed with First Nations people. “
[8] The IPCC finalized the first part of the Sixth Assessment Report, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis, the Working Group I contribution to the Sixth Assessment Report on 6 August 2021 during the 14th Session of Working Group I and 54th Session of the IPCC .
- Hot Mess was first published in Equity, issue 05 of our journal.
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