Reconciliation, accountability and collective action

Annabelle Roper ,

As the architecture industry contends with its responsibilities to First Nations peoples and communities, the gap between aspiration and action is coming into sharp focus. ACA RAP working group member, Annabelle Roper, reflects on two high-profile projects where important reconciliation work was overturned by government decisions, what silence from the industry reveals, and why collective advocacy through peak bodies has never been more important.

Architects today are increasingly asked to maintain ethical and cultural standards while operating within commercial and procurement systems that actively undermine them. When a project brief conflicts with our core values, the choice is stark: walk away and lose income or proceed and accept a moral compromise. This tension is felt most strongly when the client is government and criticism risks jeopardising future work.

This tension was highlighted to me last year during reflections on the reverse trajectory of the reconciliation efforts in the projects at Yagan Square in Boorloo/Perth and Barrambin/Victoria Park in Brisbane City, at the November meeting of the Architecture and Design RAP RING (Reconciliation Action Plan Reconciliation Industry Network Group).

Both projects were established with strong frameworks for Designing with Country and place, with significant involvement and direction from Traditional Custodians. Yagan Square was completed in 2018 and, as described by Jillian Walliss, was “a civic space, championed for its innovative co-creation processes with the Whadjuk Working Party and South West Aboriginal Land and Sea Council”. The success of the project was recognised in numerous industry awards celebrating the design community and government efforts and commitment to reconciliation. This, however, did not prevent the project from being brutally re-modelled at the behest of what is now Development WA, as a five-storey stack of bars, built crudely atop the original square design. The project proceeded without protest; as Jillian Walliss observed, there was little to no public pushback from the industry.

At Barrambin/Victoria Park, Traditional Custodians have worked with the Fulcrum Agency and Blaklash over many years to ensure the stories and significance of the site were embedded in Brisbane City Council’s masterplan. The looming Brisbane Olympics, however, have seen the Queensland Government disregard this work and select the park as the site for a new centrepiece Olympic stadium, effectively abandoning the master plan and trust that was built. Andrew Broffman (Principal at Fulcrum Agency) and Gaja Kerry Charlton (a Yagarabul First Nation person, Elder, Language and Cultural Custodian and Traditional Owner) expressed their dismay and frustration that the government had fallen into old habits, undermining trust.

The RAP RING meeting was an uncommon but important discussion, drawing attention to these projects where reconciliation has been backtracked or abandoned. In both cases, the projects have their inception in community-led processes only to be overpowered by the larger government bodies.

Gaja Kerry brought the discussion back to the central issue of accountability. Where is the accountability for the governments? How are they held responsible to the communities they are meant to represent? The double standard seems stark: the same governments that assess architects against the National Standard of Competencies are also making decisions directly in opposition to those standards they hold us to. Almost 10 per cent of the 60 competencies relate to Designing with Country, engaging with First Nations Peoples and embedding their knowledges and stories into design in a meaningful, respectful and appropriate way.

Both Jillian Walliss and Andrew Broffman wrote of the absence of meaningful pushback from the architecture and design industry in response to these decisions. This prompts reflection on the delicate balancing act within practice. The tension between the work we aspire to produce and what is available for tender, between the contribution we hope to make to our communities and the priorities of the client.

The uncomfortable truth is that individual practices are structurally constrained: when governments control procurement pipelines and future work, expecting individual practices to publicly object becomes commercially unrealistic.

Each practice has a responsibility to ensure its profitability, to remain viable, to continue to employ staff and to maintain the capacity to contribute positively to our built environment. This structural constraint becomes even more complex for business owners navigating their obligations to staff. The duty of care to staff to ensure their workplace is safe becomes an ethical conundrum when the project that keeps them employed conflicts with their values. The dilemma extends beyond income: decline the project and sacrifice revenue, or proceed and risk eroding staff trust and retention.

If individual practices cannot reasonably absorb the commercial risk of dissent, then our representative bodies must assume that role, whether through expanded advocacy, clearer policy positions, or coordinated refusal to support projects that undermine our professional standards. We are more powerful together and better positioned to positively influence the future of our cities collectively than we are in isolation.

As architects, deeply involved in shaping the futures of the places our communities inhabit, we hold obligations that extend beyond the contractual scope of our projects. As citizens in a democratic society, we also have the right and responsibility to speak to the values embedded in our profession and to call for greater accountability across the development industry.

Expecting individual practices to jeopardise their viability to uphold shared professional values is neither sustainable nor fair. If Designing with Country and meaningful engagement with First Nations peoples are core competencies, then they must be defended collectively. We require collective mechanisms, through our peak bodies and representative organisations, that have both the scale and legitimacy to advocate where individual practices cannot. The question is not whether we have values; it is whether we will act together to uphold them.