Suchergebnisse

As the public service is "thrown open to the cold winds of competition" (Hartigan, 2000), and the implementation of new public management advances past simple contracting-out, contestability of policy advice to government is receiving increased interest as new area of reform to pursue. The Government's commitment to establish an Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) is motivated by the potential for that institution to provide contestable advice on defence and security policy issues. To understand how the creation of this Institute might assist the Government's desire for policy contestability, this paper will look more closely at the principles of contestability and consider how the experience of other similar ventures by Government have contributed to increased contestability in policy advice. This understanding should inform the establishment of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

In this paper, capacity strengthening will be pragmatically explored in response to two key questions: what enabling approaches are accessible for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australian (hereafter Indigenous) organisations to effectively make governance decisions; and what approaches can facilitate partnership processes between communities and governments for improving Indigenous Australian organisational governance. In particular, it will consider 1) the need to strengthen both hard capacities such as resources, technical skills, functions, structures, equipment and so forth; and soft capacities such as values, morale, engagement, motivation, incentives and staff wellbeing; and 2) one strategy that has successfully been used to facilitate partnership between Indigenous organisations and governments - reflective participatory approaches. It will draw from reflective short case study examples in which the authors have participated to demonstrate how, where and when capacity strengthening principles have been adopted. Given the paucity of well-designed evaluations, key principles and practices that appear to work to strengthen capacity will be discussed. Key amongst these are community ownership of governance improvement, collaborative development approaches that are context-dependent and long-term partnerships between government agencies and Indigenous communities built on trust and respect. Capacity-strengthening must have a clear notion of what type of capacity is being strengthened, for whom, and how the effectiveness will be measured.

Introduction: when they write what we read -- Unsettling subjects: critical perspectives on selves in writing and writing selves -- (Re)Writing histories: the emergence and development of Indigenous Australian life-writing -- 'The pencil and the mouth': anthropology, orality, literacy, and modernity -- 'A tape-recorder and an editor': the politics and practices of cross-cultural collaborative text-making -- Crowded house: Galarabulu: stories of the West Kimberley -- Troubling relations: Nyibayarri: Kimberley tracker, Ingelba and the five black matriarchs, and The sun dancin' -- Fighting with our tongues, fighting for our tongues: Warlpiri karnta karnta-kurlangu yimi/Warlpiri women's voices: our lives, our history and Auntie Rita -- Conclusion: reading the word, reading the world: re-reading orality, literacy, and modernity