Suchergebnisse

Practical reconciliation' and more recently 'closing the gap' have been put forward as frameworks on which to base and evaluate policies to address Indigenous disadvantage. This paper analyses national‐level census‐based data to examine trends in Indigenous wellbeing since 1971. There has been steady improvement in most socioeconomic outcomes in the last 35 years; a finding at odds with the current discourse of failure. Evidence of convergence between Indigenous and non‐Indigenous outcomes, however, is not consistent. For some outcomes, relatively rapid convergence is predicted (within 25 years), but for the majority of outcomes, convergence is unlikely to occur within a generation, if at all.

This monograph presents the refereed, and peer-reviewed, edited proceedings of the conference on Indigenous Socioeconomic Outcomes: Assessing Recent Evidence. The conference was organised by the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research and held at the Shine Dome, the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra on 11 and 12 August 2005. The conference aimed to present the latest evidence on Indigenous economic and social status, and family and community life, and discuss its implications for government policy. The recently released 2002 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey (NATSISS) provided a valuable new source of data on these issues. The conference featured a variety of presentations that provide an evaluation of the strengths and weakness of the NATSISS methodology and the quality of the survey data and existing output. In the same year that NATSISS was conducted, the Prime Minister wrote to Gary Banks, as Chairman of the Steering Committee for the Review of Government Service Provision (SCRGSP), to ask for a regular report to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) against key indicators of Indigenous disadvantage. This is now available on a biennial basis as the Productivity Commission Report Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage. In addition, the annual Report on Government Services issued by the SCRGSP now includes a separate compendium of Indigenous statistics drawn from the administrative databases of Australian, State and Territory governments. Given the growing number of Indigenous statistics collected and reported in Australia, it is more important than ever before to provide critical scrutiny of the data and related analysis. By publishing this report via the ANU E Press, we aim to ensure the timely and wide access to research findings throughout the Indigenous policy community. I recommend this monograph to anyone who wants to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the existing statistical archive for Indigenous Australians.

AbstractIndigenous employment has been the subject of numerous policies in Australia, with governments aiming to increase the workforce participation rate amongst Indigenous people in recent years. Indigenous‐owned businesses, formally defined as businesses that are at least 50% Indigenous‐owned, have been demonstrated in previous research to maintain substantially higher levels of proportional Indigenous employment than non‐Indigenous businesses. This suggests that Indigenous‐owned businesses maintain work environments that are more supportive of and conducive to Indigenous employment, meriting the influence of Indigenous‐owned businesses' workplace practices in future Indigenous employment policy design. Using administrative data from two Indigenous business registries (Black Business Finder and Supply Nation), this paper provides an updated empirical analysis of the Indigenous business sector. This paper demonstrates that Indigenous‐owned businesses of all sizes, industries, locations and profit statuses consistently average proportional Indigenous employment rates higher than the Indigenous proportional population. Of all the people employed in Supply Nation‐listed businesses, over 35% are Indigenous. The potential impact of the Indigenous Procurement Policy is illustrated by differentials in the size of businesses and their capacity to employ Indigenous staff. This paper provides analysis of the Indigenous business sector that can inform future policy direction for both Indigenous employment and Indigenous business policies.

AbstractPrevious research demonstrates that businesses that are Indigenous‐owned are far more likely to employ Indigenous people than non‐Indigenous‐owned businesses (Hunter, 2015). The majority of the literature on Indigenous employment uses a deficit discourse, describing factors that prevent or exclude Indigenous people from non‐Indigenous‐owned organisations. There is markedly less literature using a strength‐based approach, detailing how Indigenous‐owned businesses create workplaces without barriers to Indigenous employment. Through 32 semistructured interviews with Indigenous business owners, managers, and Indigenous employees of Indigenous‐owned businesses, this paper provides insights into how participants' businesses create workplaces that are more supportive of, and conducive to, Indigenous employment. This paper finds that Indigenous approaches to governance inform an organisational level of cultural competence, which creates tailored and specific practices that support better Indigenous employment outcomes. This resonates with the concept of Indigenous ways of "knowing, being, and doing," and how this framework encompasses participants' approaches to business operations. In the light of increasing public and private policy commitments to improve Indigenous employment outcomes, it is imperative that the Indigenous business sector's best practice inform said policies, given its successes. However, inherent in these findings are broader discussions into more systemic and societal issues that go beyond workplace policy.

Indigenous policy is a complex domain motivated by a range of social, cultural, political and economic issues. The Council of Australian Governments 'closing the gaps' agenda for addressing Indigenous disadvantage in Australia now includes six targets with well defined and measurable outcomes for policy action. In this context there is a continuing and pressing need for robust debate to understand how meaningful improvement in Indigenous outcomes might be achieved. This monograph presents the peer-reviewed proceedings of the 2011 CAEPR/ABS conference on 'Social Science Perspectives on the 2008 National and Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Social Survey'. It is the fourth CAEPR monograph since 1992 to reflect on national surveys of Indigenous Australians. The conference covered topics including child development, crime and justice, culture, wellbeing, the customary economy, demography, education, employment, fertility, health, housing, income and financial stress, mobility, poverty, social exclusion, and substance abuse. The papers summarise the strengths and limitations of the 2008 NATSISS, discuss the types of policy-relevant questions it can inform, and consider future survey design. A social survey such as the NATSISS can ultimately never tell those responsible for developing public policy what to do, but it can provide useful information to inform policy decisions. This volume will be useful for researchers and policy makers, and relevant to the wider national debate and, in particular, Indigenous communities and organisations.