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Comprehensive and optimistic, this examination describes current Indigenous affairs policy in Australia, concentrating on the period following the end of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission in 2004. It provides a unique overview of the trajectory of current policy, advancing a new consolidated approach to Indigenous policy that moves beyond the debate over self-determination and assimilation. Arguing that the interests of Indigenous peoples, settlers, and immigrants are fundamentally shared, it proposes adaptation on both sides, but particularly for the descendants of settlers and immigrants. Advancing the body of knowledge in the field of the anthropology of policy and public administration, this empirical study is a must-read for policy-makers, academics, and indigenous peoples alike

This paper identifies two periods of punctuated change in the content and style of Australian Indigenous policy in the last fifty years. It also identifies a third period in which attention to Indigenous policy was heightened through the nationalisation of land issues already well‐established on the agendas of sub‐national jurisdictions. The paper relates all three periods to the changing federal institutions of Australian Indigenous policy, with the Commonwealth slowly exploring its post‐1967 role as a national government in Indigenous affairs. In later sections, the paper identifies some more conceptual bases of changing policy agendas, through ideas of the competing principles of equality, choice and guardianship and the generational moral dynamics of Indigenous affairs.

AbstractOne of the few things that everyone can agree on with respect to Australian Indigenous policy is that repeated government experiments aimed at improving Indigenous well‐being in Australia and particularly in remote Australia have failed. Outcomes remain poor and are, if anything, deteriorating in a number of areas. Critics have characterised the history of Indigenous policy as a series of failed policy experiments. The latest experiment in the quest to improve outcomes involves attempts to move away from the usual rational‐technical approaches, toward participatory approaches or "partnerships". However, governments are struggling to implement these innovations. Self‐evidently, the Closing the Gap policy is grounded in deficit discourse. This paper examines how this discourse works within the existing Indigenous policy world to create possibly irreconcilable tensions with attempts to introduce participatory approaches. It does this using Logics of Critical Explanation, an interpretive method which allows us to understand how policy actors work within an existing policy world to either replace or augment their norms, values and ideologies to work in the new ways that are asked of them, or to resist innovation and revert to the status quo.

Part 1 Interrogating Indigenous affairs policy -- Chapter 1: Indigenous public policy in global context -- Chapter 2: Rethinking Indigenous representation in Indigenous affairs -- Chapter 3: Rhetorical registers and the moral dynamics of failure and success in Australian Indigenous policy -- Chapter 4: Thinking policy through Indigenous knowledge -- Chapter 5: Changing the policy agenda from inside the party room: Indigenous knowledge and expertise in the Labor Party's First Nations Caucus -- Chapter 6: Black swans make better policy -- Chapter 6: Black swans make better policy -- Part 3 Nation building and resurgence: An alternative to policy? -- Chapter 7: Nation-building in Australia -- Chapter 8: Bureaucracy and sovereignty in contemporary Indigenous policy -- Part 4 Policy implications for communities -- Chapter 9: Rematriation and reconnection: Decolonising the colonial archive for the Gomeroi diaspora -- Chapter 10: Treaty as pathway to Indigenous controlled policy -- Chapter 11: Self-determination & education policy. .

Unemployment amongst Indigenous Australians is one part of a bleak and worrying picture of economic and social divide in this country. Since the early 1970s the Australian Government has increasingly invested in policies to address Indigenous disadvantage in employment and other areas. Terms such as 'stakeholder engagement' and 'participation' have become part of the government lexicon in addressing Indigenous disadvantage. In light of the nominal importance placed on stakeholder engagement, it is important to question what the concept means in practice -that is, what mechanisms exist for incorporating stakeholders in policy development. More specifically, this report investigates how stakeholders can be involved in employment policy development. CDEP The CDEP program has dual roles of providing employment and welfare services to Indigenous people. It has become .an integral part of many local economies, particularly in remote communities. The scheme is also an important mechanism for stakeholder engagement. It enhances the potential for regional perspectives to inform economic development and employment decision-making. The Rudd Government is currently phasing out the CDEP scheme. This decision is partly based on the scheme's failure to function as a job-readiness program in communities where local economies are small and jobs are very scarce. The removal of CDEP in these remote regions will force many people onto unemployment benefits. It may also jeopardise key representative Indigenous organisations in remote communities. Recommendation 1: limited exceptions should be made to the removal of CDEP, specifically in those communities without an established economy. Regional agreements In the last two decades, the Canadian Government has begun to negotiate regional agreements with Indigenous people occupying the land. These agreements involve an exchange of property interests on the part of Indigenous people for greater control in economic development and environmental planning processes. Increasing Indigenous people's capacity to regulate land use has promoted the growth of Indigenous enterprise. It has also led to employment agreements between corporations and Indigenous people. Recommendation 2: the use of negotiated regional agreements should be considered as a means of giving Indigenous Australians greater control of their land for economic development and employment initiatives. Regional representation The newly-formed National Congress of Australia's First Peoples (NCAFP) is an important step to improving Indigenous stakeholder engagement mechanisms. This body differs from the previous Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission model in two key respects. It does not have a policy-implementation role and it does not establish regional representative branches. The experience of Canada's core Aboriginal representative body, the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) demonstrated that regional viewpoints can be overlooked in a national representative body. Without a regional planning strategy developed by Indigenous stakeholders, there is a risk that government policy will override the views and interests of regional stakeholders. Recommendation 3: a pilot regional representative authority should be established. This would be a public authority that would liaise with the NCAFP. The authority would be responsible for developing a regional economic development plan.

The end of the very long-standing Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme in 2015 marked a critical juncture in Australian Indigenous policy history. For more than 30 years, CDEP had been among the biggest and most influential programs in the Indigenous affairs portfolio, employing many thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. More recently, it had also become a focus of intense political contestation that culminated in its ultimate demise. This book examines the consequences of its closure for Indigenous people, communities and organisations. The end of CDEP is first situated in its broader historical and political context: the debates over notions of 'self-determination' versus 'mainstreaming' and the enduring influence of concerns about 'passive welfare' and 'mutual obligation'. In this way, the focus on CDEP highlights more general trends in Indigenous policymaking, and questions whether the dominant government approach is on the right track. Each chapter takes a different disciplinary approach to this question, variously focusing on the consequences of change for community and economic development, individual work habits and employment outcomes, and institutional capacity within the Indigenous sector. Across the case studies examined, the chapters suggest that the end of CDEP has heralded the emergence of a greater reliance on welfare rather than the increased employment outcomes the government had anticipated. Concluding that CDEP was 'better than welfare' in many ways, the book offers encouragement to policymakers to ensure that future reforms generate livelihood options for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians that are, in turn, better than CDEP.

This paper begins with a historical analysis of both the rhetoric and the institutions of Australian Indigenous affairs since self-determination was first adopted as Commonwealth government policy in late 1972. It then moves on to conceive of these institutional developments, following Rowse, as the emergence of an Indigenous organisational sector. This terminology is, the paper argues, very useful both in tying together diverse institutional developments and in progressing debates about issues of representation and the role therein of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) and other Indigenous organisations. The language of the Indigenous sector does, however, also have its limitations. It portrays Indigenous interests as comparable with those of other groups who enjoy a corporatist-style relationship with government, such as industry bodies and trade unions. The ultimate strength of Indigenous peoples' political claims lies, however, in their being seen as quite different from those other interests; as being those of 'peoples' or 'nations' who pre-existed the encompassing society and who still, to some extent, form separate communities and political entities within that society. The latter half of the paper introduces the idea, following the example of Canada, of Indigenous peoples' organisations and their processes of representation as constituting an Indigenous order of Australian government. It is argued that this is perhaps the only philosophically coherent and historically realistic approach to future Indigenous affairs policy. It is also argued that this rethought approach has a number of clear policy implications, both practical and more theoretical. One practical implication is that calls for more ongoing guaranteed financing of Indigenous peoples' organisations should be seen as more reasonable and less exceptional. Another is that accountability processes and representation issues should be seen as matters for consideration within the Indigenous order, as well as being issues between Indigenous peoples' organisations and State or Territory and Commonwealth governments. A more theoretical policy implication is that calls for a treaty from Indigenous Australians should be treated as both well-founded and appropriate. The paper concludes by reiterating that both 'self-determination' and 'an Indigenous order of Australian government' are indeed appropriate key terms for Australian Indigenous affairs policy in the twenty-first century. With the demise of European imperialism, Australia's Indigenous minorities deserve a path to decolonisation as much as do Indigenous majorities elsewhere.

Abstract
This paper distills arguments by Indigenous public intellectual Noel Pearson in support of an "uplift" agenda for remote Australian Aboriginal communities suffering corrosive disadvantage and intergenerational dysfunction. Pearson draws on Amartya Sen while prioritizing personal responsibility, and attempts a synthesis of liberalism, social democracy, and capabilities building. The present paper also draws on Martha Nussbaum's and Rutger Claassen's capabilities approaches, with points of resonance and/or agreement with Pearson's arguments highlighted. Under a charitable reading, Pearson's position is defensible against prevailing criticisms, including the criticism that his responsibility emphasis leads him to misunderstand and misapply Sen's capabilities theory, and that his policies are illiberally perfectionist and paternalistic, ultimately assimilationist, and in breach of Kant's humanity principle.

Indigenous Australians constitute approximately 2.4% of the Australian population & suffer from disadvantage across a range of social, economic, & health indicators compared to other Australians, including exposure to racism across all domains of contemporary Australian society. However, there has been relatively little research conducted on anti-racism in relation to Indigenous Australians. This article begins with an overview of theoretical issues pertinent to the empirical study & public policy of anti-racism. Empirical findings, from social psychology, on effective approaches to anti-racism at the cognitive, individual, interpersonal, & societal level as well as for the targets of racism are detailed with a particular focus on Indigenous Australians. Recommendations for improving & expanding institutional & legal policies to implement these approaches in relation to education & child-rearing, public service, law enforcement & media, as well as monitoring racism & promoting anti-racism in civil society, are then presented. To conclude, strategies for engendering political will to combat racism in the current neoliberal capitalist climate are explored. References. Adapted from the source document.

Indigenous Australians constitute approximately 2.4% of the Australian population and suffer from disadvantage across a range of social, economic, and health indicators compared to other Australians, including exposure to racism across all domains of contemporary Australian society. However, there has been relatively little research conducted on anti‐racism in relation to Indigenous Australians. This article begins with an overview of theoretical issues pertinent to the empirical study and public policy of anti‐racism. Empirical findings, from social psychology, on effective approaches to anti‐racism at the cognitive, individual, interpersonal, and societal level as well as for the targets of racism are detailed with a particular focus on Indigenous Australians. Recommendations for improving and expanding institutional and legal policies to implement these approaches in relation to education and child‐rearing, public service, law enforcement and media, as well as monitoring racism and promoting anti‐racism in civil society, are then presented. To conclude, strategies for engendering political will to combat racism in the current neoliberal capitalist climate are explored.