Sue Olney
Christian Eva (@ChristianEva9), Kerry Bodle, Dennis Foley, Jessica Harris, and Boyd Hunter discuss their new research in the Australian Journal of Social Issues on Indigenous owned businesses - to help inform future policy direction for both Indigenous employment and Indigenous business policies.
Read MoreAs the inquiry into Robodebt reveals the depth of Australia’s shame over its treatment of welfare recipients, Dr Tjanara Goreng Goreng, Wakka Wakka Wulli Wulli woman, academic, unionist, former public servant and proud grandmother, answers the question: ‘What opportunities and challenges does a universal basic income (UBI) present for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities?
Read MoreAboriginal academic Dr Sharynne Hamilton describes how her research co-partnership with Elders in the Perth Aboriginal community has lead to a clear path of action to achieve justice in child protection grounded in respect, and commnunity control.
Read More‘Closing the gap’ is a major, and highly visible, government policy goal, with the intention of reducing disparities between Australia’s First Nations peoples and White communities. Despite many years, however, there has been little demonstrable progress. Today’s analysis utilises critical race theory, with important lessons for intersectional feminism. Penny Skye Taylor (@PennySkyeTaylor) and Daphne Habibis (@dhabibis), both of the University of Tasmania (@UTAS_), identify white ignorance as an overlooked key factor. This analysis is drawn from their research into Aboriginal views of White Australians and the dominant culture.
Read MoreDespite being 30 years since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody, families continue to lose loved ones. More than 455 Indigenous Australians have lost their lives in police or prison custody since the Royal Commission reported and according to families, the loss of life is higher than what has been reported. In today’s post, Eddie Cubillo, a proud Larrakia, Wadjigan, Central Arrernte man from the Northern Territory and Senior Indigenous Fellow at Melbourne Law School, University of Melbourne, highlights successive government’s failure to act on the Royal Commission’s recommendations and calls for taking real and effective action into Aboriginal deaths in custody.
Read MoreThe Closing the Gap Report 2020 was released the week before last by the Prime Minister. He frankly admitted ‘The final target — closing the gap in life expectancy within a generation — is not on track to be met by 2031’. Then he went on ‘We may not be on track to fully close the life expectancy gap in a generation – always an ambitious target – but mortality rates have improved by almost 10 per cent. This is mostly because we’ve made progress in tackling the leading cause of death: the big circulatory diseases like heart disease and stroke. This is progress.’ In this piece, Richard Madden and John Gilroy of the University of Sydney analyse the implications of this report and the statements made.
Read MoreAt the recently-held Power to Persuade Symposium, the talk given by Aurora Milroy (@AuroraMilroy) of ANZSOG (@ANZSOG) was a stand-out. Unfortunately, due to technical difficulties, her talk was not captured on film. We are therefore pleased to present a summary of her talk and her slides here. Aurora spoke of “black swan theory” which highlights the deficits of western knowledge and ways of working. Acknowledging and honouring the ‘black swans’ that Indigenous ways of being and knowing represent brings a more holistic understanding and can mend broken relationships.
Read MoreAboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples occupy a unique position as the first sovereign peoples of Australia. And while governments have been striving to improve their relationships with as well as their abilities to represent and provide services to Indigenous Australians, there is still a long way to go.
In this post, the Australia and New Zealand School of Government’s (ANZSOG) Aurora Milroy discusses why Indigenous values and culture should be embedded in the Australian Public Service (APS), and outlines practical solutions for helping the Commonwealth begin to reset its relationship with Indigenous peoples.
Read MoreToo many of our kids are incarcerated and living away from their families and their ‘country’ in youth detention facilities. It is urgent and critical to commit to transforming the way Australian youth justice service is undertaken. Sharynne Hamilton, Ngunnawal woman and PhD scholar at the University of Western Australia, explains the potential of ‘Justice Capital’ to lead the way.
Read MoreThe release of the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry earlier this month has not had the intended effect of allaying mistrust in the financial services sector in Australia. Despite the enormity of the report, nearly 1,000 pages with 24 entities and companies referred to civil and criminal proceedings, there is a consensus that the major financial corporations involved in the misconduct remain unscathed. In today’s post, Dr. Jonathon Louth examines the silences in this report, especially as it impacts the lives of Indigenous peoples living in rural and remote Australia. Based on his recent research with Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory, he recommends expanding community and cultural literacies in the financial sector as one of the counter measures to tackle systematic dispossession and marginalisation of vulnerable populations. This piece was originally published in The Conversation on 6 February 2019
Read MoreVanamali Hermans, Wiradjuri woman with a lived experience of disability, explains why it has been so difficult for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, to benefit from the National Disability Insurance Scheme
Read MoreWhat might we expect from former Prime Minister Tony Abbott as Indigenous envoy? Dr Prue Brown of the University of Queensland analyses the discourse in his Closing the Gap speeches to Parliament, compared with those of Rudd and Turnbull.
Read MoreThe theme for this year's NAIDOC Week, held from 8-15 July 2018, was "Because of her, we can". In the following article, republished from IndigenousX with permission, Antoniette Braybrook calls for the ongoing celebration and acknowledgment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, who work tirelessly for the community, and whose views and experiences are often invisible to policy-makers. Antoinette Braybrook is the CEO of Djirra (formerly the Aboriginal Family Violence Prevention and Legal Service Victoria) and the National Convenor of the National Family Violence Prevention Legal Services Forum. She also tweets @BraybrookA
Read MoreRecently the National Foundation for Australian Women (@NFAWomen) released their annual Gender Lens on the Budget document. This comprehensive and highly collaborate effort includes analyses of how the Federal budget falls for women, identifying the winners and losers for a range of policy positions including social services, education and training, employment, health, and elimination of violence against women. It also provides an overview of how the Budget will shape the lives of women, including young women, older women, Indigenous women, migrant and refugee women, and women with disabilities. For Reconciliation Week, today's post summarises the analysis authored by Policy Whisperer Lesley Russell (@LRussellWolpe) on budgetary impacts for Indigenous women. Her analysis indicates that Indigenous women will continue to struggle under this Budget that includes continuation of the Cashless Debit Card trial and punitive measures relating to welfare income, but has no meaningful response to high levels of incarceration and the lack of effective supports for women experience domestic and family violence. The Federal Budget papers can be accessed here.
Read MoreThe Cashless Debit Card Symposium was held at both the University of Melbourne and the Alfred Deakin Institute on Thursday, the 1st of February 2018. The Symposium attracted attendees from a range of backgrounds, including card-holders, representatives from community organisations, academics based at a number of Australian universities, Labor and Greens senators, and various other interested parties. A mix of presentations and panel discussions generated productive conversations around issues including the experience of being subject to the Cashless Debit Card (CDC), settler-colonial relations and the CDC, a rights-based perspective on income management, the consumer and banking implications of the CDC, income management and the social determinants of health, and perspectives on moving beyond current framings of welfare in Australia. Additionally, the Symposium featured a panel discussion on behavioural approaches in policy making. This is the first of several blogs that the Power to Persuade will publish based on the papers presented on the day. We kick off with an overview by Elise Klein, the organiser of the Symposium and a leading researcher into its harmful effects on communities and individuals. This paper is drawn in part from an article that ran in The Conversation; you can read it in its original form here.
Read MoreIn today’s post, leading up to the election, Professor Jon Altman analyses what the three major political parties are doing to address Indigenous poverty in Australia. Looking beyond campaign rhetoric he scores the parties’ commitment to ameliorating Indigenous poverty on a scale of 0–4 where 0 = very low confidence and 4 = very high confidence. His overall scorecard strongly favours the Greens and throws the shortcomings of the Coalition and the ALP in this arena into sharp relief.
Read More“Despite a push in Canada, Australia and New Zealand to recruit more Indigenous people into the mainstream public service, no academic study has analysed their contributions or the precise purpose behind the recruitment until now,” according to an international research team examining the experiences of Indigenous public servants.
Catherine Althaus (@AlthausCat) reports on the early findings of this important research.
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