161 Results

Crikey readers talk mandates, the new senators and the NT intervention.

Last year the indigenous unemployment rate was 3.6 times the non-indigenous rate, this year it is down to 3.3 times, surely good news? Jon Altman of ANU’s Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research reports.

There’s a broad expectation that Mal Brough will walk straight back into the ministry if he wins Fisher. And there’s widespread fear in black Australia that the portfolio will be Aboriginal affairs.

Crikey readers have their say.

The fifth anniversary of the NT intervention was supposed to be “liberation” day for prescribed communities now supposedly “stabilised, normalised and exited”. Instead it was another day of shame, says Jon Altman.

I don’t normally agree with anything George Brandis says, but in a piece in The Australian last week it finally happened. The story was on the likely failure of a 2013 referendum to amend the Australian constitution to recognise Aboriginal people in the preamble, and to remove racially discriminatory powers.

Crikey readers have their say.

Jenny Macklin is living in fantasy land if she thinks 631 new homes in the NT represents “turning a corner” in the provision of a basic service that all other Australians expect as a right of citizenry, writes Chris Graham, managing editor of Tracker Magazine.

Global evidence suggests that stronger futures for Aboriginal people will require more self-determination, writes professor Jon Altman of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research.

At least when Cook set sail from Britain he knew roughly where he was going. Indigenous affairs minister Jenny Macklin enjoys no such luxury. She’s making this stuff up as she goes along, writes Chris Graham.

Evidently, the Australian government is keen to assure Aboriginal people living on outstations and homelands that they will receive access to power, water and sewerage and road maintenance, as well as garbage collection, writes Jon Altman, an anthropology research professor at ANU.

It is budget week, so how will the new Holy Cow surplus drive the political agenda?

Several criticisms of government policy in Australia towards its indigenous peoples have used opposition to paternalism to support their alternative proposals, writes Dr Nicholas Biddle, a Fellow at the Australian National University.

A juggernaut is a force that is regarded as mercilessly destructive and unstoppable. For many this is an apt metaphor for the Stronger Futures in the Northern Territory bills, writes professor Jon Altman, of ANU’s Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research.

The lack of media scrutiny will allow the federal government to continue and expand a series of paternalistic, ineffective programs that will reduce the well-being of many disadvantaged Australians.

How far should feminists be supporting Julia Gillard as PM because she is a woman and the first one in this job?

Concerns about the Northern Territory Police’s call centre operations have been around for a while.

Why do so few of the media reporters actually ask the Aboriginal demonstrators why they are so angry with being told to change tactics?

The number of indigenous prisoners has increased for the 11th year in a row, despite the prisoner population falling for the first time in a decade. Inga Ting reports a history of failed government policy.

Conservatives in Australia have their long johns in a knot over planned pokie regulations, arguing that Australia is turning into a nanny state. So why were they pro the Howard-led Intervention in the NT against indigenous Australians? asks Annabel Crabb.