[EDITORIAL] Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Employment: Key Issues for Policy, Practice and Research

Abstract

In more than 50 years of federal public policy relating to Australia's First Nations peoples, employment has always been prominent among the issues taking centre stage. Recent Coalition governments have positioned it as one of their three major aims in the Indigenous Affairs portfolio: getting ‘kids into school,’ ‘adults into work’ and improving community safety. But behind these seemingly simple statements lies an enormous real-world complexity. Getting more people into work moves well beyond the supply and demand models of mainstream economics, with policy approaches hinging on a tangled mix of ideology, contested evidence and competing ideas. As Liddle’s introduction to this volume suggests, many of the assumptions that underpin policy decisions remain informed by colonial narratives. These assumptions require serious and sustained critique. Key questions include: What counts as ‘work’? Who decides? Are the challenges relating to First Nations employment best understood as structural or individual? How can employment policy move beyond notions of ‘carrots’ and ‘sticks’ and take account of the enormous locational, historical and aspirational diversity of First Nations peoples? To what extent should it be self-determined, or cohere with an Indigenous polity? And should notions of ‘decent’ work come into play?