Indigenous affairs after the Howard decade: An administrative revolution while defying decolonisation.

Abstract

How will the Indigenous affairs policies of the first decade of the Howard government be remembered in years to come? No doubt Prime Minister Howard and his first three ministers for Indigenous affairs, John Herron, Philip Ruddock and Amanda Vanstone would like them to be remembered as constructive and reformist. Indeed in early 2005 Amanda Vanstone used the phrase the ‘quiet revolution’ to describe the recent development of new arrangements in Indigenous affairs after the abandonment of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC). It is not hard to imagine a history of the Howard government’s Indigenous affairs policies being written which is indeed quite positive. It would tell of how Minister Herron tried from 1996 to 2001 to improve the public accountability of ATSIC and the Indigenous sector organisations which it funded. It would possibly then tell of how, in the face of still not achieving sufficient public accountability, and in the face of conflicts of interest among elected ATSIC representatives, Minister Ruddock in 2003 took away from these representatives their power to make financial decisions in Commonwealth Indigenous affairs programs. Finally it would tell of how Prime Minister Howard and Minister Vanstone eventually moved, in 2004, to get rid of ATSIC altogether, and to put in place a series of new arrangements in Indigenous affairs.