This seminar will revisit my triangular conceptual framework for Australian Indigenous policy developed a decade ago. That framework identified three competing principles of equality, choice and guardianship. Equality was identified as the dominant principle at the top and centre of the policy space, but with three interpretations: individual legal equality, equality of opportunity and socio-economic equality. The other two principles of choice and guardianship came into play through positive and negative evaluations of Indigenous difference and diversity and occupied more extreme positions at the bottom left and right of the triangle. Five positions of principle were thus identified in a linear left-right progression around a triangular policy space.

I clarify the nature of this policy space by identifying an individual/communal dimension running vertically through the triangle. Something interesting also emerges in the horizontal left-right dimension. Positive and negative evaluations of Indigenous difference and diversity are observed on both sides of the political spectrum, but at different levels in the individual/communal dimension. Thus there are elements of choice and guardianship on both the left and right sides of politics.

Biography

Will Sanders has been thinking about Indigenous housing, employment and income support issues since first employed by the ANU in Darwin in 1981. He is intrigued by the dominance of the equality principle in Australian Indigenous affairs, but also the room for manoeuvre within and around it. Will was Deputy Director of the ANU Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research from 2010-2014. He is now CAEPR's most long-serving Senior Fellow.