Located in western Sydney, an area with one of the largest Indigenous populations by density, is an Aboriginal corporation that has been successfully providing services to Indigenous area residents for over 20 years. Over the last decade this organisation has increasingly experienced difficulty obtaining government funding for the expanding services it offers; frequently losing out in tendering processes to large, non-Indigenous charities. The current preferred method of distributing public human service funding aligns with the neoliberal New Public Management; using “competitive market mechanisms” to support the devolution of government responsibility to the private sector. In accordance with economic rationalism, this approach is deemed to be best practice despite observable perverse outcomes. This seminar will provide an account of the lived experience of one Aboriginal corporation in its efforts to obtain funding and will demonstrate how this seemingly ‘rational’ approach can have clearly irrational and oppressive results.

This research is grounded in six years of participant-observation undertaken by Elise Adams, a PhD candidate at ANU’s department of Archaeology and Anthropology. Joining Elise in presenting this seminar will be Jack  and Jennifer who serve as the Community Development Worker and Executive Officer respectively of the Aboriginal corporation discussed.