body bg

Inform-Banner

Bureaucratic Ego and Aboriginal Unemployment

  • Year: 2006
  • Author: Cutcliffe, Tony
  • Journal Name: Institute of Public Affairs Review: A Quarterly Review of Politics and Public Affairs, The
  • Journal Number: Vol. 58, No. 2
  • Country: Australia
  • State/Region: Victoria

This article argues that the failure of policy from all shades and levels of government is obvious in relation to Aboriginal unemployment. It is manifest in the Federal Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) regarding Aboriginal employment initiatives. The example is provided of the Department's handling of Aboriginal unemployment in the Goulburn Valley, based around Shepparton, home to Victoria's largest Aboriginal community outside Melbourne. With around 6 per cent unemployment, Shepparton is approaching what is generally accepted as full employment. Why is it, then, that the region's 6,000 Aboriginal people, representing a tenth of the total population, are living with almost 80 per cent unemployment? How is it that these catastrophic unemployment levels, and their endemic costs and consequences, haven't raised an outcry in Cabinet? The author argues that the Department has devised unemployment strategies in total isolation of the on-ground reality in Shepparton, and in increasing denial of the present failure.

Related Items

Are we making education count in remote Australian communities or just counting education?

For quite some time the achievements of students in remote Australian schools have been lamented....

The impact of crime prevention on Aboriginal communities

This research reviews current literature on crime prevention policies and programs which have a...

Red dirt thinking on power, pedagogy and paradigms: Reframing the dialogue in remote education

Recent debates in Australia, largely led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island academics over the...

Share this with your friends

Footer Logo

Contact Us

Level 2, 53 Blackall Street
Barton ACT 2600
AUSTRALIA
Telephone: 02 6260 3733
or email us