Economic development and Indigenous Australia: contestations over property, institutions and ideology

Economic development for remote Indigenous communities cannot be understood unless the relative importance of customary activity, potentially enhanced by native title legal rights in resources, is recognised. The present article uses a three‐sector hybrid economy framework, rather than the usual two‐sector private (or market) and public (or state) model to more accurately depict the Indigenous economy. Examples are provided of the actual and potential significance of the customary sector of the hybrid economy. Focusing on the concepts of property and institutions, it is demonstrated that significant local, regional, and national benefits are generated by the Indigenous hybrid economy. A role is foreshadowed for resource economists and the New Institutional Economics in quantifying these benefits, including positive externalities, so that they might be more actively supported by the state.International Development, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Generating finance for Indigenous development: Economic realities and innovative options

This is an exploratory ideas paper that sets out to consider how real development futures might be financed and delivered to Indigenous people, especially those residing in rural and remote regions. These are places where there are limited conventional development opportunities—where development is and is going to be costly—but where demographic projections, cultural imperatives and history indicate Indigenous people will be living in 50 to 100 years time. These are also places where a very high proportion of land is owned by Indigenous people, generally under inalienable title, and often (even if tradable) has a low market value. The issue addressed is how can existing institutions and statutory and nonstatutory policy frameworks be used by Indigenous interests to strategically leverage development capital. This issue is especially critical under current circumstances when governments appear reluctant to recognise communal Indigenous rights and interests and market failure, and instead focus increasingly on the individual and the market, in accord with the dominant ideology of development. Simultaneously, there is evidence of a corporate banking retreat from commercially marginal regions. What strategic pressure might Indigenous interests exert to reverse such a trend

Sustainable development options on Aboriginal land: the hybrid economy in the twenty-first century

This discussion paper is a brief summary of a number of intellectual endeavours undertaken in 2001. First and foremost, it is an attempt to progress a research collaboration between the author-a social scientist based at the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research-and a number of biological scientists based at the Australian Research Council ARC Key Centre for Tropical Wildlife Management at the Northern Territory University. It is hoped that it also further progresses our joint collaboration with an Indigenous organisation, the Bawinanga Aboriginal Corporation in central Arnhem Land. The broad aim of this wider collaboration is to generate creative ideas about new development futures for Aboriginal people living on Aboriginal land. The paper seeks to broaden the notion of the economy and development to include the customary economy. A number of other issues are discussed in the process, some in a very cursory and exploratory way. These include the debate about Indigenous development encapsulated in extreme ideological positions taken by so-called 'progressives' and 'conservatives', as well as more conventional debates about the shortcomings of notions of development that are embedded in the market mentality and have limited analytical capacity for considering cross-cultural and sustainability issues. There is a linked debate about land rights and native title and whether the restitution of property rights (in land and species) to Indigenous groups will have a positive (or negative) future development impact. The paper begins by outlining the economic development problem that is faced by Indigenous people living on Aboriginal land in remote and regional Australia. It then describes the hybrid economy, made up of market, state and customary components, that is a distinctive feature of such situations, and argues that a big part of the development problem is that this type of economy is poorly understood-by politicians, policy makers and Indigenous people and their representative organisations alike. Consequently, important Indigenous contributions remain unquantified and unrecognised in mainstream calculations of economic worth. This shortcoming is generated in large measure by inadequate analytical approaches that fail to ask how development based on market engagement be delivered to communities that are extremely remote from markets, in both locational and cultural terms. A proper understanding of the hybrid economy requires a hybrid analytical and intellectual framework that combines science, social sciences and Indigenous knowledge systems. The paper argues for such a framework, and concludes by providing a few examples of how this different approach might enhance greater sustainable development on Aboriginal land in the twenty-first century

Indigenous communities and business: Three perspectives, 1998-2000

This working paper comprises three previously unpublished papers written over the period 1998–2000... ‘New horizons, new opportunities, new strategies: Where to now for ‘doing business with Indigenous communities’?’, was presented at the 4th AIC Doing Business with Aboriginal Communities Conference held at the Plaza Hotel in Alice Springs in February 1998. ‘The development potential of the Indigenous economy and the role of ‘doing business’’, was presented at the ‘Towards Better Business Partnerships’ 6th AIC Doing Business with Aboriginal Communities Conference, held at the Carlton Hotel in Darwin in February-March 2000. ‘Culture and commerce: are they separable in Indigenous business policy?’ was prepared as a personal comment on two discussion pieces released by the then federal Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs Senator John Herron in 1998

Stabilise, normalise and exit = $4 billion

A costing estimate for the Howard Government's intervention into Northern Territory Indigenous communities

Inquiry into Australia's Indigenous visual arts and craft sector

A submission by Professor Jon Altman to the Senate Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts Committee's Inquiry into Australia's Indigenous visual arts and craft sector

Yet another failed Howard government experiment in Indigenous affairs?

An initial response to the Howard Government's new approach to Indigenous Affairs, announced on 21 June 2007

Opening comments to Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs Inquiry into the Provisions of the Northern Territory Emergency Response Bill 2007 and Associated Bills

These remarks to the one day Senate enquiry emphasise Professor Altman's opposition to the many of the measures contained in the Bills, which he describes as 'hastily conceived' and filled with 'unnecessary' and 'contradictory' approaches