The paper explains how the vote counting system used in Northern Territory local government leads to very poor electoral outcomes which concentrate representation rather than spread it. It discusses how, in the case of Alice Springs, this has produced a narrowly based council with no representation from town camps. It argues that this vote counting...

The Indigenous estate, the assemblage of Indigenous lands held under a diversity of land rights and native title regimes now covers an estimated 1.7 million sq kms or 22 per cent of continental Australia. For a variety of reasons, including a restricted common property regime that is the dominant form of land tenure and remoteness...

Highlighting the socioeconomic benefits of cultural land management, this paper discusses two NSW Aboriginal groups that are engaging Aboriginal people in looking after their country. Banbai Business Enterprises manages the first Indigenous Protected Area (IPA) in New South Wales, ‘Wattleridge’, on the New England Tablelands north east of Guyra, and is now also managing a...

Using 2006 Census and Community Housing and Infrastructure Needs Survey statistics this paper critiques Working Future, a policy initiative of the Northern Territory Government announced in May 2009. It shows that the 20 proposed Territory Growth Towns (TGTs) in Working Future are geographically skewed towards the more densely settled, tropical savannah north of the Northern...

In the present era of evidence-based policy making in Indigenous affairs, where the monitoring and closure of socioeconomic gaps dominates the federal agenda, data have become paramount. Yet with regard to one of the cornerstones of the Labor government's 'Closing the Gaps' initiative-Indigenous education-the reliability of the evidence base has been repeatedly called into question...