The impact of institutional racism upon indigenous economic and human development in Australia

Overview

Within Australia, State employment programmes are an essential means of attempting to redress the substantial social and economic disadvantages experienced by indigenous Australians, particularly at the community level. While such programmes expend large sums of money, the social and economic outcomes for indigenous Australians remain far below that of the non-indigenous. This paper argues that an important constraint to indigenous human development arises as a result of institutional racism within a range of responsible public sector agencies at all three levels of government within the Australian federal system. The results of an evaluation of the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP) within a remote indigenous community are presented. This serves to illustrate how the exclusion of indigenous people from the design and delivery stages of key government programmes has the potential to result in substantial misallocation of funding from purposes meant to assist in the alleviation of indigenous social and economic disadvantage.

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