Abstract
After eleven years of a Coalition government there has been a change in government at the Federal level and with the election of Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister there is a renewed sense of hope and optimism about the future of Indigenous affairs in Australia. The Prime Minister has fulfilled one of the key ALP election promises in Indigenous policy by delivering a national apology to the Stolen Generations. Another election promise the Federal government has indicated it is yet to fulfill is to establish a national representative body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This is an important policy because of the representative vacuum that has existed since the abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) in 2005. There is much to be learnt from previous bodies and those lessons are crucial to constructing a sustainable representative body that has the trust of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia. This paper turns to the question of what lessons can be learnt from ATSIC. More specifically, the paper is concerned with how Indigenous women fared under the representative and policy structure of ATSIC.
Disciplines
Human Rights Law
Date of this Version
March 2008
Recommended Citation
Megan Davis, "ATSIC and Indigenous Women: Lessons for the Future" (March 2008). University of New South Wales Faculty of Law Research Series 2008. Working Paper 9.
http://law.bepress.com/unswwps-flrps08/art9
Comments
This paper will appear in Balayi: Culture, Law and Colonialism (2008, forthcoming). This paper may also be referenced as [2008] UNSWLRS 9.