This paper examines recent local government reform in the Northern Territory from two perspectives. The first is a quantitative perspective on population and finances, which focuses on the mixing of diverse interests in the recent changes. The second is a more observational perspective gained from working with one pre-reform local government and now the new...

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...

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...

This paper tracks the recent rise of ideology and evidence discourse as a way of describing good and bad Indigenous affairs policy. Expressing dissatisfaction with this discourse, it suggests a slightly more complex analytic way of thinking about Indigenous affairs involving three competing principles; equality, choice and guardianship. The paper suggests that dominant debates in...

This paper, adapted from the ANU- Toyota Public Lecture ‘Closing the Gaps in Indigenous Mortality and Housing: Perspectives from the Social Sciences’ presented at the ANU on Friday 4 April 2008. In it the author argues: "On April 6, 2005 John Howard, on a visit to Wadeye in the Northern Territory, opened up the ‘issue...