The Policy Analyst’s Eye

Thou blind fool, [redacted], what dost thou to mine eyes,

That they behold, and see not what they see?

Sonnet 137

In recent weeks, one area of focus in my reading has been various aspects of the Indigenous art sector. As I read more widely and deeply, it struck me (and this seems obvious in retrospect) how diverse, complex and dynamic the sector is, and that this is in many respects a microcosm of the wider policy context which policymakers, Indigenous interests, and policy analysts operate within.

One of the insights to emerge from my reading has been the disparate ways issues are seen, observed, and interpreted by different authors, and by their subjects. The titles of two excellent books I have read in recent months even reflect this framing: Quentin Sprague’s What Artists See: Essays (link here) and Drusilla Modjeska’s A Woman’s Art: Her Eye (link here). Not only is art open to alternative interpretations and ways of being seen, but there is often no single best way of seeing and interpreting a work of art, or the artists motivation, or the context within which the artist lived and worked. So too with policy — policy analysis, policy development, and policy evaluation.

This is not an argument for analytical anarchy, but a recognition that there are legitimate alternative perspectives that invariably exist and should be considered and weighed in exercises aimed at evaluating policy. Ideally, good analysis will transparently acknowledge the existence of alternative perspectives and provide a rationale for why those alternatives are set aside or not given primacy.

Unfortunately, neither governments, interest groups, nor academics and independent analysts invest enough attention in identifying, understanding and explaining the nature and/or existence of alternative ways of seeing the policy world. Part of the reason for this is the way governments in particular frame policy issues, increasingly without engaging in good faith dialogue across the community and developing alternative options in secrecy and without open engagement. Critics too can be so focussed on tearing down a policy framework for either ideological or self-interested motives, that they fail to see either the elements of the policy that are worthwhile or under-invest in identifying what would be required to replace the extant policy framework.

This broad-brush description leads me to make the case once again for the importance of governments engaging in substantive dialogue with the wider public and for much greater transparency around government activities. This is not just a pre-requisite for improved democratic cultures in a global environment where these cultures are under increasing and direct threat, but they also contribute to the more mundane, but still important task of making policy initiatives and frameworks more effective. Without substantive wide-ranging dialogue and transparency, alternative policy options don’t obtain the oxygen necessary to be more than stillborn.

The Indigenous policy domain (like most other policy domains) is increasingly disconnected from the ongoing and underlying intellectual currents that shaped out nation and its social and economic institutions. The institutionalised default within Australian government is increasingly to rely on secrecy and non-disclosure of salient information rather than a preparedness to engage in open discussion. My forthcoming posts based on the use of FOI provide more than enough evidence for this. Debates are pursued by specific interests utilising ideological arguments frameworks that are contrived to exclude wider and more inclusive democratic input. Government adopt simplistic nostrums and refuse to engage in open discussion about what they are doing. This occurs on both the left and right of the societal spectrum (though a binary characterisation is itself a simplification), and across the indigenous non-Indigenous divide (again a divide that ignores the ubiquity of intercultural identities in modern Australia). The result is incoherence in both macro and micro policy settings, and the concomitant development is that policymaking becomes transactional and invariably benefits stronger over weaker interests. I see these developments as inherently unsatisfactory and arguably proto-authoritarian.

Returning to the Indigenous art sector (where the issues I have just discussed are themselves apparent and deeply embedded), I recently came across a link to a web site that I once read every day. It was written by a US based art collector, Will Owen, who developed an extraordinary insight into the texture and breadth of the Indigenous art sector in Australia. His blog was titled Aboriginal Art and Culture: an American eye. The sub-heading was Indigenous Australian art, culture, anthropology, music, politics, literature…

It struck me that the broader Australian Indigenous policy domain has never had a non-Australian policy analyst writing regularly about developments. Of course, there is no reason why there should be such person writing, but it points to yet a further gap in the potential perspectives that are brought to bear on the policy process in this area. Whether the onset of ubiquitous AI will address this gap is perhaps moot.

In any case, Will Own died suddenly in late 2015 and his blog ceased. It remains available online and is worth a visit or revisit (link here).

In 2008, he published a post reviewing a book which sought to assess the state of play across the remote Indigenous policy domain in the early 2000s. The review, titled Engagement Not Intervention, is recommended (link here); reading it in 2026 suggests that notwithstanding the extraordinary changes in Australia and the world over the past two decades, many of the issues and policy conundrums identified then in the book under review continue to frame, shape and permeate today’s policy challenges.

It is past time that we continue to look at these challenges through the same eyes. As a nation we need new ways of seeing to assist us to shape and formulate new ways of doing.

 

27 March 2026