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

See How We Roll

 

In the perilous movement of people through time and space, both places and kin are made and remade. A primary driver of movement is the opportunistic pursuit of resources: a meal, an adventurous ride, the numbing release of alcohol or ganja, the conviviality of assembled kin … All of these forms of Warlpiri movement, no matter their diversity, never seem to be in search of a destination per se. The near pristine abandoned houses at one of the outstations on Nungarrayi’s ancestral estate attest to this; the houses stand as a kind of melancholy memorial to the collapsed outstation movement more generally and the bewildering history of the disconnect between government imaginaries and Aboriginal ways of living. Warlpiri rarely look to settle in the conventional Western sense; they do not arrive at a destination. They keep moving, always on the lookout for what is coming next.

 

The extract above is from page 84 of Melinda Hinkson’s recent book, See How We Roll, which focusses on the challenges inherent in the life of a Warlpiri woman living in exile from her ancestral country in Adelaide. The subtitle is Enduring Exile Between Desert and Urban Australia.

 

See How We Roll is an ethnography exploring myriad issues which explicate and illuminate Warlpiri ways of living in modern Australia. It is narrated reflexively through the prism of a friendship between anthropologist Hinkson and her ‘informant’ Nungarrayi (a subsection term that serves to anonymise the individual concerned). Hinkson has written a comparatively dense book, interleaving an individual narrative embedded within a complex world of local Aboriginal politics, conflicts and social relations, anthropological theory, contextualised within a staccato account of two decades of policy history related to remote Australia.

 

My sense is that See How We Roll was written for a largely academic and anthropological readership, and I expect it will be well received. It is very well written, builds on the pre-existing literature, and moves smoothly between participant observation and theoretical exegesis. Despite its theoretical density, the narrative alone is worth reading as it brings to life the lives of not just Nungarrayi, but her extended family. While Hinkson doesn’t say so, my sense is that the experiences narrated in See How We Roll are widely replicated across remote Australia and the surrounding urban cities and towns.

 

Hinkson’s nuanced narrative describes, in largely non-judgemental terms, the extraordinarily precarious lives of Warlpiri people, the daily challenges of sustaining welfare payments, keeping power on, engaging government services, their drinking culture, the moving in and out of prison, hospitals, and the early deaths of far too many. She also describes the social relations at the heart of Warlpiri society, the importance of kin, the attachments to place and to country, and (as in the quote above) their addiction to perpetual movement and engagement, all from the perspective of a grandmother who has decided to leave her Central Australian community and live in Adelaide; a grandmother who has a propensity to live on the edge.

 

It strikes me that this is, more than any other I have come across recently, an important book for policymakers engaged in shaping policy in the Indigenous domain. It shatters preconceptions regarding the distinction between remote and urban contexts, and makes clear the parallels between disadvantaged Indigenous people and other disadvantaged citizens. Most importantly, it should make policymakers question their assumptions and preconceptions regarding Indigenous life choices, and the potential for policy instruments and measures of various kinds to articulate or engage with the altogether different world views and approaches to living of many Indigenous people.

 

I do have one critical comment regarding See How We Roll. While Hinkson’s narrative describes the experience of Indigenous lives neutrally and largely objectively, she resorts to a more value laden approach to her description of various policy measures. It is not that I fundamentally disagree with her policy critiques (which are often included as brief asides more than extended arguments), but it somehow doesn’t sit well within an otherwise neutrally descriptive narrative. In the scheme of things however, my criticism is a mere quibble.

 

See How We Roll is more than an anthropological treatise. It is a window into issues of enduring salience and importance to policymakers. It doesn’t offer solutions, it doesn’t argue for particular policies, but it certainly allows those of us whose knowledge and experience of Aboriginal social, economic, and political realities is thin to gain a better appreciation of what is at stake when policies directed at reshaping Indigenous lives are promulgated unilaterally and from ‘on high’.

 

Ultimately, Hinkson challenges policymakers, and the nation generally, to look harder at the underlying constraints on Indigenous lives, and our own responses to Indigenous life choices, and to truly ‘see’ how ‘we’ roll.

 

 

 

See How We Roll was published by Duke University Press in 2021.

Codesign in the Indigenous policy domain

 

Two of the most important and high profile current policy initiatives in the Indigenous policy domain are the development of an Indigenous Voice, which I recently blogged about (link here) and the development and ongoing implementation of the National Agreement on Closing the Gap (link here) and which I have also written about on this blog (link here and link here).

 

Both of these policy processes involve elements of codesign by both governments and Indigenous interests. Both are case studies in a recent Discussion Paper published by the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the ANU (link here). The paper canvasses the relevant international literature on codesign and collaborative governance; argues that codesign is more than mere consultation; and assesses the two case studies against a set of criteria drawn from the literature.

 

One of the key messages in the paper (consistent with its sub-title) is that while there are opportunities for both governments and Indigenous interests in pursuing codesign of policy development, each of these parties also face risks.

 

Another is that the design of the codesign process is crucial in ensuring the legitimacy and efficacy of the policy outcomes.

 

The Discussion Paper is recommended notwithstanding the author’s academic pretensions.