Indigenous Affairs
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The CIS has been publically advocating for improving the outcomes of Indigenous Australians since 2004. Our work has spanned health, education, housing, private property rights, criminal justice, child protection and employment policy reform and had a direct impact on government thinking on Indigenous issues.
Our latest focus is on improving Indigenous economic outcomes.
The Prosperity Project: Strategies for Indigenous Economic Development
The Prosperity Project focuses on the practical measures that will enable Indigenous communities to improve their economic outcomes and bring about meaningful and sustainable change.
While there is much goodwill in Australia to improve Indigenous outcomes, there is a surprising gap in the knowledge about what works.
The Prosperity Project aims to bring likeminded individuals together to help fill that gap and drive the agenda for change.
The Prosperity Project will look at how a more enabling environment for Indigenous enterprise could be created and which models of support and corporate partnerships work most effectively in which context. It will also look at strategies to improve the accountability and effectiveness of Indigenous corporations.
Featured Publication
Evaluating Indigenous programs: a toolkit for change
Sara Hudson
04 June 2017 | RR28
The federal government recently announced it will allocate $10 million a year over four years to strengthen the evaluation of Indigenous programs. However, given that the average cost of an evaluation is $382,000, the extra $10 million a year for Indigenous program evaluations will not go far. To make the…
READ MOREPublications
Submission to Productivity Commission - Draft report: Introducing Competition and Informed User Choice into Human Services
Michael Potter, Sara Hudson
14 July 2017 | CIS Submission
The Productivity Commission (PC) released a draft report proposing reforms to increased competition, contestability and informed user choice to human services. CIS responded to the PC’s report with a submission covering two issues raised in the draft report: social housing and remote Indigenous communities. In…
Submission to the Queensland Productivity Commission on: Service Delivery in remote and discrete Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities
Sara Hudson, Heidi Kiekebosch-Fitt
02 June 2017 | CIS Submission
The Inquiry into service delivery for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders closely aligns with the CIS’s focus on Indigenous service delivery and achieving better outcomes for Indigenous peoples as part of our Prosperity Project. The Prosperity Project is a program of research focused on the…
Submission to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet – Consultation Paper: Indigenous Business Sector Strategy
Sara Hudson, Charles Jacobs
26 May 2017 | CIS Submission
We believe supporting Indigenous businesses contributes to Indigenous empowerment. Unlike program delivery, which tends to be a more passive form of support, supporting Indigenous businesses is an active form of assistance. A multiplier effect occurs when people own a business that goes beyond the financial…
Ending the Violence in Indigenous Communities
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Marcia Langton, Josephine Cashman
05 December 2016 | OP152
Urgent action is need to address the epidemic of violence in Indigenous communities. Aboriginal women are between 37 and 80 times more likely to experience family violence than non-Indigenous women. For too long, the voices of the victims of domestic violence have been oppressed and…
Submission to the Productivity Commission on the Preliminary Findings Report: Introducing Competition and Informed User Choice into Human Services: Identifying Sectors for Reform
Sara Hudson
27 October 2016 | CIS Submission
To improve Indigenous outcomes, there needs to be better management of overall funding and a strategy to coordinate how programs are delivered.
Media & Commentary
Commissioner Tim's Blind Eye
Jeremy Sammut
16 July 2017 | Quadrant Online
According to Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane, Australia remains a racist country because ethnic minorities are not perfectly statistically represented in the upper ranks of politics, the media, and business.…
Building Indigenous competitive advantage
Charles Jacobs
13 July 2017 | THE SPECTATOR - FLAT WHITE
The ABC’s recent Alice Springs Q&A highlighted many key features of the Indigenous disadvantage debate — both positive and negative. While issues such as juvenile detention and domestic violence dominated,…
Make NAIDOC money count
Sara Hudson
07 July 2017 | Ideas@TheCentre
This year’s NAIDOC week saw Australia celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. And in light of recent news about the appalling suicide rate…
Men of violence
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price
23 June 2017 | THE SPECTATOR
Almost every other Aboriginal woman I know has been subject to family violence. It is in fact rare for an Aboriginal woman to have not experienced violence. And somehow this…
Co-accountability in Indigenous program evaluation and service delivery
Sara Hudson
09 June 2017 | Croakey
Earlier this year, in response to damning reports about the evaluation and funding of Indigenous programs, the federal government announced $40 million over four years to improve the evaluation process.…