Bob Beadman
Bob Beadman has worked in Canberra, Brisbane, Townsville, Thursday Island, Darwin, Alice Springs, Geneva and the Federal Ministers Office. He has worked for both sides of politics in both the Australian and Northern Territory Governments.
Since retirement in 2001 after 43 years service, he has taken on the roles of Chairman of the Northern Territory Grants Commission, Chairman of the Swimming Pool Safety Review Committee, Coordinator General of Remote Services, Director for Cyclone Reconstruction and Community Development, Member of the Red Cross Committee for Children, and Public Officer and Treasurer of the Tiwi Bombers Football Club.
He has been closely involved in Indigenous Affairs for the last 50 years.
Recent articles by Bob Beadman
25 January 2025
After the theft of a continent, welfare benefits beat work
Land rights now! By a strange quirk of fate, I was working in the Minister’s Office in 1976 when Parliament passed the Aboriginal Land Rights (Northern Territory) Act. Great was our pride, and our expectations. In terms of securing title to land and sea the Act has been highly effective. But in terms of creating assets for wealth generation, and lifting household incomes, and providing the means for people to participate in the economic activity of the Country, not so much.
31 May 2024
Bugger the bush: the pauperisation of generations of people
It has always seemed to me that the Northern Territory, and especially its Indigenous peoples, have been Australia’s ‘poor relation.’ Out of sight, inaccessible, incomprehensible, hostile, threatening.
2 June 2023
Straddling 65,000 years: Vale, Dr Yunupingu AM
It has been my privilege to know Yunupingu, and for our lives to have criss-crossed and intertwined all these years. I think that now finally - I have answered my own puzzlement about his lifes choices.
16 January 2023
The Voice is an invitation to the Australian people
The nation is approaching a watershed decision. Are we brave enough to try and correct the wrongs of the past?