Federal Court rules Australian Government doesn’t have a duty of care to protect Torres Strait Islanders from climate change
The Federal Court has handed down its long-awaited judgment in a four-year climate case brought by Torres Strait Islanders.
Recent articles in Indigenous-Affairs
16 July 2025
It’s time for another reforming and agitating attorney-general
Just last month Australia celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Whitlam Government’s Racial Discrimination Act (1975), without much fanfare it has to be said.
15 July 2025
The politics of a police criminal organisation
In 1972, police at an Aboriginal settlement at Papunya, several hundred kilometres west of Alice Springs, closed down a travelling Slim Dusty concert after some of the young men somehow got access to alcohol and became drunk.
22 June 2025
Aboriginal-Chinese roots of reconciliation: China’s first cultural envoys in Australia
As Australia marked Reconciliation Week (27 May – 3 June ), a landmark exhibition at the National Museum of Australia reminds us that Indigenous–Chinese bonds helped forge the links between the two peoples long before Canberra and Beijing formalised diplomacy in 1972.
10 June 2025
‘Deadly’ sports diplomacy: why Australia’s Indigenous people must be a part of our sports strategy
The fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have practised sports diplomacy for more than 60,000 years is a powerful story.
5 June 2025
In one awful decision, Albanese has revealed his do-nothing plan
It didn’t take long for us to discover what a triumphantly re-elected Labor government would be like.
3 June 2025
Time again for stewards to do a moral health check-up
Was there ever anything more predictable, and more shameful than the detached and independent — and, of course, apolitical — decision by federal Environment Minister Murray Watt that damage caused to Aboriginal Australian heritage values could not weigh as heavily as the economic interest of Woodside’s Northwest Shelf project, worth billions of dollars, potentially trillions?
1 June 2025
Bridging now to next – seeking to rise from the ashes of the Voice referendum
During this Reconciliation Week (27 May – 3 June), with the theme Bridging Now to Next, the nation is aware that there is still unfinished business on the national agenda when it comes to the due recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians.
1 June 2025
Sydney Harbour Bridge walk – unsuspected joy and hope
At the end of reconciliation week it is time to look back at a extraordinary event. While Aboriginal people remained quiet and uncomplaining, most of our leaders showed very little interest in them. And average Australians, they believed, were right behind them. Didn’t social media and talkback radio prove that?
18 May 2025
Voice rejection sends Australia backwards
It was a dramatic return to the political stage! With the election underway, indigenous activist Noel Pearson broke a self-imposed silence which he had kept for 18 months since the failure of the referendum on the voice to parliament.
10 May 2025
The Racial Discrimination Act at 50
The passage 50 years ago of the Racial Discrimination Act, Australia’s first substantial piece of human rights legislation, laid the basis for the recognition of native title in the common law in the 1990s.
3 May 2025
RSL stands up for Welcome to Country while Dutton weaves and dodges
On 25 April, a group of Neo-Nazi protesters booed Uncle Mark Brown’s Welcome to Country at the Melbourne ANZAC Day Shrine service.
30 April 2025
From welcome to jeering: How disrespect spreads
Norms do not sustain themselves. They are shaped, modelled, and sometimes destroyed – publicly, rhetorically, politically.
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