Being Indigenous in the Bureaucracy: Narratives of Work and Exit

Abstract

Australia’s civil service has had some success in attracting substantial numbers of Indigenous employees. But significant numbers also regularly exit the bureaucracy. Retaining Indigenous employees is recognised as an ongoing difficulty for government. This research with former and current Indigenous civil servants outlines factors they identify as contributing to decisions to leave the bureaucracy. A key finding involves their general sense of being underutilised and undervalued— that forms of experience and understanding as Indigenous people go largely unrecognised within government, which in turn constrains their potential to meaningfully contribute to improving government relations with Indigenous Australians or to enhancing the effectiveness of the bureaucracy more broadly. Work as an Indigenous civil servant emerges as a space of contestation with the possibilities and limits of statecraft.

First Nations First

“…A now substantial literature indicates a long list of obstacles getting in the way of improved workforce outcomes, including exit linked to feeling undervalued and underutilised, racism, pigeonholing, problems with managers, pressure to move from regional offices to the national capital, opaque 'unwritten rules' of bureaucracy, unconscious bias in recruitment and a lack of cultural safety (eg. Bargallie, 2020b;Lahn, 2018;Larkin, 2013;Leon, 2022). In this article we dig in to look beyond headline statistics to consider the conditions of employment in the public service.…”

Assessing the support of health leadership for increased Indigenous participation in the health workforce

“…Indigenous employees also sought a clear articulation of the 'positive case' or 'value proposition' underpinning efforts to employ them. 27,28 Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations illustrate the strengths-based approach, whereby the community identifies the problems and determines the solutions. This sector provides services that are tailored by the community for the community and covers home and site visits, medical, nursing and allied health services and public and health promotion, as well as providing assistance with appointments, transport, accessing child care, drug and alcohol services, dealing with the justice system and providing help with income support.…”

Indigenous Health Workforce: exploring how roles impact experiences in Higher Education

“…Altman & Hunter, 1997;Hunter & Daly, 2018) have argued that the education and employment opportunities that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have within Australia are still at the lower end of skills and education levels due to the various advantages non-Indigenous peoples have accumulated over the years since colonisation, due to (white) privilege and institutional racism (Larkin, 2014;Paradies, 2007). This has resulted in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people being seen as having a mainly higher level of interactional (informal) roles within their communities yet having no structured higher level (formal) roles within the wider society (Lahn, 2018;Larkin, 2014).…”