Jon Altman

• BA MA (Hons) PhD
• Professor Emeritus at Australian National University

It is a truism that the impacts of any crisis always fall unevenly. In this chapter, we focus on the experience of COVID-19 by a particular population group, Indigenous Australians living in extremely remote circumstances. Here key responses to the disruption wrought by the pandemic have paradoxically registered as reprieve. In Australia, remote-li...

This chapter explores post-capitalist development alternatives that are emerging in remote Australia for Indigenous peoples who have repossessed their ancestral lands. My exploration is based on over 40 years of research as an economic anthropologist/comparative economist exploring development alternatives. I deploy a grounded model of actually exi...

Arnhem Land Fire Abatement (Northern Territory) Limited (ALFA) is a non-profit company established to make a financial return from savanna fire management. It operates as a charitable entity to ensure that its earnings benefit the Aboriginal landowners of Arnhem Land, many living in deep poverty. ALFA is unusual because it must operate at the inter...

In April 2020 a Group of Eight Taskforce was convened, consisting of over 100 researchers, to provide independent, research-based recommendations to the Commonwealth Government on a "Roadmap to Recovery" from COVID-19. The report covered issues ranging from pandemic control and relaxation of social distancing measures, to well-being and special con...

Today, increases of so-called ‘low-skilled’ and temporary labour migrations to Australia—including via dedicated seasonal labour schemes targeted to Pacific Islanders—occur alongside calls for Indigenous people to ‘orbit’ from their remote communities in search of employment opportunities. These trends reflect the prevailing neoliberalism within co...

In much of remote Australia where a sizable minority of Indigenous people live, labour markets are able to employ only a small fraction of the working-age Indigenous population, a legacy of Australia’s settler-colonial past and present. In this chapter, we do two things. First, we describe the former Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP)...

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in remote communities in Australia experience a disproportionate burden of diet-related chronic disease. This occurs in an environment where the cost of store-purchased food is high and cash incomes are low, factors that affect both food insecurity and health outcomes. Aboriginal and Torres Strait...

In the 1970s, Aboriginal people in remote Australia took decisive steps to decentralize from government settlements and missions to live and make a living on their ancestral lands at places that have become known as homelands. Over time, this migration garnered some state support and saw the emergence of new facilitating institutions. But in the la...

This article examines the importance of basic income in supporting development and economic security in remote Australian Indigenous communities. Specifically we draw on the case of the Community Development Employment Programme (CDEP) and examine its significant basic income features: it provided economic security, flexible definitions of work, co...

Income management was introduced into the Northern Territory in 2007. Despite much rhetoric around evidence based policy making and constant reviewing of income management, there has been little grounded research about Aboriginal responses at the community level to this new institution. In this article I report on the operations of income managemen...

Deploying the lenses of economics, this chapter considers why the Australian government has proven so incapable of progressing the process of reconciliation after setting up the statutory and institutional mechanisms to do so in 1991. My argument is that in policy thinking there is a perceived logical correlation between reconciliation and the ques...

In early 2015, the prime minister of Australia delivered the seventh annual Closing the Gap Prime Minister’s report (Australian Government, 2015). In it he reported that the government’s goal to halve the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and other Australians by 2018 was not on track, a euphemism for failing, and that there was a decli...

To determine the average price difference between foods and beverages in remote Indigenous community stores and capital city supermarkets and explore differences across products. A cross-sectional survey compared prices derived from point-of-sale data in 20 remote Northern Territory stores with supermarkets in capital cities of the Northern Territo...

Amid the questioning of government support for remote Aboriginal communities and what Prime Minister Tony Abbott called the “lifestyle choices” of those who live there, the growing role of Aboriginal management of large areas of remote Australia has been overlooked. There are 1,200 small, discrete Indigenous communities in regional and remote Austr...

Australia's economic history is the story of the transformation of an indigenous economy and a small convict settlement into a nation of nearly 23 million people with advanced economic, social and political structures. It is a history of vast lands with rich, exploitable resources, of adversity in war, and of prosperity and nation building. It is a...

This chapter does four things. First it provides a brief history of Australian Indigenous affairs in the modern policy era that began with a 1967 Constitutional Referendum. Second, it looks at contemporary Indigenous policy, in particular so called ‘Closing the Gap’ strategies, and its unrelenting focus on convergence and structural adjustment base...

This chapter does four things. First it provides a brief history of Australian Indigenous policy in the modern era demarcated by the 1967 Constitutional Referendum. Next it looks at contemporary Indigenous policy – in particular, Closing the Gap strategies – and its unrelenting focus on a form of convergence and structural adjustment based on Weste...

At a time when neoliberal and conservative politics are again in the ascendency and social democracy is waning, Australian public policy re-engages with the values and goals of progressive public policy in Australia and the difficulties faced in re-affirming them. It brings together leading authors to explore economic, environmental, social, cultur...

This chapter examines the relationship between indigenous people, mining corporations, and the state in liberal democratic, rich and minerals export dependent Australia. I begin by briefly describing indigenous societies at first contact and then trace the devastation of the hunter-gatherer economy as state and settler colonization expanded. Today,...

Participation in the Indigenous visual arts sector provides one of few market opportunities for Indigenous Australians resident on remote Aboriginal lands. In this article we examine the economic factors that influence this market engagement as they relate to woodcarving in the Maningrida region of Arnhem Land. In particular, we look at the factors...

This article focuses on the issue of Indigenous Australian property rights and a Treaty. Using a political economy framework, I examine three issues: What mechanisms might provide more resource rights to Indigenous Australians? How effective have treaties with Indigenous people in the Torres Strait and New Zealand been? And what are some of the rel...

Plant resources are used, managed and conserved by local communities in many parts of the world. However, very few studies have examined the site-specific factors and mechanisms that affect resource extraction. We apply methodology from the social and biological sciences to examine the cultural and socio-economic factors that influence the harvest...

Aboriginal Australians have diverse interests in forest, encompassing cultural, economic, environmental and social values. Historically, the agencies and industries comprising the forest sector have engaged with only some of these interests, and have typically done so in a fragmented fashion. Our research with Aboriginal communities around Australi...

This article advocates a crucial role for economic anthropology in the twenty-first century. The use of anthropological techniques for primary data collection is essential for understanding the complexity of diverse local economies. This is demonstrated with reference to a remote Aboriginal economy in Arnhem Land, Northern Australia, using a ‘hybri...

Practical reconciliation’ and more recently ‘closing the gap’ have been put forward as frameworks on which to base and evaluate policies to address Indigenous disadvantage. This paper analyses national-level census-based data to examine trends in Indigenous wellbeing since 1971. There has been steady improvement in most socioeconomic outcomes in th...

Anthropologist Dr Ad Borsboom, chair of Pacific Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen, devoted his academic career from 1972 onwards to the transmission of cultural knowledge. Borsboom handed the insights he acquired during many years of fieldwork among Australian Aborigines on to other academics, students and the general public. This collection o...

This chapter looks at what happens in Australia when indigenous people who are landowners need to negotiate with multinational corporations engaged in mineral exploration and production on their lands. Focusing on a number of significant benefit-sharing agreements, the chapter explores some of the broad fundamental tensions that arise when the inte...

This scoping study presents an assessment of the potential impacts of climate change on Indigenous settlements and communities across tropical northern Australia, including the Torres Strait Islands and the Pilbara region of Western Australia. The study region is home to about 87,000 Indigenous people, around a quarter of the total population of 35...

‘Practical reconciliation’ and more recently ‘closing the gap’ have been put forward as frameworks on which to base and evaluate policies to address Indigenous disadvantage. This article analyses national-level census-based data to examine trends in Indigenous wellbeing since 1971. There has been steady improvement in most socioeconomic outcomes in...

This article explores the central role played by vehicles in a contradictory set of social processes that have unfolded in western Arnhem Land, north Australia, over the last five decades. Motor vehicles have mediated much of humanity's experience of the world over the past century. Kuninjku people's interaction with motor vehicles, we argue, provi...

The growth of the Aboriginal Arts Industry in Australia over the last few decades has seen an increase in the number of indigenous communities producing woodcarvings. The timber used for carving is derived from locally available tree species. Whilst the practice relies on the continued supply of timber from native forests, very little is known abou...

This article utilises a model of the economy that includes the non-market, Indigenous customary sector. It seeks to ‘Indigenise’ the economy by using available NATSISS 2002 data on fishing and hunting activities, art and craft production, and Indigenous people’s ability to meet cultural responsibilities while in employment. Other ABS statistics ign...

Current debate in Indigenous affairs in Australia often involves the assertion that the last 30 years has been a period of policy failure. This article examines trends across a number of socioeconomic outcomes for Indigenous Australians from the 1967 referendum to the present, using census data. Overall, there has been steady, although not spectacu...

This article assesses the state of commercial development and resource management on Indigenous land in remote Australia. Indigenous landowners control significant assets—over one million square kilometres of land—often with substantial resource rights and income earning potential. The inactivity and missed opportunities on the Indigenous estate ar...

This study examines a particular form of cooperative wildlife management on Aboriginal land in the tropical savanna of the Northern Territory of Australia, in the context of broader questions about governance. It asks how governance at the local or community level can be designed to ensure sustainable development and real economic benefit for the r...

One of the most important programs for Indigenous community and economic development is the Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme. CDEP employs around 35,000 Indigenous Australians and accounts for over one-quarter of total Indigenous employment. This paper reviews the evidence on the social and economic impacts of the scheme. The...

The Community Development Employment Projects (CDEP) scheme is an unusual labour market and social development program for Indigenous people. Currently the CDEP scheme employs around 36,000 Indigenous Australians and accounts for over one-quarter of total Indigenous employment. Despite the significance of the CDEP scheme, in recent times, relativel...

There is currently a growing policy interest in the effects of the regulatory environment on the ability of Indigenous people to undertake customary harvesting of wild resources. This Discussion Paper develops and describes a methodology that can be used to estimate the economic benefi ts derived from the use of wild resources. The methodology and...

Economic development for remote Indigenous communities cannot be understood unless the relative importance of customary activity, potentially enhanced by native title legal rights in resources, is recognised. The present article uses a three-sector hybrid economy framework, rather than the usual two-sector private (or market) and public (or state)...