The Constitution of AIDS in Australia: Taking 'Government at a Distance ' Seriously

Australia’s policy response to AIDS has frequently been held up as a model of global best practice. The few comparative analyses of national AIDS policies (Kirp and Bayer 1992; Mann and Tarantola 1996) portray the Australian approach as enlightened and innovative, and a recent evaluation of Australia’s National HIV/AIDS Strategy (Feachem 1995) has found such indices as its low rate of HIV incidence exceptionally good. But there has been little attempt to interpret this perceived success. A diagnosis of the conditions of possibility for government policy offers potential for a rich interpretation of this perceived success Drawing on Foucault’s concept of governmentality, Nikolas Rose and Peter Miller argue that a liberal problematics of government is "dependent upon technologies for 'governing at a distance', seeking to create locales, entities and persons able to operate a regulated autonomy " (1992: 173). Government is a problematizing activity, elaborating programs around perceived difficulties and failures and making “the objects of government thinkable in such a way that their ills appear susceptible to diagnosis, prescription and cure by calculating and normalizing intervention ” (1992: 183). The strategies, techniques and procedures through which programs are rendered operabl