Surviving “Advancement”: Aboriginal Community Organisations Negotiating Settler-Colonial Neoliberal Governance in Western Sydney

The introduction and rollout of the Indigenous Advancement Strategy (IAS, the Strategy) in 2014 by the Abbott Coalition government dramatically altered the relationship between the Indigenous sector and the Commonwealth. In this thesis, I use a critical qualitative methodology to undertake in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 32 frontline workers in eight Aboriginal community organisations in Western Sydney between 2016-2017, to highlight the day-to-day processes of negotiating and ultimately surviving these ongoing policy settings. Although there is a body of research on the broader turn to neoliberalism in Indigenous Affairs beginning with the abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission in 2004-05, there is little analysis of how Aboriginal community organisations and frontline workers understood, dealt with, and negotiated this significant policy shift of the IAS at the grassroots level of service delivery. In my significant and original contribution to knowledge, I examine how frontline workers describe the effects of the Strategy for Aboriginal community organisations, and their practice in negotiating and fighting for their survival whilst balancing their commitment to the Aboriginal community of Western Sydney in an era of deep crisis. This research reveals how settler-colonial neoliberalism is problematised, challenged, and negotiated by Aboriginal frontline workers through their day-to-day action as the reality of contemporary Indigenous Affairs policy. While Aboriginal community organisations continue to deliver culturally-specific services, and a social good for Aboriginal communities in specific socio-historical contexts through grassroots programs, advocacy, and policy representation mechanisms, I explain that the constraining nature of the organisation-to-government relationship, and the reflexive practice of frontline workers to Commonwealth settler-colonial neoliberalism, are correlated with the distinct positioning and social function of the Indigenous sector, the reflexive negotiation of Aboriginal community and government relationships, and frontline workers’ agency through anti-racist project making. I argue that Aboriginal community organisations in Western Sydney continue to actively negotiate state domination, paternalism, and logics of mainstreaming in Indigenous Affairs policy in Australia, and significantly, expose a dual legitimacy crisis of both New Public Management and settler-colonial governance