The politics of being 'practical' : Howard's fourth term challenge

Tim Rowse argues that the Howard government's recent innovations in Indigenous affairs policy make significant concessions to the ideological and institutional heritage of Indigenous policy over the past thirty years. Rather than a return to 'mainstreaming' in the interests of 'assimilation', there are two irreversible concessions to 'difference': the army of Indigenous organisations that operate as semi-autonomous instruments of governance, and the substantial and growing statistical archive of Indigenous disadvantage. Although the government's interest in statistics through a discourse of 'responsibility' has the potential to stigmatise Indigenous Australians and act as a scapegoat for the failure of practical reconciliation, there are other political possibilities inherent in continued Indigenous statistical visibility.