Towards a history of Indigenous statistics in Australia

![CDATA[In 2003, the Productivity Commission report Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage: Key Indicators 2003 demonstrated that Australia now has an extensive (though not time-deep) statistical archive through which we can compare Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. The report points to twelve ‘headline indicators’, and seven ‘strategic areas for action’, and it operationalises the ‘strategic areas for action’ in terms of thirty variables on which Indigenous and non-Indigenous can be compared. It has not always been possible to make such a wide battery of Indigenous/non-Indigenous comparisons (nor Indigenous/Australia comparisons). In this paper I will trace the steps that Australian governments have taken to recognise an entity that we call the ‘Indigenous population’ and to state its characteristics in comparative, quantitative terms. My story is a frankly teleological one, in two senses. First, in looking at the steps taken I will pay particular attention to the steps that led towards what we have now. Second, I will nominate a turning point or watershed: the period 1966–76. In this moment, Australian governments ceased to manage the statistical archive in one way and began to manage it in a new way.]]