Problematisation of New South Wales government Aboriginal employment policy

From the early 1980’s the NSW state government has taken ownership and responsibility for the creation of Aboriginal employment policies within the public service for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Ostensibly, these policies have been a pubic relations exercise to provide Equal Employment Opportunity for the unemployment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the NSW public sector. The NSW public sector established the moral basis to design, develop, and administer ‘racialised’ employment initiatives for Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people. These ‘racialised’ policies are ‘paternalistic’ top-down approaches based on the ‘moral responsibility’ of government to address and fix the perceofpetion of the ‘Aboriginal problem’ percieved as as being ‘racially inferior’ and ‘in deficit’ to the qualities possessed by non-Aboriginal people. Through the use of the Whats the problem represented to be? (WPR) approach (Bacchi, 2009) and slected use of Fairclough’s (2002; 2003 cited in Walter, 2006) three tier approach, this research has undertaken a policy analysis of selected NSW government Aboriginal employment documents. The policy analysis has revealed ‘problematisations’ and ‘problem representations’ within each of the policies. These ‘problematisations’ within Aboriginal employment policy has emerged as a continuous pattern of institutional racism embedded in bureaucratic employment policies towards Aboriginal people since the mid-70s.