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The Employment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in Local Government: Issues, Benefits, and Ways Forward

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 February 2015

Warren Rerden  and
Bernard Guerin
Warren Rerden
Affiliation:
University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
Bernard Guerin*
Affiliation:
University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia
*
Address for correspondence: Professor Bernard Guerin, School of Psychology (Magill Campus), University of South Australia, GPO Box 2471, Adelaide SA 5001, Australia. Email: [email protected]; [email protected]
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Abstract

In Australia today, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experience significant ongoing disadvantage around employment, education, health, housing, and social inclusion. Local government agencies and others often now have roles for Aboriginal people to work and deal with relevant issues. Ten people working, or formerly working, in Aboriginal-related roles in local government were interviewed about the issues and benefits of such roles. Themes to emerge included the importance of properly resourcing the positions, having wide-ranging Aboriginal employment policies, providing mentoring and support for Aboriginal workers, and continuing to build cultural awareness in councils. Many of those interviewed described cultural awareness training as valuable for councils, but also questioned the efficacy of the way they are commonly run. Implications for local government include the need to ensure that what is already known about the effective implementation of policies in organisations is being applied; for example, by making Aboriginal employment policies the responsibility of each work area.

Keywords

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanderslocal governmentcultural awarenessemploymentAboriginal support rolesracism and discrimination
Type
Articles
Information
The Australasian Journal of Organisational Psychology , Volume 8 , 2015 , e2
Copyright
Copyright © Australian Psychological Society Ltd 2015 

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