Indigenous Community Governance Project Understanding, Building and Sustaining Effective Governance in Rural, Remote and Urban Indigenous Communities The Secretaries' Group and the new arrangements in Indigenous Affairs   Will Sanders and Bill Gray Not in the ICGP’s original research plans, the unique opportunity that this case study represents arose in late 2005. In a series of interviews, Will and Bill were able obtain views directly from eleven members of the Commonwealth Government’s Secretaries’ Group on Indigenous Affairs, about their experiences of the Australian Government’s new ‘whole-of-government’ policy and administrative arrangements set in motion in July 2004. After a draft was presented and circulated to the Secretaries Group’ to seek their feedback, their findings were reported in CAEPR Discussion Paper No. 282: 'Views from the top of the ‘quiet revolution’: Secretarial perspectives on the new arrangements in Indigenous affairs'. This paper reports on various aspects of the new arrangements, ranging from the Ministerial Taskforce and the National Indigenous Council to Indigenous Coordination Centres and local and regional agreement making. In its latter sections the paper also offers some commentary and analysis. It argues that while the level of senior executive attention being given to Indigenous affairs across a broad range of Commonwealth portfolios is genuinely innovative, there are other aspects of the new arrangements that draw on and rework past experience and well-established ideas in Indigenous Affairs. Taking a lead from one of the Secretaries, the paper attempts to move beyond the language of ‘mainstreaming’ to talk instead of some potential benefits of the involvement of line departments in Indigenous Affairs and of the complex relationships between Indigenous-specific and general policy mechanisms. The paper notes a diversity of opinion among the Secretaries on a number of aspects of the new arrangements and argues that this is healthy. It concludes by noting that the way governments organise themselves was only one of two aspects of Minister Vanstone’s claimed ‘quiet revolution’ in Indigenous affairs, and that whether the new arrangements work will ultimately depend on other things as well, such as relationships between government and Indigenous communities built up over extended periods of time.   Papers arising from this research include: 'Views from the top of the ‘quiet revolution’: Secretarial perspectives on the new arrangements in Indigenous affairs', CAEPR Discussion Paper No. 282, by Bill Gray and Will Sanders. [3.2 MB PDF document] Click here to download document.